A Church with a Heart for our Community

January 12th Tuesday

Greetings to you…child of the Most High God…in the powerful name  of Jesus Christ – THE Risen Savior!  “This is the day that the Lord has made and we will be glad and rejoice in it!” – some days it is easy to state and other days it seems like an act of betrayal! I trust that you had a good weekend and Monday enjoying God’s blessings and surprises as we journey forward through 2021. Today I will be praying for you, asking Father to be: the Lifter of Your Head and the Sharer of your burden and the Listener of your heart’s cry and the Reason that keeps you going.

One of the principles that we talk about many times in our church family is the importance of praise. We even have an “ambassador of praise” in our leadership team. There are times when I wonder if people get tired of hearing about ‘praise’ and ‘thanksgiving’. In the season we are in with covid19 and lockdown  and staying at home and being isolated…isn’t ‘praise’ a little unnatural. The quick answer to that concern is “yes!” it is unnatural because ‘praise’ in these moments is “supernatural”!

Praise is both a offensive response and a defensive position. One moment we are encouraged to make praise a sacrifice and the next we are given a garment of praise to fight against the spirit of heaviness and despair. I believe that ‘praise’ is one of those spiritual weapons’ that is contrary to what the world values and imagines…praise destroys the weapons of the world…praise is powerful and brings us into alignment with God’s purposes (read 2 Corinthians 10:4-5).

This morning in our devotions we read about a time of praise in the throne room of heaven and this observation…The thunderous voice of the fired angels caused the foundations of the threshold to tremble as the cloud of glory filled the temple – Isaiah 6:4 TPT. If a united praise in heaven could cause the foundations to shake…imagine what our praise could do on earth. We need to spend time ‘praising’ God with each other so we can shake the foundations of this world. In this morning’s devotional thought we were told that “praise is a weapon of mass destruction against the enemy” – Gretchen Rodrigues, The Vision.

Now, because singing is a good vehicle for expressing ‘praise’ – I am thinking of a little chorus: We’ll sing in the morning the songs of salvation-We’ll sing in the noontide the songs of His love-And when we arrive at the end of our journey-We’ll sing the songs of Zion in the courts above! Let praise be a part of your day…confuse and overwhelm the enemy!

Something to ponder – be blessed!