The Prayer of Praise

The Prayer of Praise
by Stormie Omartian, from Seven Prayers Devotional Journal

I used to hurry into the church twenty minutes late on Sunday morning. By the time I found a seat and settled into it, the worship and praise time was over and the pastor was preaching. I wasn’t concerned about this because I was there for the teaching. Yet my mind wandered everywhere and didn’t settle into the message until the sermon was half over.

On the days I arrived in plenty of time to get a seat before the service started and was a full participant through the entire worship time, I found I was open to receive the message as if God were speaking directly to me. My heart was made soft and receptive to what the Holy Spirit wanted to teach me because of the twenty or thirty minutes I had spent praising God. Negative attitudes I had come in with were melted away and replaced with ones more in alignment with what God desired. I was made ready and open to receive from God.

Worship invites God’s presence, and that’s where deliverance happens.

Two men in prison were singing praises to God when suddenly the prison doors flew open and their chains fell off (Acts 16:26). In the spirit realm when we praise the Lord, the prison doors of our lives are opened, our bonds are broken, and we are set free.

Praising God opens you to experience His love, and it will liberate you.

The Prayer of Praise Brings Healing and Transformation

The more time we spend praising the Lord, the more we will see ourselves and our circumstances grow in wholeness. That’s because praise softens our hearts and makes them pliable. It also covers us protectively. The more the pliability and covering are maintained, the more quickly our hearts can be molded and healed.
Praise and worship of God are always acts of will. We have to will to praise God even when we don’t feel like it. Sometimes our problems or the burdens we carry choke out our good intentions, so we have to make the effort to establish praise as a way of life. And it becomes a way of life when we make it our first reaction to what we face and not a last resort.
Now is the time to lift up a prayer of praise to God for everything in your life. Thank Him for His Word, His faithfulness, His love, His grace, His healing. Thank Him for what He has done for you personally. Keep in mind that whatever you thank the Lord for — peace, financial blessing, health, a new job, an end to depression — will start the process of its being released to you at that time.

In the Old Testament, the people who carried the ark of the covenant stopped every six steps to worship. We also have to remind ourselves not to go very far without stopping to praise and worship. For emotional healing and restoration, we have to be six-step persons and continually invite the presence  of the Lord to rule in our situations.

We all have busy lives, but it is important to make time to praise God throughout the day. Write down ways you can make time to worship God in your daily routine. If you make a point to spend time with God during the day, you will create a deeper and more meaningful relationship with Him.

In the deepest part of our souls, all of us want deeper relationships with God. Even if we don’t know that’s what we want! Our praise is where we find healing, restoration, hope, and wholeness. Let’s praise Him with full hearts today! What are you praising Jesus for today?