Praise & Worship

November 15, 2018

Quiet Time Component #3: Praise & Worship

worshipContinued from here.

The final component of quiet time that Lysa TerKeurst mentioned in a video for her Bible study, Finding I AM: How Jesus Fully Satisfies the Cry of Your Heart, is engaging in praise & worship. While there are other ways to do this, I am a musical person and thoroughly enjoy using music to help with this. I have a library of over 600 Contemporary Christian songs on my iPod, and I choose a few each morning to guide me through my praise & worship time.

Not every Contemporary Christian song focuses on praise (thanking God for what He has done) or worship (admiring God for who He is). Many focus on the Christian walk or experience. While they have their place, I don’t use those during my praise & worship time because I want my mind focused on who God is and what He has done. As I shift my focus onto God, He grows larger in my mind while my problems grow smaller. It’s not that my problems become smaller. Instead, my perspective shifts as I recognition how the size of my God dwarfs the size of my problems.

Left to our natural tendencies, we are all woefully self-focused. As we focus on ourselves, our problems grow larger in our own heads, like the lens of a camera zooming in so that our problems fill the entire frame. Praise & worship shifts the focus of the camera outward so that God fills more of the frame than the problem. That is the correct perspective of life, but we won’t get there without shifting our focus to God, which is why praise & worship are such an important part of our daily quiet time with God.

Even focused praise & worship time for one song (3-4 minutes) can help shift your perspective, shining hope and life into your life, regardless of how large your problems are. This was an important part of surviving my son’s major back surgery in 2015. I could have easily become self-focused because that was a very difficult season in my life. Choosing to set aside lots of time for praise & worship helped me keep God in the frame and believe that He was in control during a time when everything felt out of control.

To be continued…

[Graphic: Cartoon of Grace singing and playing a guitar. Courtesy Bitmoji.]

 

August 24, 2017

Overcoming Despair: Praising and Worshiping God

dancingContinued from here.

One of the most powerful ways to restore hope when you are mired in despair is actively choosing to engage in praise & worship, especially when you do not feel like it. If you let your feelings of despair drive your choices, you will spiral deeper and deeper into the emotional abyss. The fastest way to change direction is to make a conscious choice to praise and worship God. This works because it takes your focus off your yourself and places it squarely onto God.

While praise & worship do not require music, that is my preferred way of doing this. I am musical by nature, so combining praise & worship with music enables me to shift my focus from myself to God more easily. I also find it helps to engage my entire body in the process, such as by singing praise & worship songs to God while standing rather than sitting and raising my hands upward.

If you are not musically inclined, you can accomplish the same thing without music, such as by reading the Psalms aloud. For example, read Psalm 42 and Psalm 43 aloud while standing to engage your body. The Psalms provide a wonderful blend of expressing the human condition while redirecting the focus back to God.

No matter what is going on in your life, you have something to be grateful for: your relationship with God, which can never be taken away from you. You are not walking through this painful season alone: God is always with you. Whatever you are feeling and experiencing will come to an end, just as the seasons end. The one constant that never ends is your relationship with God. He is walking alongside you through this challenging time and even carrying you, when needed. Shift your focus from yourself to God, and the despair will transform into hope.

Continued here.

[Graphic: Cartoon of Grace dancing, surrounded by musical notes and lightning bolts. Courtesy Bitmoji.]

December 14, 2016

Grace’s Story: Living Proof Live

Continued from here.

In March 2013, Bible study author and speaker Beth Moore held a Living Proof Live event in Greensboro, NC. This event was recorded and is now available as a Bible study called Sacred Secrets. I was riveted by the praise & worship. While I had been attending Sunday School and Bible study for years at my local church, I had not attended the worship service in a long time. (That’s another story for another time.) I had no idea how thirsty I had become for praise & worship until that event. I could not get enough!

While I don’t recall anything specific in Moore’s teaching that was earth-shattering, the Holy Spirit convicted me through that lesson. For the first time in my life, I understood that God wanted to meet with me “in the secret:” one-on-one on a daily basis. I made the life decision to tithe the first hour of my day – every day, no matter what – in one-on-one time with God.

That one decision changed my life. For the first time in my life, I actually felt loved — really and truly LOVED!!

Because of the child abuse, I had spent my entire life believing that I was fundamentally unlovable. I desperately wanted to be loved but could not trust that anyone’s love was sincere or lasting. I would simultaneously try to manipulate people into depending on me so they wouldn’t leave while also holding them at arm’s length so I would be less hurt when they would inevitably leave.

In the wee hours of the morning when I was alone with God, my heart opened up and received His love. He melted the ice around my heart and filled it with so much love and acceptance that I was actually giddy! For my entire life, I had believed that love was finite and that there was never enough left over for me. God poured an abundance of love into my heart in a way I have no words to describe. Imagine a cup filled to overflowing with love – that’s the closest I can come to describing the experience.

In June 2013, which was after only three months of spending the first hour of each day with God, I realized that my desire to die was gone. I had lived my entire adult life with an undercurrent of suicidal urges. This was such a part of who I was that I didn’t even notice it anymore … that is, until it was gone. I was blown away that God could heal this painful part of my existence so completely, and I didn’t have to do a thing to make it happen other than show up to receive His love. That’s grace.

Continued here.

[Graphic: Cover of Beth Moore’s Sacred Secrets Bible Study. Courtesy Amazon.com.]