The Power of Praise

We are constantly fighting a war with our lives. We make choices that send us down a path, and we have an enemy that wants to steer us toward destruction instead of toward the full life that God intends for us. That enemy wants to ruin us because of we remind him of his ultimate enemy, our Father God.

The devil uses all sorts of tools he can use against us to pin us down. While he can’t harm us without the Father’s consent, he can lead us into confusion and chaos. All he needs to do is get us to make small choices that begin to separate us from the path that God intended for us to walk on. Often those choices are insignificant and don’t even seem to take us off track. But a 1,000 small steps later we are wondering how we got so far from God.

But we have access to incredible strength through Christ. He has placed within us the same power that raised Him from the dead. Because of that, we don’t have anything, or anyone, to fear.

When we worship God, we are lifting Him over every other thing in our hearts. This foils the plans of the enemy and exposes the cheap nature of every other god he tries to throw in our path. Praise draws us into the arms of the Father where nothing can harm or hurt us.

Worship is both testifying that we have accepted Christ, and identifying as the Father’s children. It is testifying, because singing and agreeing with a song is claiming it as true for our lives. When we sing “I have decided to follow Jesus” or “I’ve been set free” we are together declaring our salvation. And worship is identifying because we are drawing to our Father who is Lord over all. Without Christ, we are pretty weak against the dark forces in this world. But through Him we are powerful and able to overcome anything that comes against us.

Worship is warfare. Whether we sense it or not, there are all sorts of spiritual battles going on around us–great and small–that we can and should fight off. A simple song or lyric may not feel powerful, but as God is lifted higher in our hearts, everything else falls into its rightful place. We don’t have to be afraid. We don’t have to worry. We don’t have to feel inadequate or incapable. Through Christ, we are children of the most powerful Being in the universe.