praising God

I will praise God's name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving.
This will please the Lord more than an ox, more than a bull with its horns and hoofs. (Psalm 69:30-31)

I hate boring church. I have been to so many. And I have found myself leading a few too. Since I hate it as much as I do, it becomes one of those nightmarish trapped situations that you are in occasionally.

Boring praise and worship is my worst hate. I was raised in a church that believed that music was to be energetic and you could enjoy it, maybe, but it was not for entertainment. In fact, there were even several times through the years that someone worried about the music people were listening to for fear that they were engaging in entertainment.

Praise and worship are not entertainment. To put them in that category is to miss the whole point of what you are doing.

But to put people in a position of not being able to enjoy their music is wrong. Can you imagine someone coming to you and singing a song they made for you with no real expression, no real joy, just rote singing? Your boyfriend reciting a poem he wrote for you as a sense of duty?

It is like giving a gift when you don’t even bother to wrap it and give it out of a pure sense of duty.

One of the first churches we went to that had a great praise band was one that the pastor told me had “blow your face off music.” I told my wife, we have to go there to see what it was. They had a Friday night service, so it was perfect. And they did, too.

It was phenomenal music, very energetic and very well played. And the people responded in kind. They sang, they clapped, they danced, they had tears streaming down their faces. It was wonderful. There was a sense of worship – unadulterated loud energetic worship that I had never seen before in my life.

I wanted more. And I began to ask myself, why not? of course, people in church will respond with the comment that if the music is too loud they will leave.

I worried about that for a long time. But no more. Loud is not the only way to worship. But soft does not mean reverent. Sometimes it just means dead.

Some of the greatest reverence I have has been with in your face music. And some of the deadest times I have been at worship have been with loud music.

But praise has to be meant. Psalm 66:8 says Praise our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard. Let people know that you are praising.

The Lord doesn’t just want singing. He wants praise. You are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel (Psalm 22:3). He lives in our praise.

Psalm 150 says it so well. Now here is spontaneous, loud praise to the everlasting God.
Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens.
Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with tambourine and dancing, praise him with the strings and flute,
praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord.