“Praise Is What I Do” by William Murphy
Hebrews 13:15-16 (KJV)
15 By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. 16 But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
Sacrifice Of Praise
More Than Words
Why is it a sacrifice to praise the Lord? It seems to me that the goodness and wisdom of the Lord is so profound that praise should be automatic. But it is not. We live in a world of constant noise, and we seek it out on every level. We watch television (some of us all day long, or at least for hours at a time), attend movies and concerts, surf the Internet, talk and text on cell phones (which are rarely more than 3 feet away from us), yet when it comes time to praise the Lord, the House of God falls silent. We whisper our prayers, as if in a conspiracy, parsing our words with tense lips, holding to whatever personal privacy we feel that we need in order to pray.
Perhaps one of the reasons we are reluctant to praise God, is because in order to praise Him, we have to focus our attention on Him. This means that we have to turn away from something else in order to praise Him. The problem is, we don’t want to turn away from whatever it is that has our attention or fascination. Why? Because much of what has our attention, keeps our attention by means of tapping into our desire to indulge ourselves. We vicariously enjoy the petty chaos of reality TV, and vent our aggression in sports activities. We shout the praises of the entertainers we adore when they do well. Praising man is role playing: We do it not so much because we admire them, but because they give us the chance to see ourselves as them. It is not so much the star we see on the stage or movie screen, but ourselves. From our beds we are armchair gossipers, glamorous thieves, murderers, beautiful liars, unchained adulterers and fornicators, perverts, rebels, traitors, warmongers and anarchists. Television, movies, the Internet and music are the great external sanitizers of the collective unwashed mind. Work and entertainment, the two great tenants of our thoughts have us enthralled as voluntary prisoners.
But we have to pull away from all this. We should be in communication with the Lord, but doing so requires that we turn away from our visual, intellectual and emotional indulgences. I always thought that the phrase, “fruit of your lips” was oddly quaint. it is far more than this. The word that is translated as “fruit” means exactly that, and more. It means “fruit as in plucked.” Our praises, our thankfulness to the Lord which we are told to have continually, is literally fruit. We are the branches that abide in the Christ-vine. Our praises and thanksgiving are our fruit, which the Lord plucks to His pleasure and the devil wishes to steal. We are told to do good, and communicate. These are sacrifices too. Doing good, doing the will of the Lord is a sacrifice. In doing the will of God, we turn our backs on evil and give ourselves over to be used according to the mercy and knowledge of our righteous Creator. May the power of the Holy Spirit sustain you in a lifelong determined to praise God-out loud. Are you willing to be fruitful?
Be a blessing to someone today.
Until we meet again: “Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.” (Ephesians 6:10)
Your friend in Christ,
Verneda
Twitter handle: @vlights
© 2012 Verneda Lights. All Rights Reserved.
The video”Praise Is What I Do” by William Murphy was uploaded on Youtube.com by GospelMusicTV on Mar 17, 2008. Verneda Lights and E-graphX Omnimedia have no ownership in this video. It is used for educational purposes only.
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