Rick Warren - The Awesome Power of Praise
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Summary
Pastor Rick Warren reminds us that genuine praise to God—done with all our heart, in spirit and truth—is a vital daily habit, drawing from Psalm 150:6 and John 4:23. He stresses that lukewarm worship disgusts God, while heartfelt praise brings incredible blessings. Through seven benefits and practical singing, he encourages the congregation to make praise their first response in 2022, especially in tough times.
The Power of Praise in the New Year
It’s good to see you. Thank you. Have a seat, everybody. We have a little bit different service this week, as you can tell. I’ve got some friends here on stage who are going to help me through this service. One of my roles as your pastor is not just to teach you new truths, but to remind you of things you already know. We have good forgetters. Do you agree with that? Parents have to remind their kids of things they know. Employers, bosses, supervisors, and managers have to remind workers of what’s going on. It’s part of my job to help remind you of things because, by human nature, we forget.
A Vital Habit for 2022
Now today, as we start a new year, 2022, together, I want to remind you of a powerful habit and the benefits of this important habit. This important spiritual habit is one you’re going to need to use every single day of your life in 2022. This habit is particularly useful when you’re going through tough times. So today, I want us to look at the awesome power of praise. But we’re not just going to think about it. I’m not going to just teach you about it; we’re actually going to practice it. This will be an unusual service because I’m going to teach you a point about praise, and then we’re going to practice it. After that, I’ll teach you another one, and we’ll do that.
So, get out your message notes right now. Okay, go ahead and pull them all out and not only pull out your message notes, but start warming up your voice because you’re going to use it a lot in this service. Now, at the top of your outline, Psalm 150, verse 6 says this: «Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.» Do you have breath? Yes? Then you are to praise the Lord! Everything in the universe brings praise to God. Actually, even the stuff that doesn’t have breath—trees, plants, rocks—they honor God. They bring glory to God by being what God created. Everything brings glory to God; only human beings reject that. And so even Jesus once said, «If human beings don’t praise me, the rocks will cry out.»
True Worship in Spirit and Truth
Now, when it comes to praise, when it comes to worship, it’s not really complicated. In fact, Jesus said there are only two marks of real worship—that’s the only thing you have to remember from the entire Bible. There are only two qualifications for worship to be correct, and Jesus says this in John, chapter four, the next verse on your outline, verse 23. Jesus said, «True worshipers worship the Father in spirit and in truth.» Circle «spirit» and «truth.» In spirit and truth—that’s the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. Now, what does that mean to worship God in spirit and truth?
Now, «spirit» does not have a capital «S, » so it’s not talking about the Holy Spirit; it’s talking about your spirit. You’re not just a body; you have a spirit in your body. And when you worship God in the correct way, it’s from your spirit. You don’t just mouth the words; you don’t just mindlessly go through rituals and prayers that you’ve memorized. You come from your spirit, and it has to be in truth. In other words, for worship to be accepted by God, it has to be authentic. You’ve got to really mean it, and it has to be accurate; authentic and accurate, devotional and doctrinal, in spirit and in truth. The one thing that really ticks God off, if you want to know what God doesn’t like, what God really hates, is lukewarm worship. Where we go through the motions, we sing the songs, we say the prayers, we do the right things, but we’re not even thinking about it; we’re just going through the routine, the ritual, without even thinking about God. He says, «I’d rather you just mail it in, skip that.»
God Rejects Lukewarm Worship
In the book of Revelation, Jesus says, «I see that you’re neither hot nor cold, but you’re lukewarm.» He said, «I don’t like that. I don’t like lukewarm worship.» He said, «I’d rather have you be cold, totally against me, or hot, totally for me, just not lukewarm.» He said, «Because you’re lukewarm, I’m going to spit you out of my mouth.» That’s a euphemism that says, «You make me sick to my stomach. You nauseate me, » God says. «When I see people who are taught to come into worship but they don’t really mean it, they’re not even thinking about it, » He says, «It makes me want to throw up; it makes me want to puke; it makes me want to vomit because I am so nauseated by lukewarm worship.» It needs to be in spirit and in truth; it needs to be passionate.
Now, God talks about this in the book of Isaiah; there on your outline or here on the screen, Isaiah 29. God says this: «These people claim to be mine, and they praise me with their lips.» They’re saying all the right things; they’re singing all the right things, but they don’t mean it; their hearts are somewhere else. They’re thinking about the ball game; they’re thinking about where we’re going to go for lunch; they’re thinking about all these other things. He said, «Their hearts are far from me, and their worship is just routine, repeated without thinking.» You know, any time for the last 42 years as I’ve been the pastor of this church, when I’m out on the patio talking to people, when somebody comes up and says, «You know, Rick, I really didn’t get anything out of that service today, » when somebody says that to me, I always ask the exact same question, and I get the same answer every single time. When people say, «I didn’t get anything out of worship, » I say this: «Did you attempt to sing all of the songs with your whole heart, or did you just stand there watching other people sing?» I’ve gotten the same answer every single time. The answer is, «I just stood there; I didn’t try to sing.» And I reply, «That’s your problem; that’s why you got nothing out of the service; you didn’t put anything into it; you didn’t put your heart into it.»
Worship Is for God, Not for You
Now, let me tell you this: Worship isn’t for you anyway; worship is for God. When we come to worship, we’re expressing our thanks, our gratitude, our praise to God. Worship is not about you. Now, any time you do anything that God wants you to do, God always builds benefits into it that will bless you. So yes, you’re going to get something out of it, and we’re going to talk about some really big things you get out of praising God today. But the point is, I worship God because He deserves it. I wouldn’t be alive; I wouldn’t be able to breathe; my heart would not be beating. Everything in my life I owe to God, so certainly on the first day of each week, I pause from my week to thank God. Thank you! I wouldn’t have anything without God. Now, when you do that, you will get something out of it, but it’s got to be in spirit and truth; it’s got to be authentic; it’s got to be from your heart. That means you put some emotion into it.
Now, in the Bible, I could give you a list of over 50 different benefits—physical benefits, financial benefits, relational benefits, emotional and mental benefits—all kinds of benefits for your life when you do what God tells you to do when He says, «Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.» We could look at a lot of them, but I’m only going to give you seven today. I just picked out seven benefits, and the reason I only picked seven is because I want you to have the time to not just listen about it; I want you to practice these forms of praise. So you’re going to get your exercise today; you’re going to do a lot of standing and singing.
Instructions for Participating
Now, here are your instructions for this service: Even if you have never, ever, ever, in your entire life, sung a song in church, I want you to give it your best shot today, okay? I want you to try to sing praise to God today with your mouth. Okay? I don’t want you to stand there with your mouth closed like, «I’m cool; I’m cool. Look at everybody else.» Okay, no! Now, because some of you have had a hard time with this, let me answer the three most common excuses for not singing in church. Okay? Here’s the first one, and this particularly comes from men, but women can do it too: «Rick, I’m not really an emotional person, and I don’t feel comfortable with my emotions, so I don’t want people watching me, and I certainly don’t want to get emotional in front of them. I’m not an emotional person.»
Well, the answer is this: You’re wrong; you are an emotional person. You’re just frightened by your emotions, so you deny them. You’re made in God’s image. God is an emotional God. God gets angry; God gets frustrated; God gets impatient; God loves; God weeps. The only reason you have emotions—what makes you a human being—is you have emotions. Now, the question is, are you in touch with them? Are you denying them? Can you feel your emotions and be a true man or a true woman, or are you scared to death? You’re frightened; you were taught to push your emotions down, shut them down. I want to tell you, Saddleback Church is a place that you need to set yourself free to feel the feelings you have, okay? This is a safe place for you to feel the feelings that you have. Why? Because you’re made in God’s image. If God didn’t want you to feel, He wouldn’t have given you those feelings. But maybe you were taught by your parents or somebody else to shove them down.
No One Is Watching You
Now, let me just say this: You don’t have to worry about how you look to other people when you’re praising God, because guess what? They’re not looking at you worship; they’re focusing on God! Nobody is looking at you right now; nobody in this auditorium is thinking about you. Nobody! So why are you so concerned? How do I look? Do I look cool? Am I alright? You know what? Everybody’s thinking about themselves. Nobody cares how you worship God; nobody cares how you praise God. Why? They’re focusing on God, not you. By the way, you know how sometimes people raise their hands when they praise God? People say, «What’s that all about? Is it some kind of weird thing? They raise their hand; they’re going to a trance?» No. It’s just a symbol of joy! You do it all the time. It’s sports games! You go to a game, you go, «Touchdown!» Or you go to a soccer game and your kid hits a goal. You know, it’s just saying, «Touchdown, Jesus! Yay, God!»
Now, let me tell you why you go to a game and when you go to a game, you raise your hand when you’re full of joy—you’re called a fan—but if you came and you dared to raise your hand in church, you’re called a fanatic! So really, it’s okay to express joy to other people, but it’s not okay to express joy to God. Come on, get over it; grow up! And if you feel like raising your hand, do it! If you don’t, don’t; it’s no big deal. It’s not some special ooey-gooey thing. The Bible says we lift our hands and praise God and say, «Touchdown, God! Yay, God!» You know, I’m feeling this right now at this moment, and your heart moves when your body moves, so don’t be afraid to move your body in worship.
God Wants Your Voice
Now, another excuse people say is this one: «You know, Rick, I’m not really a musical person; I can’t sing; I can’t carry a tune in a bag.» Okay, well first, let me just say this: God is moved by the sincerity of your heart, not the sound of your voice. So you don’t have to be a Metropolitan Opera singer for God to like your worship, okay? Let me just say it this way: God wants to hear your voice because He gave you that voice! What do you think? You got your voice? God gave you your voice! He wants to hear your praise in YOUR voice, not in somebody else’s voice. What if my wife, Kay, said to me, «Honey, I don’t really like the sound of my voice, so I’m going to stand silently and let other people tell you how much I love you.» That makes sense? «Because I don’t like the sound of my voice, I’m not going to tell you how great I think you are; I’m going to let other people say it, and I’ll nod?» No! I want to hear it in my kid’s voice; I want to hear it in my wife’s voice! God wants to hear your voice, not somebody else’s. Some of you have never used your voice to praise God. Today is your day!
Alright, now here’s the third excuse people give for not singing in church: «I don’t know the tunes.» Okay, it doesn’t matter if you know the tunes or not. Let me ask you this: Can you read? Can you read? Because if you can read the lyrics on the wall, you can say them aloud without any tune to it, and that’s praise too! Did you hear what I’m saying? You don’t have to sing the words, but you do have to say the words! So if you don’t have a voice or you’ve got laryngitis, what I want you to do is—I want you—you’ve never done this before—I want you to read the words aloud of the songs we’re going to sing. But I want you to read them with a little bit of emotion and passion! Not like, «Oh God, you’re a great God; you’re incredible; you really do great things; I’m really glad to be one of your kids.» No! God, thank you! God, this is—I—you know, you’re amazing! You rose from the grave; you’ve got power; you can change my life! Say it with a little bit of enthusiasm! So, I’m telling you, if you can’t sing, you don’t know the tune, say the words aloud, but just say it from the heart, okay? You don’t have to sing for this to work, but you do to receive all the blessings that I’m going to share with you, and there are some really big blessings that you’re going to miss out on in 2022 if you don’t learn the habits that I’m going to teach you or remind you of today. But you have to put your heart into it! So read it dramatically like you actually mean what we’re saying!
Praise with Your Whole Heart
Now, for those of you who are still thinking that you can opt out of this and you don’t have to say anything, you’re dead wrong because I am watching you! More importantly, God is watching you to see if you will praise Him or not. It doesn’t really matter who’s watching; God is watching you; nobody else is, but God is. But if you don’t sing in this service, I may have to put a cameraman on you to focus on you and put your lovely picture on the screen so everybody can see you standing there like a mannequin. I’m just kidding! Okay, relax! Take a deep breath; I would never do that. That would be embarrassing. Embarrassing is not loving; I would never embarrass you, so I would never do it. But I might, so just read the words aloud with authentic feeling. Don’t give lip service; remember God says, «I’d rather have you hot or cold, not lukewarm.» Read the words while you’re thinking of something else? No! While you’re thinking of Him! Psalm 138, there on your outline, verse 1 says, «I will praise you, Lord, with what?» My whole heart. Circle that! So that’s what we’re going to practice today. This is going to be an exercise, and when you finish here, you’re going to know how to praise God.
By the way, you know what we’re going to do in heaven? One of the things we’re going to do in heaven is praise God! So what we’re going to do here is practice, so when you get to heaven, you’re not a doofus, okay? You know how to do this! When you get to heaven, you don’t want to go, «Oh, I never really learned how to praise God!» Now, today, as I said, God gives benefits when we do what He tells us to do. I’m going to share with you seven incredible benefits and blessings to your life that God guarantees when you praise God with all your heart.
Seven Benefits of Praise
Now, I’m going to start with a couple of simple, obvious ones right up front, but as we move through these seven, we’re going to get into some heavyweight, major, macho blessings of God that you have been missing out on if you haven’t been praising God as a habit of your life. Alright? Let’s get right into this. Number one, this is a real simple, kind of obvious one: Number one, praising God lifts my spirit! That’s the first thing it does. Praising God lifts my spirit! If I came to church today tired, exhausted, discouraged, fatigued, praise is a mood enhancer. In fact, praise, particularly with other people, worshiping with others, is an energizer, which is why you need to come to worship, not simply passively watch a service online. You’re the smart people! There are a lot of our members right now who stayed home today, and they’re watching online in their pajamas, eating Cheerios. They’re not going to sing; they’re not going to get involved; they’re not going to get the benefit! You get the benefit by being involved in the family together, and there is power in corporate worship.
Benefit 1: Praise Lifts Your Spirit
One of the reasons that I wanted to look at the habit of praise in our first service out of the gate in 2022 is because the thing I’ve been hearing most from people in the last two or three weeks, the week before Christmas, and even since then, the thing I’ve heard that most people say is, «You know, Rick, I’m feeling a little discouraged right now. I’m feeling a little down; I’m feeling a little discouraged, a little dismayed.» Well, there’s a lot to be discouraged about. If you look in the world, there are a lot of problems out there! But if you don’t keep your eyes on God, you’re going to get discouraged. And so praise takes your focus off of the problems around you and puts your focus back on God. Recently, there was a cover of Businessweek magazine, and the cover of Businessweek magazine said «Searching for Hope.» So that’s what the world’s looking for right now. This is not a Christian magazine; the world is searching for hope right now. Well, we know where it is!
So let me ask you a couple of personal questions right off the bat as we start a new year together. What’s discouraging you right now? Whatever that is, we’re going to deal with it in this service. That problem—what’s discouraging you these days? The second question is, what are you looking to for the source of your hope in the new year? What are you going to put your hope in in the new year? If you put your hope in the wrong thing, you’ll just be more and more disappointed. Now, if you’re feeling a little down, a little depressed, a little tired, a little empty, that’s typical in the first few weeks of January; it’s after the holiday hangover where you spent so much time and energy and all the holidays! Now you’ve taken all the Christmas lights down and, you know, we’re just kind of going through and you’re feeling a little discouraged. I recommend to you Psalm 42. It’s there on your outline. Psalm 42, verse 5 and 6 says this: «Why am I discouraged? Why am I so discouraged? Why am I so troubled and upset? Instead, I will put my hope—remember, the world’s looking for hope. I will put my hope in God, and I will praise Him once again as my Savior and my God. And when my heart is breaking, » maybe your heart’s breaking right now, «I remember your kindness.»
Now, if you’re taking notes, circle three words in that passage: hope, praise, and remember, because those three go together. If you want hope in your life—you want to be a hopeful person—you’ve got to do the other two: praise and remember. When you praise and remember, it builds hope in your life.
Now, when you praise God, here’s what God offers to you. It’s the next verse on your outline, Isaiah 61. It says: «To all who mourn in Israel"—I mean, what’s mourning? It’s grief. When you’ve lost something, you’ve lost a lot in the last couple of years because of COVID and other things. There are things that you lost out on this past year and the year before that. «To all who mourn in Israel, He gives beauty for ashes, joy instead of sadness, and praise instead of despair.» God gives you choice! What do you want? Beauty or ashes? You know, praise instead of despair. Joy instead of sadness!
Benefit 2: Praise Helps Sense God’s Presence
Now, we’re going to start with a song of hope—it’s actually called «Living Hope.» And if you’re going to sing it, or if you’re going to read it aloud as your praise, let me show you how to read it aloud. Don’t just read it in your mind; say the words aloud, but say it expressively! Okay? Put it on the screen. Here are some of the words of the song we’re about to sing: «Who could imagine so great a mercy?» You think about that. «Who could imagine so great a mercy? God’s wish to be? What heart could fathom such boundless grace? God’s grace to me!»
You’re thinking about this: «The God of ages stepped down from glory, let’s say Christmas, to wear my sin and bear my shame. Whoa! The cross has spoken. I’m forgiven—completely forgiven. The King of Kings calls me His own! Beautiful Savior, I’m Yours forever! Jesus Christ, You’re my living hope!» That’s how you sing it or that’s how you read it aloud!
Okay, now there’s another benefit. This is just a little one; we’re going to get to the heavyweight ones in a minute, but this is another benefit of developing the habit of praise in your life, and it says, «Praising God helps me sense His presence.» Praising God helps me sense God’s presence. Now notice I said «sense, » because God is always present with you, whether you feel it or not. God is always with you; there’s never been one second of your life that God was not with you and paying attention to you.
But I don’t always feel it, and neither do you. Sometimes I feel like God’s a million miles away. He’s not! God says, «I am always with you; I’m always near you; I’m always close with you.» But I don’t always feel God’s presence, and I want to feel God’s presence! What do you do when you want to feel God’s presence? What should you do? What you’re doing right now! First place, get together with some other people and praise God with your whole heart. I guarantee you, by the end of this service, you will be feeling God’s presence! I guarantee it! Because when you get in a point of praise, praise makes God’s presence more real to me than when I don’t feel Him at all. But God says you’ve got to do it with your whole heart.
Now you say, «Wait a minute, Rick, how do I praise God with my whole heart when I don’t feel like praising God right now? In fact, I don’t feel very good right now; I just kind of forced myself to come to church, and I wasn’t really in the mood; I’m kind of tired. How do I praise God when I don’t feel like it?» Here’s the answer: You do it anyway!
Act Your Way into Feeling
Now you’ve heard me say this before; I’ve taught it to you many times: It’s easier to act your way into a feeling than feel your way into an action. If you wait for a certain feeling to come before you do something, that feeling will often never come. But if you act your way into the feeling, you do act it even though you don’t feel like it. The feelings always follow actions! Now, this is true in every area of your life. If you don’t feel close to your wife or your husband right now, or your boyfriend or girlfriend, and you feel a little estranged from them right now, what do you do? You start acting in a more loving way, and the feelings will return.
When a guy comes to me and says, «You know, Rick, I’m leaving my wife.» Why? «Well, I just don’t love her anymore.» Well, it’s your choice. Love is a choice! Don’t blame anybody else; you choose to love and you choose not to love. So if you’re not loving your wife, that’s because you’re choosing not to love. It’s your choice; accept the responsibility, buddy! It’s not like you don’t have any control over it; love is a choice. If you want your wife to treat you like a king, treat her like a queen! Let me give you a little experiment: Next 10 days, act like you’re in love with your wife. Date your mate! Do all the things that you did when you first started dating, like opening the door for her, treating her with respect. Guess what? The feelings will return! Because feelings always follow actions!
Now, that’s true in every area of life; it’s also true in praising God. When I don’t feel like praising God, that’s usually when I need to praise Him. What I’ve discovered is if the only time I ever pray is when I feel like it, the devil makes sure I never feel like it! And if the only time I praise God is when I feel like it, the devil makes sure I never feel like it! Maturity is when you act on what is the right thing to do, whether you feel it or not. Immature people live by their feelings. «I don’t feel like doing it, so I don’t!» That’s what babies do! Little kids live 100% by their feelings, but when you grow up, you do the right thing because you do it out of love, not out of feeling.
Those of you who are moms, you remember when your babies were small? And you had to get up multiple times in the night to go either nurse them or give them a bottle? Did you ever feel like doing that? No! But you did it because you loved that baby! And as you nursed that baby or you gave that baby the bottle, the love returned! And the feelings followed your actions.
Now, the same is true in praise. There are many times I don’t feel like praising God; that’s when I need it the most. That’s what I need because my mood is frozen. This is the mark of maturity. Psalm 140, verse 13, on the screen or on your outline, says, «The righteous praise Your name, and they live in Your presence.» Now, you’re in God’s presence all the time. What does it mean to live in Your presence? They recognize it; they feel it; they sense it; they know it. If you want to feel God’s presence in your life, just praise Him more, because praise and presence go together. Psalm 75, verse 1 says this: «God, we praise You and we thank You because You are near.» We don’t praise You and thank You to get You near; we know we praise You because You are near! God is never not near; you’re just not tuned into Him!
So, a second one of the smaller benefits, but it’s a big one, is that when I praise God, all of a sudden, I start feeling His presence.
Benefit 3: Praise Enlarges Perception of God
Alright, let me give you a third one. Here’s the third benefit of praise: Praising God enlarges my perception of Him. Praising God makes God bigger in my eyes. Praising God enlarges my perception of Him, and I’ll explain why that’s a big deal in just a minute. But in Psalm 69, verse 30, it says this: «I will praise the name of the Lord; praise the name of God with a song, and I will magnify Him with thanksgiving.» Circle the word «magnify.» Magnify is praise; they do the same. Now, I’ve got up here, I’ve got a little magnifying glass. When I take a magnifying glass and I look through it, what does a magnifying glass do? It makes things bigger. When I magnify God, God gets bigger in my eyes.
Now why is that a big deal? I want you to write this down: When God gets larger in my life, my problems shrink. When God gets larger in my life, my problems get smaller. Now, the opposite is true too! When I look at my problems and my problems get really big, then God gets small in my life. One thing’s going to be big in your life—either your problems or God! When you praise God, you focus on God; you magnify Him. That makes Him bigger! The bigger God gets in your life, the less worried you are about your problems because this is nothing for God! God can handle this! This is nothing! My problems shrink inside because God is so much bigger than my problems.
And so that’s one of the benefits: Worship and praise and magnifying God are the same thing. That’s why we often call our worship team at Saddleback our magnification team, because it’s their job to magnify God to make Him bigger in all of our eyes! Now, Psalm 145, verse 3 says this: «The Lord is great. He’s big; He’s great, and the Lord is worthy of our highest praise because His greatness is beyond understanding.» I can’t ever know or understand how big and great God really is! You can’t either! I said this many times; it’s like an ant trying to understand the Internet! You don’t have the brain capacity to understand how big God is! If you could completely understand God, you’d be God! You’re not; I’m not! God is God, and we’re not!
But when we praise God and we sing to God in a song, God gets bigger; our problems get smaller. So, whatever problem that’s got you scared right now, got you intimidated, got you worried, got you fearful, the antidote is the thing about the greatness of God because the bigger I see God, my problems shrink in size.
Benefit 4: Praise Reveals Solutions
Now, a praise song—a lot of people think a praise song has to be fast, like «hippie, skippie, happy, yappy, clappy, » you know, dance around! Yeah, there’s good—they’re good praise songs! You want to—you can’t even—you got to dance to them; they’ve got a beat, okay? And the Bible says you can dance before the Lord! Okay? But a praise song can be fast, or a praise song could be slow. It could be very slow, and we’re singing it very slow, word for word. Either way, a praise song focuses on some attribute of God: God’s goodness, God’s greatness, God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s holiness, which means I’m not at all like Him. He’s totally different than me! He’s perfect!
And our worship team, a while back, wrote a song about God’s greatness. It’s called «Alive and Well, » and the chorus goes like this, and if we’re going to sing it in just a minute, but I’m going to say the chorus to you. The chorus says this: «All things are possible.» I think about that! That means the problem I’ve got: No big deal, God—ALL things are possible! There’s nothing too hard for You; there’s nothing too hard for You!
Now, let’s go to some more. We’re going to get into some more of the heavier benefits, but here’s a big one! Number four: Praising God reveals solutions I can’t see! Praising God is the way you see things that you can’t see any other way! It reveals solutions to problems you have in your life. You know that you have things that you just can’t figure out. They’re like the Gordian Knot; you can’t untie them and you go, «I don’t know how to fix this relationship; I don’t know how to fix my chronic health problem; I don’t know how to fix the economy; I don’t know how to fix my finances.» I don psalm’t know—there are all kinds of things in your life that seem to be intractable problems. They’re so complex, so convoluted, and you’ve had them so long you wonder, «Am I ever going to get a solution to this?»
And you’ve thought, and you thought, and you tried, and year after year you come to the end of 2021 thinking, «Well, I still haven’t figured out the answer to that!» What do you do when you have a problem you can’t figure out? You praise God! You praise God, and in praising God, He will give you an answer you will never come up with on your own! Psalm 73 is an example of this. Psalm 73, verses 16-17, David said this: «I tried to understand all that was happening to me.» You’ve done this many times, trying to figure out why is this happening to me? What’s going on in my life? Why am I stuck here? Okay? «I tried to figure out what is happening to me, but it was too difficult to understand until I went into the sanctuary of God.» What do you do in the sanctuary of God? You come—it means it’s a metaphor for coming into the presence of God! It means coming into the presence of God with praise! What do you do in the sanctuary? You thank God; you praise God; you worship God in the sanctuary. He says, «It wasn’t until I started worshiping and praising and thanking that, all of a sudden, bam, the idea came!»
I wish I had time to give you a thousand examples from my life as a leader when I had no idea what to do next in the direction, whether I was leading Saddleback or leading a movement or coaching and counseling a world leader in 165 different nations that I’ve been in, dealing with businessmen, or talking to Congress, or talking to the United Nations, which I have, or dealing with parliaments of other nations, which I have. And sometimes people will ask me questions, and I go, «I have the slightest idea what the answer to that is. I don’t know how to solve that problem!» But in my worship time, in my praise time, as I’m thanking God for who He is and what He’s done and I’m thanking God and I’m praising God, bingo! The Holy Spirit drops that idea into my brain! I go, «That’s the billion-dollar idea that I was looking for! That’s the entrepreneurial key! That’s the big creative idea!»
The best way to be creative in your business is to get in touch with the Creator of the universe! Nobody is more creative than God! If you want creative ideas, worship! Praise! Thank God! The more you’re in tune with the Creator, the more creative you will be! David goes, «I couldn’t figure out the problem until I went into the sanctuary.» He said, «Great! How do I get into God’s sanctuary? How do I get into God’s presence?» The next verse, Psalm 100, verse 4 says, «Enter His gates with thanksgiving and come into His courtyards with praise.» The doorway to creativity is praise! You want to be a creative leader? You want to be a creative business owner? You want to be a creative mom, creative dad, creative teacher, creative artist, creative musician? Come into the presence of God! The Creator will give you creative ideas! That’s a big benefit! You’re going to have problems in 2022 you’ll never solve on your own! Why? Because God wants you to connect with Him! And when you connect with the Creator in praise, those ideas—oh, I can’t tell you how many brilliant ideas I would have never come up with; but in the moment of me just thanking God and praising God, whether in a crowd or by myself, the Holy Spirit goes, «Rick, here’s what you need to do. Boom!» And that inspiration is genius! And it’s not my genius; it’s the genius of the Creator of the universe!
You know, we sing a song here at Saddleback called «Promises, » and it’s a song about trusting God when you don’t understand the situation, when you’ve got an impossible problem. And it’s a song about praising God for His faithfulness when we can’t see the future! The fact is we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, much less the rest of 2022! I want us to sing to God that song «Promises» right now! And remember, if you don’t know the tune, that’s okay. Just read the words aloud, but read it with some enthusiasm, with some meaning, with some passion! Okay? Let me show you again how to praise God just by reading. Here’s a part of that song: «God of Abraham, You’re the God of covenant.» That means you make promises, and faithful promises—time and time again you have proven that You do just what You said!
Benefit 5: Praise Helps Remember Blessings
Alright, let’s now take a look at these last three because they are really important! The last two particularly, but here’s a big one! Number five: A big benefit when you develop the habit of praise—praising God helps me remember His blessings. Now, I’m going to explain why this is really important in just a minute, but praising God helps you remember the blessings of God. Why? Have you noticed that when you’re going through a tough time—and you may be going through one right now—when you’ve got a big overwhelming problem in your life, a big pain, a big hurt, something going on, you tend to overlook all the good in your life, and you can only see the bad? You know what I’m talking about? You get imbalanced! When you’ve got a big problem in your life, all you think about is the problem! You can’t think about smelling the roses and enjoying life and it’s a beautiful time today. All you’re going to see is your problem. Anytime I have a fight with my wife, Kay, the whole world smells like Limburger cheese! It just stinks!
Because you know what I’m talking about? If you’ve got a relationship that really matters to you and it gets out of whack, everything else sucks, okay? Nothing else is good! If you’re out of whack with the person you love the most, it just messes up everything else! And what happens is, in your problems, you tend to get—and what praise does is it rebalances you. Praise corrects the imbalance in your life! Praise reminds you that not everything is bad in your life! Let me give you an example of this: In Psalm 105, the first five verses, the psalmist had been going through some really tough times, and so the person who wrote this decides to enumerate the things they can thank God for and praise God for. They’re going through a very tough time, and Psalm 105 says this: «Praise the Lord! I tell myself with my whole heart I will praise His holy name! I tell myself”—I’m talking to me! But you, like, you don’t do this; you talk to yourself all the time—“Praise the Lord! I tell myself, and I remember all the good things He does for me! He forgives my sins! He starts listing just a few of them: He forgives my sins! That’s a big one! He heals my illnesses! He saves my life! He surrounds me with love and tender mercy! He fills my life with good things!»
Now, why is it important to remember God’s blessings? Well, there are a couple of reasons. The first one is that in your life, when you get a problem, you tend to overemphasize that to the neglect of all that’s good! Your life is never all good, and your life is never all bad! You get both through life the entire time. On the cover of Kay’s book, «Choose Joy, » is a pair of railroad tracks because the rails represent the good things in your life and the bad things in your life, and they’re parallel! And you get both of them all the time throughout your entire life! There will never be a time in your life when everything is good because we’re on a broken planet! So, no matter how good things are in your life, there’s always going to be something you need to be working on, okay? That’s not right! But there’s never a time in your life when everything is bad either! Even in the worst days, there are things you can be thankful to God for!
And so what praise does is it brings your system back into balance! It corrects the imbalance because when you’re having a problem, you tend to think, «Everything sucks! Everything’s bad! The whole world’s falling down! The sky is falling down! Chicken Little!» And what happens when you do that, when you get imbalanced, you forget who you are, and you lose your identity! Many of you are struggling right now with insecurity! The truth is, you’re pretty insecure about who you are, and you’re not even sure who you are, and you’re struggling with your identity! Who am I as a woman? Who am I as a man? And the reason why you struggle with your insecurity and you struggle with your identity is because you listen to what other people say about you instead of what God says about you! And that’s what praise is all about!
Listening to other people—what other people say about you—is none of your business! What other people think of you is none of your business! You should not pay any attention to it! Why? You don’t need anybody’s approval in life to be happy! You’re as happy as you choose to be! If you’re miserable because of what somebody else thinks about you, that’s your choice, and that’s dumb! Nobody can force you to be unhappy; only you can let other people control your emotions! When you say, «You make me so mad, » you’re admitting, «You have the power to control my emotions!» So what you think about yourself is not even as important. You think stuff about yourself that really, really doesn’t even matter! Because you lie to yourself all the time! I lie to myself more than I lie to anybody else; so do you!
The Bible says, «The heart is deceitful; you should not trust everything your brain tells you because your brain isn’t accurate! You get misperceptions all the time! What matters is not what other people say you are; what matters is not what you think you are; what matters is what God says you are, and He always tells you the truth! And He says you’re lovable! You’re forgivable! You’re capable! You’re usable! You’re valuable!» These are things that God tells you. That’s the truth! And so when we praise God, we remember not only how God has blessed us, but we also remember whose we are! We remember our identity! «I’m a son of God; I’m a daughter of God! He made me; He created me; He sent His Son to die for me; He wants me with Him in heaven! If you have a problem with me, that’s your problem! If God likes me and I like me, what’s your problem?»
Now, this is why we’re going to sing a song called «Who You Say I Am, » because one of the things of praise is it not only balances your life between the negative and the positive, but it also balances your life between what other people say you are, what you think you are, and who you really are! This is the antidote to your insecurity! This is the antidote to why you feel bad about yourself! This is the antidote to low self-esteem! Praising God—God wired the universe that the more you praise Him, the more secure you are in who you are!
Benefit 6: Praise Enlists God’s Protection
Now, on these last two benefits, I’ve been saving these because they’re the biggest ones of all. If you’re experiencing any kind of conflict in your life or any kind of frustration in your life, these last two points about praise are going to be especially helpful to you in 2022. If you feel like you’re in a battle right now—if you feel like you’re under attack—maybe your health is under attack with some kind of chronic illness, or your finances are under attack, or your reputation or your integrity is under attack, or your marriage is under attack, or your business, or your dream—anything that’s under attack—you’re going to need these next two.
And if you’re frustrated and you feel like, «I’m caught; I’m stuck; I’m like in prison; I can’t get out; I can’t get on; I can’t get out of what I’m doing right now, » then you need to be practicing the habit of, listen, praising God in advance! I’m going to explain this: Praising God in advance. Okay, here’s the sixth benefit: Praising God enlists God’s protection! God starts fighting your battles if you praise Him in advance! Now, I’m not talking about after the fact; the timing of your praise determines what it is! Follow me on this: If I thank God after He answers a prayer, that’s called gratitude! If I thank Him after He’s done something for me, if I thank Him in advance before it happens, that’s called faith!
It makes—you see the difference? Thanking or praising God after God’s done something in my life is called gratitude! But thanking God and praising God before it happens is faith! And you need both of them in your life! Both gratitude and faith draw you closer to God!
Now, a classic example of thanking God in advance—when you’re in a battle and you feel like you’re under attack, and you need God to defend you, and you need God’s protection—a classic example of this is 2 Chronicles, chapter 20, which is the story of a battle that Israel is in. Israel’s a little tiny nation, and one day in 2 Chronicles 20 in the Bible, three larger enemy nations gang up against Israel to annihilate them. So it’s going to be three to one! The odds were incredibly stacked against Israel; they were vastly outnumbered in the battle. And so they knew the only way they could win was if God miraculously saved them, because they were going to get their rears kicked by an overwhelming odds stacked against them! Maybe you feel the odds are stacked against you right now in some area—maybe in your business or education or whatever!
The odds are stacked against you! So the king—his name was Jehoshaphat—he probably called them «Fatty» for short, okay? «Hey, Fatty!» So the king decides that praising God in advance is going to be their strategy for the battle; it’s their only protection. And so he organizes a very unusual battle plan that has never been used before or since this particular battle! And he decides to put a choir in front of the army as they march out into battle.
Now here’s what it says—look on your outline! 2 Chronicles 20, verses 21 and 22 say this: «So the king appointed singers.» That’s what I’ve got next to me; these are singers! «The king appointed a choir to walk, » notice, ahead of the army, in front of the infantry! And they were to praise the Lord, singing praise to the Lord and praising Him. What are they saying? It says they sang, «Give thanks to the Lord because His faithful love endures forever!» Please sing that song: «Give thanks to the Lord, His love endures forever!» Praise God! Praise God; His love endures forever! We sing that song now! So, get the picture here: Over here on this side of the valley are the enemy tribes—enemy nations of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir—they’re ready for bear! They’re ready; they’re ready to go to battle.
Over here is the Israeli army, and the king says, «Okay, choir, you guys get out in front of the infantry, and you walk out into battle singing praise!» What are they doing? They’re symbolizing thanking God in advance! Now, the three nations over here see this choir walking around. They go, «What is going on?» And the choir—the army behind the choir is going, «Yeah, what is going on?» And the choir, the singers in front, go, «Yes, we’d like to know what’s going on because we’re the tip of the spear, and we don’t even have weapons on us!»
Now here’s what happens—this is a great miracle! Notice the rest of the verse: «The moment the people started singing and praising the Lord caused the opposing forces to start attacking each other, and they were completely defeated!» Israel didn’t have to do anything about it! These guys get in a fight with each other, and they get confused, and they start to fight, and they decimate themselves! Israel wins the battle without even picking up a sword!
Now that strategy—General George Patton would have fainted if somebody suggested that to him: «Send a choir in front of the infantry!» It is a symbolic act of faith! They’re praising God in advance for their deliverance, for their victory, for His protection, for winning the battle!
Okay, have you ever tried that with any of your battles? Thanking God—maybe you feel like you’re under attack right now—from a competitor, under attack from the devil, under attack from, you know, illness—COVID—under attack, who knows? But you’re in a battle right now! Have you thought about thanking God in advance? Remember: If you wait till after God gives a solution, that’s not faith; that’s gratitude! There is power in praising and thanking God in advance!
So let me ask you this question: You know the problem you’re going through right now that you feel like you’re under attack with? When are you going to start thanking God for the answer? After He’s answered? Why not now? The Lord wants to be your defender! The Lord wants to be your protector! The Lord says, «I will fight your battles!» In fact, in that 2 Chronicles 20 passage, He says, «You don’t need to fight in this battle; stand still and see the salvation of the Lord! The battle is not yours; it’s God’s!» And so Psalm 28, verse 7, the next verse on your outline, says this: «The Lord protects and defends me; when I trust Him, He helps me, and He fills me with joy as I praise Him.»
When we sing this next song, I want you to be filled with joy and praise Him that the battle is not yours; it’s God’s! And that whatever is trying to oppose you right now, God is greater than the opposition against you! Many of you know that for a few months now, I’ve been going through some very painful health problems. But I’m not waiting for the cure to praise God. And while the doctors have been trying to figure out what’s causing severe pain and paralysis all over my body, I have been practicing praising God in advance; you should too!
And I’ve been telling God, «Thank You that this is not the end of the story, Lord! Thank You that what I’m going through—I’m going through! This too shall pass! Thank You that this is not the end of the story! Thank You that You are not finished with me! Thank You that You are bigger than my problem! That You’re greater than my pain!» And I’m thanking God in advance, even when I don’t feel it! Why? Because I know that’s how God fights your battles!
Benefit 7: Praise Breaks Chains
Alright, you need to do that too! Now, here’s the seventh one, and this is another big one for using thanking God in advance! The seventh benefit is this: Praising God breaks chains and opens doors! Praising God breaks chains in your life—things that are holding you back—and opens doors for opportunity that you can’t seem to bust through! When you feel like you’re stuck, and many of you right now feel like, «Psycho! You know what? Nothing changed since last year! I went through all of 2021, and nothing really changed!» And you’re in a situation right now that you cannot control, that you can’t get out of, you can’t get on with it! You’re just stuck! You might feel you’re enslaved; you’re in chains! You’re imprisoned by an attitude; you’re imprisoned by a fear; you’re imprisoned by an addiction; you’re imprisoned by a situation that’s out of your control. You’re stuck; you’re in chains.
There’s never a better time for you to thank God and praise God in advance! Now, the classic example of this—I could give you many in the Bible—is Acts, chapter 16. And in Acts 16, Paul is in prison. Paul and his friend Silas were talking about Jesus in this town, and the city council, the people didn’t like them, and so they throw them in prison. And Paul and Silas are in this dark, dank, dirty, cold, down in the dungeon, Roman prison! And in the middle of the night, at midnight, they decide to have a praise session—a praise and worship God session—in the prison! Not after out of—while they’re in prison! Acts 16:25–26 says this: «About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing songs to God!» After midnight, Paul—singing praise to God! After midnight! That’s what that song’s really about! You didn’t know, but that’s after midnight! Silas praised the Lord after midnight! Yeah! Okay?
So anyway, it says after midnight they start praising and thanking God and singing songs to God in prison, and it says, notice, «and the other prisoners listened.» Well, I guess so! It’s deadly in the middle of the night! They can’t help but hear the guys! Listen, your praise of God is always a witness to non-believers! We think people are impressed by our prosperity; they’re actually impressed by how we handle adversity! It’s not how successful you are that makes people want to come to Christ; it’s how you handle the problems that they’re going through too, and you handle them in a better way!
Now it says here they start praising God; it’s at midnight! It says suddenly there’s a strong earthquake that shook the foundation of the jail! Ladies and gentlemen, this was the original jailhouse rock! Okay, I waited all week to tell you that! Then at the doors, it says, of the prison, the doors of the jail broke open, and all the prisoners were freed from their chains! They came undone, and they all walked out free! That is a miracle! But it’s also a metaphor of what God does in your life when you praise Him! When you’re stuck, when you praise Him, when you’re bound up when you’re in chains! When you need to be set free from an attitude, an addiction, a habit, a situation when you need the chains broken off you!
Closing Challenge and Prayer
Now here’s my challenge: As we start 2022 together, I want you to make the habit of praise your natural response to everything you face, good or bad! I’m going to thank God; I’m going to praise God in this situation—develop that habit and watch what happens! Watch all these benefits! And there are many others we didn’t cover! Secondly, make the habit of attending worship every weekend so you get your weekly B-12 shot! You get recharged; you get re-energized! You’re going to walk out of here with a better attitude than you came in with! So every week, be here this weekend unless you got COVID—then you stay home, okay? Because we don’t want to get that! But otherwise, we’ll see you here every week!
And I just want to say that I love you! I thank God for you! This is going to—we’re starting our 43rd year together, and I couldn’t be more excited about this! Now, we may have some more really cold days in the winter, but we’re going to keep these doors open, so we’re technically an indoor/outdoor church! And they’re not going to shut us down no matter what happens! Okay? So if it rains, if it gets freezing cold the next couple of months like it was last night, it’s okay to wear a parka to church! It’s okay to bring your thermos of hot chocolate with you! Just show up, and we’ll praise God together!
Okay? Alright, let me pray a blessing on you! Father, I want to thank You for these people! I look out on their faces; I love them! We love You; we love each other! Thank You that we’re part of a family called Saddleback and that everybody in here—all of the women, and my sisters, and all the guys are my brothers—and thank You that no matter what we go through in 2022, we’re not going to go through it alone! We’ve got a family that’s going to pray for us; it’s going to support us; it’s going to be with us. And one plus God is a majority! And one plus God and a family—we got this! And so we greet the new year with anticipation! More than that, we greet it with praise to You!
I ask You to bless everybody here—bless their health in 2022! Bless their finances! For those who are out of work, give them jobs, Lord! Give them creative ideas! Give us what You want us to have! Bless their memories! Bless their minds! Bless their relationships! Bless their businesses! Bless their vocation! I ask You to bless every person in every way that You can! And I pray this blessing in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and everybody said, «Amen!»