The Church Can Shift the Atmosphere – Part 4

“Every child of God should express praise. Human praise of a holy God is a major theme throughout God’s Word. Praise is expressing to God our appreciation and understanding of His worth. Praise says ‘thank you’ for each aspect of God’s nature. Praise expands our awareness of God’s character. ‘Praise’ comes from a Latin word meaning ‘value’ or ‘prize.’ When we praise God, we proclaim His merit or worth and His value to us here on earth. We find other words related to praise in the Bible, including ‘glory,’ ‘blessing,’ ‘thanksgiving’ and ‘hallelujah’. These should all be ways we express our love for God. 

“The order of the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11:2 is important, ‘Father . . . hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come.’ First, Jesus praised God, and then He made His request. Praising God puts us in the right frame of mind to begin to declare our needs to a holy Father. With our hands outstretched, we can worship God in such a way that our daily provision can be released. Through worship, we can be assured that our supply will always come to us in a timely manner. Praise and thanksgiving are the opposite of worry. One of our greatest worries is over our needs being met. This is a time to be thankful for all that God is doing in our lives. Be like the one leper who went back and thanked Jesus for his healing. This thankfulness produced not just healing, but wholeness. Be whole!

“There is also a price to pay to enter into praise and worship. There is a cost to this process, and we are faced with a fundamental issue: Will we choose to just enjoy the efforts of others, or will we enter into the sacrifice of praise in a personal way? Furthermore, will we choose to offer this sacrifice in the good times as well as the trials?  We must be willing to embrace these costs to experience the real fruit of our praise.

“There is, perhaps, no stronger weapon of warfare than praise and worship to the Lord. Satan hates our worship to God for many reasons. For one, he is jealous of our worship. He longs to obtain it for himself through whatever means he can. For another, he knows that the weapon of worship is strong and effective.” (Chuck Pierce)

“Let the saints be joyful in glory; let them sing aloud on their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand, to execute vengeance on the nations, and punishments on the peoples; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute on them the written judgment—this honor have all His saints. Praise the LORD!” (Psalm 149:5-9; NKJV)

Give Him 15 minutes in prayer:

  • Read Joshua 5 & 6. Praise God! Ask the Lord for the strategy of worship that will dethrone what has seemed invincible and prevented you from moving forward in your promise.
  • Read Psalm 34. Praise God for the angels that are encamping around you.
  • Read Psalm 85. Praise God for restoring favor to your land.
  • Read Philippians 4. Thank God for establishing your mind on Him and making you think His thoughts. Realign your thoughts.  
  • Declare that you will capture each thought you have that is contrary to God’s judgment.
  • Read Acts 16:16-34. Praise God and watch your prison doors let go.  Watch salvation come to those around you who are imprisoned.

A prayer you can pray:

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we praise You! We proclaim that You merit our highest and best praise and worship. Your worth and Your value to us here on earth is not measurable. Your love makes us express our love to You in return. You provide for us. You are our healer. You are our very best friend. You are our peace. You are our way maker. You are our protector. There is nothing we can ever need that You do not give us.

We will praise you in the good times and we will praise You in the challenging ones, such as we are living in now. You will not ever let the enemy triumph over us. He cannot have a drip of our worship. It only belongs to You. We will praise You and dethrone what has seemed invincible and prevented us from moving forward in our promise. We will praise You for angels that are encamping around us. You have posted them there. We will praise You for restoring favor to our land. We will thank You for establishing our minds on You and making us think Your thoughts. Your thoughts and Your ways are higher than ours. We will capture every thought! We will watch You open our prison doors, and we will live free! We will watch salvation come to those around us who are imprisoned, as well. We exalt You most High God! Amen.

Today’s decree:

Let the saints be joyful in glory! This honor have all His saints. Praise the LORD!

Learn more about Chuck Pierce here.