Quotes about Praise

Psalm 134, The final Song of Ascents, provides the evidence. The way of discipleship that begins in an act of repentance concludes in a life of praise.

If Christians worshipped only when they felt like it, there would be precious little worship...Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship. When we obey the command to praise God in worship our deep, essential need to be in relationship with God is nurtured.

There is no literature in all the world that is more true to life and more honest than Psalms, for here we have warts-and-all religion. Every skeptical thought, every disappointing venture, every pain, every despair that we can face is lived through and integrated into a personal, saving relationship with God—a relationship that also has in it acts of praise, blessing, peace, security, trust and love.

GOD, you are my God. I celebrate you. I praise you.

Premature praise is false praise. Praise is our end but not our beginning. We begin our lives crying, not smiling and cooing and thanking our parents for bringing us into this lovely world full of dry diapers and sweet milk and warm flesh. We kick and flail. We yell and weep. We have the popularization of a kind of religion that, instead of training people to the sacrificial life after the pattern of our Lord, seduces them into having fun on weekends.

We don't become praising people by avoiding or skipping or denying the pain and the poverty and the doubt and the guilt but by entering into them, exploring them, minding their significance, embracing the reality of these experiences. That is what is so distressing about the religious entertainment industry in our land.

Hallelujah! Praise God in his holy house of worship, praise him under the open skies; Praise him for his acts of power, praise him for his magnificent greatness; Praise with a blast on the trumpet, praise by strumming soft strings; Praise him with castanets and dance, praise him with banjo and flute; Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum, praise him with fiddles and mandolin. Let every living, breathing creature praise GOD!

One day they were making "bricks without straw" and the next they were running up the far slopes of the Red Sea, shouting the great song "I'm singing my heart out to GOD—what a victory! He pitched horse and rider into the sea! GOD is my strength.

For redemption is not a rescue from evil—it is a redemption of evil. Salvation is not luck but rather a courageous confrontation that is victorious in battle. And that is why praise is so exhilarating. It has nothing to do with slapping a happy face on a bad situation and grinning through it. It is fashioned deep within us, out of the sin and guilt and doubt and lonely despair that nevertheless believes. And, in that believing, becomes whole.

The prayer of David traditionally assigned to this story is Psalm 57. While there are lines in that psalm that convey David's fugitive state at the time, its overwhelming impression is of energetic and ebullient praise of God. This means that while Saul was the occasion for David's being in the wilderness, Saul neither defined nor dominated the wilderness. The wilderness was full of God, not Saul.

For the good, when praised, feel something of disgust, if to excess commended.

Worship is focus.