THE POWER OF PRAISE

Micah 5:1-7:20; Revelation 7:1-17; Psalm 135:1-21; Proverbs 30:5-6

“What can we bring to the Lord? What kind of offerings should we give him? Should we bow before God with offerings of yearling calves? Should we offer him thousands of rams and ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Should we sacrifice our firstborn children to pay for our sins? No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

“After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands. And they were shouting with a mighty shout, ‘Salvation comes from our God who sits on the throne and from the Lamb!’ And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living beings. And they fell before the throne with their faces to the ground and worshiped God. They sang, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength belong to our God forever and ever! Amen.’”

“Praise the Lord! Praise the name of the Lord! Praise him, you who serve the Lord, you who serve in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God. Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; celebrate his lovely name with music.”

“Every word of God proves true. He is a shield to all who come to him for protection.”

I have an almost primal distrust of “praise” as the phrase is used in so-called “contemporary” worship. Don’t get me wrong. Our own church has a terrific contemporary service that is bringing literally thousands of folks to the Lord who would like as not never darken the door of a traditional sanctuary. I get that the new generation of Christians has been raised on a steady diet of technology and special effects – not to mention Internet, Twitter, texts and assorted sound bites - until almost nothing longer than fifteen minutes can hold their attention unless it’s on a giant screen awash in colored strobes or moody spotlights and accompanied by music just a few guitar riffs shy of actual rock and roll. They do seem to need new religious practices to call their own. Nothing is wrong with that. But to be blunt, contemporary worship runs a significant risk of becoming more about entertainment than about Christ. Frequently, its practitioners seem more concerned about their own personal pleasure and comfort than real praise. Contemporary worship also treads on other very dangerous ground. In redefining and restructuring what we think of as worship, “contemporary” Christians have to be even more, not less, intentional about making absolutely certain they are not remodeling God in the process. Also, praise must never be allowed to become more about pleasure than motivation. Our heavenly Father will have less than no appreciation for any religious practice that does not move us outside our comfort zone into the sometimes uncomfortable world of self-sacrifice and discipleship.

The contemporary obsession with unconditional love, forgiveness and acceptance to the exclusion of other characteristics of holiness is just so darn comforting, it’s easy to miss that we are only a step or two away from changing our image of God from the Lord of Scripture. Unflinching righteousness, wrath and uncompromising judgment (to name a few divine qualities that don’t get a lot of press in contemporary circles) just don’t mix as well with beautiful modern harmonies and the feeling of (dare I say forced) goodwill which are the staples of most contemporary worship. Yet when we do not give equal weight to all aspects of God’s character, we risk neutering the real Christ of the Bible by turning Him into someone we like to think of as “just like us.” We’ve brought God down off Mount Sinai and into our living rooms, and that may be a good thing. However, we don’t seem to be any closer to the radically different lifestyle Jesus calls us to. We’re just feeling a lot better about ourselves in spite of our failures and shortcomings than we used to.

It’s doubtful that this is the place the Spirit really wants us. The same remodeling of mores is occurring with parents who feel it is more important to be friends with their kids than to be mentors, disciplinarians and examples of a higher, better and more productive lifestyle. But that does not make it right.

If we are going to experience the full power of praise, we have to take a step back from current ideas and cosmetic emotions and refocus on the awesome completeness of the Lord Almighty of history. See Him as He really is in all His Glory, and give honest and fervent praise for every aspect of His divine and perfect character. Only One in all of history has even had the audacity to attempt to balance all the characteristics of holiness. Only One has in fact succeeded. Let us not be guilty of lessening the enormity of His victory by forgetting that He is our Judge as well as our justification. Let us praise Him for all that He is, and let’s do it with more than raised hands and sacred songs. Let’s offer Him our bodies, our minds, our sinfulness and our imaginations so that our praise will be as complete and comprehensive as humans can make it, and not some clichéd emotional high of the moment.

It is a great and glorious thing to see hundreds or thousands of fellow Christians raising their hands to heaven and truly giving the Almighty praise as they find themselves possessed by the Spirit. But it is better to see them working with the poor and downtrodden to lift them up and bring them closer to the Spirit. That is the true power of praise, when it moves us to act in a place we would never have gone in our own strength.