The other night our friend (who is living with us for this season), came home and I could tell he had a lot on his mind and wanted to talk. We spent the meal talking about intimacy with the LORD and why it’s so important to cultivate that.
Life can be hard and there are a million different ways in which we self-medicate. Learning how to abide with the Father and letting Him fulfill everything is challenging because it confronts our own desires, some of which are self-serving and dangerous. Learning to choose the Lord, over self-gratification, is a discipline that requires practice. But that’s the sacred invitation of God to his beloved children: to come and abide with him. And because of His generous, lavish nature, He gives us the tools we need to do just that.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to share some of the weapons of warfare I have learned to employ in developing and protecting intimacy with God.
Today’s weapon of choice is: PRAISE
Praise is one of my favorite weapons of warfare, because it’s a game changer. I know, it sounds strange but it is one of the most effective weapons we have been given. Praise is something we do solely for the purpose of expressing our love to God, which is why it’s so awesome. Our praise doesn’t make us stronger it is the actual praise itself that attacks the enemy and pushes him out. Let me explain. In Psalm 22:3, King David writes,
“But You are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.”
(Psalm 22:3, NKJV)
I LOVE this verse because it tells me that God makes his dwelling place right in the middle of my PRAISE to HIM. While God is everywhere, there is something unbelievably irresistible about our praise which attracts him to it. There is an aroma so sweet that He will not deny himself the opportunity to come and revel in it. I like to call this the “More Factor” of God.
Praise is the pathway to God’s presence. He comes and inhabits it. He comes and manifests his power in ways of his choosing in order to reveal himself. And let us not forget that the enemy cannot be in the presence of God. Therefore, because praise is a direct pathway to the presence of God it also becomes the way to breakthrough.
Let me tell you the story of how God began to demonstrate this amazing process in my life.
I was in my first year of college, on my own for the first time in my life, just trying to get myself established on firm footing. I’m sure you know exactly what I mean, we’ve all been there. I was feeling pretty good, pretty sure of myself, because I had worked hard to get to this place. I had endured high-school and was finally in a place studying the things I was interested in, surrounded by like-minded people, and independent. I was on my way. Funny thing, this utopia place I had built up in my mind, became the very place I unraveled.
It was after Christmas, about mid-way through my second semester, just after I had decided to change my degree emphasis. Music has always been my destiny—I can’t even begin to tell you the number of times it’s been spoken over me and prophesied about. But there has always been a spirit of fear waiting and watching to undermine me. Anyway, I had just finished switching my degree around, finally settling on music as a minor.
I was trying to study, late one night alone in my dorm room, but I was mad. My spirit was so irritable and I could not concentrate. I’m not sure it was a conscious choice, but I moved from reading to praying. The more I prayed that angrier I got. You see, I had just returned from a visit home and a close friend of mine had secured a new, great job, in his field, but in another country. I was frustrated because I felt like every time I got close to someone, they moved away. I felt betrayed and it was clearly God’s fault.
Somewhere in my soliloquy of accusation I heard the LORD respond to me with this simple statement:
Maureen, you don’t trust me.
My words evaporated and the whole room became thick with silence, as I took a minute to absorb his words.
“I don’t?”
God replied, gently, “Nope.”
Before I could even form the question, I knew why. All of the sudden a place opened wide within me, a place I had worked hard for more than a decade to keep carefully closed and hidden. It was a place of deep, deep wounding. It was a memory I had refused to even let myself believe. And that night, for the first time in years, I acknowledged the abusive things that happened to me. I had developed a good system of ignoring it and working around it, but it was still there and it was a source of pain and hurt that was preventing me from developing intimacy with God. Because of this wound I could not trust God. Because I could not trust God I looked to fill that need with other people, and as my friend prepared to leave for a two-year period of time, my heart broke again.
I remember that night as the night of deliverance. It was a hard night. I was pretty obnoxious and arrogant before the LORD, but HE, in all his power and wisdom deliberately stepped into my line of fire and spoke in words of grace and love. His love confronted my sin. See, I had locked up my pain, ignored my heart, and developed ways to manipulate and control my life so that my needs could be fulfilled. The problem is that my need, all of it, can only be fulfilled by God himself. That night was a night of reckoning. It was a night of revelation, a night of invitation, and ultimately a night that began immeasurable healing.
Whatever I thought Utopia was, was no more. I stood in the ruins weak, tired, and empty, taking tentative steps toward Him as my first act of trust. “I am here. And for now that is all I can give. That will have to be enough.” And it was. He met me there in my broken state of surrender and began the rebuilding process. It was in this season I learned you can praise the LORD even when all your circumstances contradict his character.
In these places of challenge and suffering we have to keep our eyes on the LORD and our hearts out of the blame game. Every difficult situation, big or small, is fought in a realm beyond what we can see. And when it comes on us hard, the fastest way into the presence of God is through praise. So here’s the process: Praise leads to presence and presence secures breakthrough. We begin with a simple praise of God for who he is, dwelling in that truth with Him. It’s in that meeting place that he reveals his heart, which gives you something new to praise. If we only praise God for what he does for us, it can be difficult to praise him when in the middle of suffering. Make your praise focus be WHO God is, his character and heart.
The LORD spoke to me and confronted my lack of trust because He knew it was the central foundation piece that would be needed for every battle in my life. I have learned that trusting people isn’t always possible, but choosing to trust God opens the way like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Trust enables me to lift my eyes up off the giant onto God so that I praise Him. Trust enables me to pursue Him in the middle of the storm instead of running for cover—HE becomes the cover.
Praise is a powerful weapon because it bypasses everything and takes us to the holy presence of God.
When I sit before, God Almighty, I have access to stores of everything imaginable and beyond that makes faith possible. I literally feel when I am in the presence of God that anything is possible. That right there is what draws me back again, over and over. So, when things get tough, praise has become my first choice because I’ve seen how God overcomes by His character in the middle of the mess. Praise brings more of God and the more I know him, the more I want to praise him, and the more I praise him, the more he reveals his heart. It just births more.
The place the Father inhabits is holy and the enemy is rendered impotent.
That’s why praise is such a powerful weapon; that’s why praise is a game-changer and the enemy knows it! It’s why he is so relentless in his quest to get us as far away from God as possible. But God is better. He pursues us with LOVE and GRACE, inviting us to come—Trust. When we step in trust and turn our hearts to praise God, He is exalted and the enemy is expelled. That’s what praise does, it’s an active agreement with God regarding his nature, character and authority—it establishes his kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.
Go ahead, pick up your weapon of praise and give it whirl. You won’t be disappointed. Learn it in the easy rhythms of the tide so that when the tidal waves surge you can stand.