The Power of Praise | Is This Thing On?

Have you ever felt too tired, too distracted, or simply too self-conscious to truly engage in worship? In this powerful message from our summer series, "Is This Thing On?", Robbie dives into why praising God isn't just a passive activity or an optional suggestion—it’s a direct command and a spiritual weapon. Using relatable stories from his own life, Robbie reveals how praising God shifts our focus away from our giant-sized problems and up toward our faithful Creator. Whether you're standing on the front lines of a personal battle or you're simply "not in the mood," discover how turning your gaze upward and raising a hallelujah changes everything.

Key Points & Scripture References

• Praise is a Command, Not an Option: The Bible repeatedly commands us to praise God, regardless of our present circumstances, feelings, or musical abilities (Psalm 150, Psalm 100, Psalm 47, Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, 1 Peter 2:9).
• Praise Creates Space for God: When we actively praise, we create an honored space for God. He inhabits the praises of His people, making Himself more real to us than our problems (Psalm 22:3).
• Praise is a Weapon in Battle: Just like King Jehoshaphat sent worshippers to the front lines, our praise acts as an act of defiance against the enemy, claiming victory and deliverance before the fight is even over (2 Chronicles 20, Exodus 15, 2 Samuel 22).
• Overcoming Internal Obstacles: We must intentionally break through the internal walls that hold us back from worship: not being in the mood, insecurity about our singing voice, personal preferences about musical style, and the pride of being embarrassed.
• Giving Yourself a Pep Talk: Sometimes, you have to talk to your own soul and command it to remember God's goodness, just like David did when he needed to realign his heart (Psalm 103).

Conclusion & Call to Action

Don't let your current circumstances or internal insecurities dictate your worship today. Choose to raise a hallelujah louder than your unbelief, and watch how God moves when you give Him the praise He deserves! If this message encouraged you and helped you break through a wall in your own life, please like, subscribe, and share this audio with a friend who needs to hear it.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Hey, uh we really cherish what's happening in our youth, our young adults. We really count it a privilege to raise them up and release them into ministry. I had the privilege of listening to Robbie speak at our youth camp, New Day, uh, last week. Yeah. And Robbie's been a part of a leadership track here at the church, so his gifts are being uh developed, and I think he's gonna be a real gift to us uh this morning. So let's uh pray for him as he gets ready to speak on the power of praise. Jesus, once again, we're just really thankful for what you're doing. And although Robbie wouldn't consider himself a youth, he's he's a lot younger than most of us. So we just bless what you're doing in the next generation. We bless your work in his life. We ask all that you have for him, all the desires you have in your heart for his life would come to pass. And instead of seeing a crowd of people kind of looking suspiciously at him this morning, we we just want to count ourselves and the number of folks that are just cheering him on, wanting to see Christ formed in his life and wanting to see the next generation go further than us. So we just bless him. We bless him to be himself. He doesn't want to perform here in this house. He can be Robbie here and not Robert. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Good morning. It's good to be here. World Cup's over.

unknown 2:21

What are we gonna do?

SPEAKER_01 2:23

I don't know. I'm gonna go in the morning until the Premier League starts in three weeks. The US didn't win again. It's kind of ridiculous. I'm devastated. Can't believe we didn't win. I love the World Cup. I know a lot of us here couldn't really care less about soccer and football as the main sport, but I think there's something so special about teams coming from all over the world to try and win one for their country. That's what makes the Olympics so special as well. I mean, there's a lot more emotion that gets wrapped up when you're representing your country. The first World Cup that I can remember was in 2010. It was in South Africa, and coincidentally, Spain was the team that won that World Cup. Same as this one. But the songs that were released for that World Cup are the best World Cup songs that we've ever had. I don't really even think it's a debate. We had Waka Waka, this time for Africa, which is still an amazing song. We had Wave and Flag, and both of these music videos, I remember just having on repeat when the World Cup was starting, my brother and I just played soccer all through the house. I think we went for hours until probably we broke something. Waka Waka had this uh the video was just these iconic clips of players from past World Cups that were celebrating like a goal or penalty kick shootout or something. And then wave and flag was the perfect like follow-up to that, where you had all of these kids in dirt lots playing soccer while the lyrics said, When I get older, I'll be stronger, and they'll call me freedom, just like a waven flag. And that that had me. That had me believing that I was gonna grow up and I was gonna play for our team in the World Cup and I was gonna help us win the first World Cup that we ever won. I'm 29 now, so kind of like towards the tail end of my early 20s. Just getting there. And it's probably it's starting to look a little unlikely that I'm gonna play for the US. It's looking real unlikely that we're ever gonna win one of these things. I do play soccer, D3 soccer at 1852, though, so the dream's alive. I have a chance. I can make it. Soccer, really sports in general, have this undeniable ability to make us feel like we're part of something greater. You can watch the game in person, you can go to a bar, you can watch it from your couch, but anyway you watch it, it's really easy to get wrapped up into cheering for your team. Sports have a way of making us believe that even though we're not on the field, we're still playing the game. So we yell at the top of our lungs, we throw our hands up when our team scores, we feel it all. The highs are really high and the lows are really low. To be honest, a lot of us, probably the biggest expression of praise in our life is when we're watching sports. A lot of times the person who cheers at the top of their lungs for a game has a lot of trouble actually offering the same amount of praise to God. For a lot of people, the first time they ever saw their dad cry was when he was watching a sports game. And honestly, don't tell me it's just men either, because I've watched sports with enough women to see them pleading in front of the TV as well, and see them jumping up doing a celebratory dance when their team scores a touchdown. I've seen it. It's not just men. I'm not trying to say that cheering is wrong. I think I regret a few of the things that I said while cheering for the US this World Cup. But that wasn't cheering's fault. That was that was an internal issue that needed addressing. Yeah, the question isn't how can we stop caring so much about our sports teams, but rather how can we extend our excitement and praise for sports to our walk with God. We're in a series this summer called, Is This Thing On? And it's it's centered around our words and the power that they have. And today we're gonna extend actually beyond our words to our actions as well, because this is the power of praise, is the topic we're covering this morning. We frequently equate praise to song, and it's true there's an explicit link between praise and song in the Bible, but there's actually seven words for praise that are used in the Old Testament, and together they show us a picture that praises about, is about more than just song. I'm not gonna dive into those seven words this morning. Hopefully, you've already heard them discussed in a different sermon. If you have questions, feel free to come and talk to me after. I'd love to. They're very interesting. We just don't quite have time to go through them all. Ultimately, they show us praise is a lot of things. It can be raised hands, it can be extended hands, it can be kneeling, it can be dancing, it can be shouting, it can be making music. When we view praise through the light of all of the words that are used for praise in the Old Testament, it becomes apparent it's more than just singing. Praise is the sincere acknowledgement of God's worth expressed through words, music, and postures or actions that declare his character and his works. It's this reason that so many of our worship songs say things like, You're a good, good father. Oh God, you've done great things. Your name is the greatest, your name's the highest, your name stands above them all. There are ways to extend our praise beyond sports and into our daily walk with God. It starts with asking ourselves the question: what does the Bible say about this? What is the Bible saying about praise? Well, for starters, the Bible's commanding us to praise. There's no escaping it. The Psalms are littered with commands to praise. We have Psalm 150 telling us, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Psalm 100 says, enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Psalm 47 says, clap your hands, all you peoples. Shout to God with joyful praise. And it's not just the Psalms either. This command extends to the New Testament as well. Ephesians 5 has us addressing one another in hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with all our heart. Colossians 3 has virtually the same command. And then Peter in 1 Peter 2 9 says, But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. I could keep going with other commands through scripture, but the point is, praise isn't optional. We often treat it like it is, though. I'm very guilty, hand up, of losing track of time and getting to church after the first song is over, and then taking a song to collect myself, and then by the time I'm ready to jump into worship, Travis is up and closing us out of our time in worship. I'm very guilty of doing that. I get it. It's it's hard to get here on time. I don't even have kids, and I'm still late. Some of you guys have a million kids. So bless, bless you, honestly. But what about the rest of our lives? I mean, corporate praise is a big part of the command to praise in scripture, but it's it's not the only thing. Praise isn't exclusive to group settings. Are we shouting along to worship music in the car? Are we lifting our hands and worship in the solitude of our homes? Does goodbye yesterday get an encore when you're in your shower? Maybe scratch, scratch the last one because the shower's a notoriously bad place to dance, and that song makes you, you just have to dance to that song. I will say though, if you're not dancing to worship songs in your bedroom, you're missing out. You should try it. It's worth trying. I think that many of us are guilty of pushing praise to the side because to us, praise is passive. And passive doesn't fit within our culture. We think things like, I'm in the middle, I'm in the middle of a battle right now. I don't have time to sing a song? Are you kidding me? I've got so much work to do. I can't praise. It's not uncommon for the image that comes to mind when we think of praise to be like a hippie drum circle at Ventura Beach. That's the epitome of getting nothing done. How could I possibly get anything done like that? My to-do list, my to-do list just keeps getting longer and longer. I don't have time to praise. So, so why praise then? Why are we commanded to praise? I'm not trying to be a spiritual doctor that's giving you medication and telling you what to do with your life. I don't want to be the one that tells you what to do. You should have freedom between you and God to figure out what works in your walk with him and what doesn't work in your walk with him. That's what we believe. But the truth is the Bible is prescriptive in this area. We're commanded to praise. These verses don't read nine out of ten Bethel pastors recommend. It's not a progressive church trying to institute new doctrine. These commands are old. They're really old. We're not given the freedom just to decide whether or not praise works for us. The Bible tells us it does. The Bible tells us you gotta do it. But why? I mean, does God just need constant affirmation? Is he like the birthday prima donna that's like, man, I've been here for two minutes, and nobody has mentioned that it's my birthday, and nobody's said anything nice to me or done anything nice for me. What's going on? No, of course God's not like that, but he does have, I think, like all of his commands, he has multiple reasons for giving us the command to praise him. Because on the one hand, God knows, he knows we're made to worship. We're gonna worship someone, and he's a jealous God that absolutely will not abide, his people praising idols. Then on the other hand, God's commanding us to praise because he knows it does something. Psalm 22, verse 3 says, You are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. I use the ESV translation here because I really like it, but it can also be translated as God inhabits the praises of his people. He inhabits the praises of his people. I love this verse because it lends imagery to what happens when we praise. When we praise, we're actually creating a space for God, an honored place. He sits enthroned on our praises. In praising God, we invite Him access, give Him access to our lives, give Him access to ourselves. Praise isn't passive. It's not the same thing as singing along at a concert. When we praise, we're inviting God into the room and into our lives. We're enthroning Him on our praises, and then from this position, He is more real to us than our problems, and from this place of faith, He's able to work miracles in our lives and in our hearts. So, what power does praise have? Praise has the power to turn our gaze up in defiance of what's in front of us and in defiance of what's inside us. I mean, sometimes there's a mountain in front of us. All we can see is what we're up against, and what we're up against is clearly much more than we can handle. And it's okay. It's okay to be afraid of what's in front of you. The Bible tells us that we have trials and tribulations, but yet when they come, we're like, whoa, whoa, hey, calm down now. I knew there was gonna be trials, but nobody said anything about a capital trial. You know, it feels like the stakes are pretty high. I I don't I don't think I signed up for this. We get focused and distracted by what's in front of us. When I write sermons, I tend to I tend to just hyper focus and I can't see anything beyond what's right in front of me. I can't see past it. It's like my brain's in out of office mode. I actually had to take time yesterday. I actually had to take time yesterday to to go and worship in my room because I knew I was too focused on what was in front of me. I I knew I was too focused on it. I actually have plans for lunch today, and you guys don't understand how big of a win that is for me. Like I never have plans after a sermon, ever. It's victory for sure. Praise. Praise has the ability to help us by lifting our gaze off of our circumstances and onto what really matters. In 2 Chronicles 20, King Jehoshaphat is leading Judah and he's following God's will. But despite this, there's a multitude of enemies coming against them. Multiple nations have banded together to come against his nation, and he's terrified. He's terrified. There's a great multitude coming against him, and a prophet just told him that God's upset with him because he partnered with King Ahab. Ahab, who is the poster child for evil kings in the Bible. The Bible literally says, this guy's the worst. We've never had someone this evil. That's literally what the Bible says about Ahab. So he's just partnered with this guy, and a prophet told him, uh, yeah, God did not like that. He's he's mad. And then a huge army is coming against him. So yeah, King Jehoshaphat, he's terrified. So he sets his face to seek the Lord. He pulls his gaze up from what's in front of him, this great multitude of enemies. We pick up the story in verse 20. Early in the morning they left for the desert of Tokoah. As they set out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, Listen to me, Judah, and people of Jerusalem. Have faith in the Lord your God, and you will be upheld. Have faith in his prophets, and you will be successful. After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and praise him for the splendor of his holiness, as they went out at the head of the army, saying, Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever. As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, who were invading Judah, and they were defeated. The Ammonites and the Moabites rose up against the men from Mount Seir to destroy and annihilate them. After they finished slaughtering the men from Seir, they helped to destroy one another. All they do is send worshipers out in front of the army. They just say, Hey, go, give thanks to God for his deliverance, which hasn't happened yet at this point. He has not delivered them. They're just in faith. Go and give thanks for his deliverance and declare that he is faithful. And they don't even need to fight the battle physically. They just send worshipers out and they praise God, and then God just claims victory for them. That's what praise has the ability to do. It has this ability to say, Man, I can't see over what's in front of me, but I can see what's above me, and he can see what's in front of me. He can see past it. One of the songs that we sing at Radiant is called Raise a Hallelujah. And its very existence is testament to the power of praise. In December of 2017, this young boy named Jackson Taylor, whose parents are leaders in the Bethel music community, he became super ill. He was two years old at the time. And his family spent weeks at the hospital watching their son just progressively get worse until the point when Joel, who was Jackson's father, sent out a message to all their friends saying, Hey, we don't think that Jackson's gonna make it through the night. And Jonathan Helser received that message and he described that moment like this. I just felt like this giant of unbelief stood in front of me, and I just thought, Jackson's gonna die tonight. We're not gonna see this miracle. And as the giant stood in front of me, all of a sudden, out of my gut, this song started coming out. You hear the lyrics to that song. Because I raise a hallelujah. In the presence of my enemies. I raise a hallelujah louder than the unbelief. I raise a hallelujah. My weapon is a melody. I raise a hallelujah. Heaven comes to fight for me. Jonathan recorded that song. It became obviously the song Raise a Hallelujah, and he sent it to Jackson's father Joel, who actually played it. He played the recording over his son in the hospital bed over and over again. And as he did, Jackson slowly started to get better. He was completely healed. And he left the hospital shortly after. Our weapon's a melody. When there's a giant of unbelief standing in front of us, this insurmountable mountain of tribulation that's all we can see, our praise stands in defiance as this weapon that calls the hero of the story to come in, the one who has power over everything. The awesome thing about praise is we praise him when the battle's in front of us because we know he's faithful, and then we praise him when the battle's behind us because we're thankful for his deliverance. Think about Exodus 15, when Moses and the children of Israel they all sing a song to God after he parts the Red Sea for them. I mean, I can just imagine the dance party that they had. God's just brought them out of hundreds of years in Egypt. They're just singing a song thanking him for what he's done. King David has many songs of deliverance that are attributed to him. Probably the most notable is 2 Samuel 22, which describes his deliverance from all his enemies and also from the hands of Saul. And this song became a psalm that all of Israel could join in singing. So his personal song of deliverance became something that all of his nation could sing together. And this actually can go for us too. We all have a song of deliverance to sing. What has God walked you out of? When we're worshiping or when we're on our own, let the Holy Spirit guide you in a spontaneous song. I mean, Chris kind of led us in that this morning as he just said, hey, whatever's in your heart, let it go. Declare the goodness of God, declare his sovereignty over your problems. Just let it come out of you. And if you're really bold, sing it so somebody else can hear it. I'm not saying distract the person next to you while we're in worship, but I would love it. I would love it if someone came up to the front, to the anchoring elder, and said, Hey, I have this spontaneous song. I want you to weigh if it's for the whole congregation. So I'd be willing to share it. That'd be awesome. It's been a long time since we've had that. Here's the thing. I think we all want to praise. It's in it, it's in our hearts to want to praise. We we read these verses, and we know that God is asking us to do something that's for our own good. We know it. But wanting to praise and actually praising, they can often be really different things. We wish that there was zero gap between the commitments that we make and the actions that we take, but often there is a gap. Often that's not the case. So, what's going on inside us that's creating this gap? What obstacles are we needing to overcome to actually praise? Typically, we struggle in praise because we're too consumed with either our horizontal vision, i.e., what's in front of us, or our inward vision, what's going on inside us. And praise can help us defy what's in front of us and increase our faith. We just talked about that. It can also help us to defy what's going on inside us. You'll notice as we walk through these four internal obstacles that I want to discuss, that they're all I statements. That's because despite what these obstacles might try to tell us, these obstacles start and end with us. The first one is I'm not in the mood. I just don't feel it. It's the first obstacle that we have to praising. And guys, I get it. Me too. I mean, some days we're going to wake up and just think, man, this this ain't it. This ain't it. It might be stress, it might be grief, it might just be tired. We have to figure out a way to bring our praise to God anyway. That's why Paul writes in Hebrews, well, does he write Hebrews? I don't know. Possibly. Uh in Hebrews 13, 15, through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of the lips that openly profess his name. It's a sacrifice of praise. It's a sacrifice to praise. I give myself peptox a lot. I really do. It started back in high school when I was running cross-country. If you've ever run long distance in the Valley Heat, then you know what it is to fantasize about your water bottle. When you're eight miles into a 10-mile run and your sweat's already crystallized on your skin, all you can think about, it's 105 degrees, all you can think about is your water bottle. I just remember picturing the the shack at the entrance to the Exeter track and just being like, man, I know that I'm gonna get there, and my water bottle is gonna be there, and it's gonna be the best. And we didn't have great water bottles then. Like I just had like the Gatorade squirt bottle, like that's all that I had, but I knew the odds. I knew the odds. I knew how hot it was. There was no way there was ice left in my water bottle. I've been out for an hour and a half running. But in my mind, that water when I got back was gonna be as cold as if it had just melted off a glacier. And I would negotiate with myself, I'd be like, if I could just get back, I'm gonna drink a gallon of water. If I could just get back, I I know I know this the water polo coach. He'll let me jump in the pool. I I'll cool way off. If I can just make it back to school. And then after college, I continued to give these pep talks to myself, but the location shifted. I wasn't running in the valley heat anymore, now I was actually running in the hills of San Francisco. So the scenery shifted, and the negotiations shifted too. They weren't the same. I didn't need the same motivation. I traded sweat crystals on my skin and fantasies about glacial water for lead in my legs and dreams of getting back to my couch and never having to move again. I would say things like, Man, if I can make it back to my house, I promise I'll never make myself go up another stair again. I'll I'll just rent a scooter. If I need to go up a hill, like if I need to go up a hill, I'll just there's always scooters at the bottom of these hills. I'll just rent one and take it up to the top. I'll never ever have to go up another stair again if I can just make it back to the house. And now the starting point of my negotiations, well, it's moved again. Now these negotiations start when I'm staring at my shoes and my socks next to the door. I don't just need motivation to finish my run anymore. Now I actually need motivation just to start it. I have to tell myself, hey, remember what it's like when you get back from this run. Remember how good it feels when you get back from a run. And sometimes that's not enough, and I actually need outside help. When we got back from New Day, I was exhausted, and my roommate actually had to be the one to convince me to go for a run because I was way too tired to do it. He watched me like walking back to my room with my shoes in hand, and he's like, What are you doing? You should go. I'm like, it's already hot, man. Like it's already, he's like, that's just the porch. Once you get off the porch, it's fine. Sometimes we need the help. We're gonna go through periods in our life where praising God isn't easy. One thing I've noticed in my years of running is that I always get the same feeling when I get back. Yeah, I'm way more tired now when I'm running, and the recovery takes way longer after I get back, but I get the same peaceful mental clarity now that I did when I was in high school when I get back from a run. And it made me realize when it comes to praise, your starting point doesn't determine your end result. So just because you might come in excited to praise, and you don't need any motivation, doesn't mean that your result's any different from someone who's really struggling to praise. They have all these obstacles that are stopping them, and it's a challenge just to open their mouth. The end result's the same. When we devote ourselves to praising the Lord, the end result is always connection with God. It doesn't matter your starting point. And on a practical level, it does help to remember two things on days when when it really you're not in the mood to praise. And the first one is that there's there's a lot of expressions of praise. It's not just celebration. If you're if you're not feeling it, don't just sing along to the song when you know you're not your heart's just not in it. There's something going on inside. Actually, take the time to address it. That's okay. Change your posture if it helps. You don't have to worry about kneeling during the same song that someone else is dancing to. You don't have to feel victorious. You can you can praise God just as effectively through a posture of surrender as you can through a posture of victory. It's just as effective. Don't check out. Press in. God values your obedience. He doesn't just value your ovation. And the second thing to remember is that pep talks, they're allowed. It's okay. One of the songs we sing literally goes, Come on, my soul. Don't you get shy on me. Come on, my soul. And that's not new either. David wrote in Psalm 103. Psalm 103 goes, Praise the Lord my soul. All my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord my soul. Forget not all his benefits. David's talking to himself. He's he's saying, Come on, don't you forget what he's done for you. I can I can picture him like seeing Goliath fall at his feet. I can picture him like remembering when Saul fell asleep in the cave in front of him. David's like, Come on, my soul. Don't forget what he's done for you. And we can do the same thing for ourselves, but sometimes we do still need someone else to lift our hands for us. And that's okay too. Like the second day of New Day, I was already just completely empty, and I had to go and get prayer because I was like, I don't know if I have it in me. That's okay. I'm willing to bet that we all know real breakthrough comes when you actually break through a wall. Something that was standing in front of you, preventing any forward progress, when you actually break through that wall, that's actually when you realize progress has been made. When you really don't want to go to the gym and you make it there anyway, when you're really craving that milkshake from in and out, and you still say, no, I gotta lock in, you say no, that's when you realize, wait, I think I've actually made progress here. It's not when you wake up and it's the easiest thing ever to go to the gym. No, that's not progress. Yeah, it's it you don't re it's progress, but you don't realize, hey, this is this has happened. I see a change in me, because I never would have done that. There's power in choosing to do something that you don't feel like doing. It's powerful when you choose to praise, even though you're not in the mood for it. Those are moments of breakthrough. The second obstacle, I promise the rest of these will go much faster, is hey, I'm I'm a bad singer. Singing, that's not my gift. And I get it. You're saying, no, Robbie, you don't get it. I'm so bad at singing. Literally, all of my friends, when I sing in the car, they think I'm joking because I'm that far off key. They're like, there's no way that this guy's serious right now. You're telling me, hey, hey, Romans 12. Have you thought about Romans 12? It teaches us there are many different giftings in the church, many varieties. We're not all called all, we're not all called to operate in the same way. I mean, you wouldn't expect my elbow to be able to taste food. Maybe, maybe we can all just agree, let's leave the singing to the people who are actually good at it. No, we can't agree to that. I'm sorry. Singing might not be your gift. I know it's not mine. There's a reason I haven't sang any of the lyrics that I've put up on screen to worship songs. I'm up here, I'm wearing linen pants just so I can feel more like Monica. But the discussion of gifts, it doesn't actually extend to commands. We're commanded to praise. There's not praising voices in this room and silent voices in this room. We're all a part of the choir of creation. We're all the choir of God's people. And also, I do have I hate to burst your bubble about Romans 12, but just because something's not your primary gifting does not give you an excuse to not operate in it. You might not excel at serving, but you are still called to serve. You might not be exceptionally generous, but you're still called to give. You might not be the best encourager, but you're still called to build up the kingdom with your words. You might not have the best voice, but you're called to bring what you've got. We need your voice in the room. The third obstacle is, hey, I don't like the worship here. It's it's just not the way I was raised. And this is fairly similar to the first one, but I don't want to just skip over it because there's a subtle difference. Guys, we're blessed with really amazingly talented worship leaders here at this church, but it's still not, it still might not be your style of music. That's that's okay. I would want to ask you, what do you think is God's style of music? Because the Bible, the Bible makes it pretty apparent that God's people have been raising their hands and dancing with all their might as a form of worship, as a form of praise to him. They've been doing that for thousands of years. The Bible's also pretty clear that his people, they've been kneeling before him and offering sacrifices of praise for just as long. This expression of praise that we practice on Sunday mornings, it might not be comfortable for you, but it is commanded of you. And he commands it because there's power in that praise to fix our gaze on him, to invite him into our lives and allow him to bring change. There's power. It's not for no reason. And the second thing I'd remind us is hey, look, Sunday morning isn't actually the only time that we're commanded to praise. Even if you love the worship here, we still don't want there to be a big gap between the way we praise on Sunday and the way we praise in the rest of our week. I mean, I think we should practice all of the types of praise, but if you aren't comfortable with the worship here, the rest of your week you can choose whatever expression of praise you feel the most comfortable with, but you do have to practice praise in your private life. It's not optional. It can't just be on a Sunday morning thing. The last obstacle that we have is, and I'd get embarrassed. It draws attention to me. Focusing on what other people think of you is a near universal experience. You either don't want anyone to see you because you are afraid of what they think about you, or you want everyone to see you because you have to know what they think about you. And if you're part of the crowd that's like, I don't want anyone to see me because I'm afraid of what they're gonna think about me, if you're wrestling with praising at church because you're embarrassed that people can see you, the usual suspect there is shame. Our youth group would be familiar with this story because I've told it before, but uh a couple of years ago I I had warts on my hand, and they were mildly uncomfortable, but mostly they were just embarrassing. I mean, it's not like warts are uncommon, something like 75% of people are gonna get a wart at some point in their life, but they just made me feel a little unclean. And I remember I would do things like I tried to take a thumbprint of my left hand at the DMV because I didn't actually know if my right thumbprint would work, and I didn't want to deal with the embarrassment of having to explain like why that was the case. I completely forgot, of course, about the universal truth that the DMV employees cannot possibly care less about your problems. I mean, to me, to me, all I or to this poor gal at the DMV, all I was was just this idiot that was making her job harder. I mean, as if being the only, there is one DMV that services the entire San Francisco area. That's ridiculous. As if being the only DMV wasn't bad enough. Now she has to deal with some idiot, some insecure guy who's just afraid of being seen. I remember I wouldn't even shake hands with people. I would give people a lot of fist bumps at that time. I think I literally gave my boss a fist bump the first time I met him, which is crazy. I would not recommend it. I wouldn't raise my hands in worship because I was afraid that people would see the words that were on my hand. And the truth is, they weren't even that visible. I never had a single person come up to me and ask me about them, but that's what. Shame does. Shame just makes our mistakes, our sin, way more visible to us than it does to anyone else. Way more visible to us. Shame tells us, man, everyone knows what's wrong with you. Everyone sees that. Shame tells us, man, everyone thinks it's super hypocritical of you to be singing this song. You? You serious? That's what shame says to us. Shame's telling us everyone in the room is looking at us, but the reality is most people are looking at themselves. That's just the cold hard truth. Most people are just focused on themselves. And for the few people who are looking at you, they're not gonna judge you for praising your savior. If they know their, if they know your story, they honestly they're probably gonna be inspired by you. Danny, Danny Bartlett was the youth pastor here before Eric. And many of the young adults in our community, and just the adults in our community, were were really impacted by the passion for praise that Danny had. I mean, Danny would go for it in worship. I think probably to me, the most iconic thing was like the Danny rock, like that he would always do in worship. And I look out at our community now during worship, and I can see Danny's legacy like has carried on. And the cool thing is, Danny picked that up from Savior's Church. This culture of praise, it's passed down from generation to generation. They're gonna be inspired. It can create a culture of praise. Can I have the worship team come back up? You might have sensed a pattern in these obstacles. You might have you might be wondering, like, you might have picked up, I think a lot of these, do a lot of these have to deal with like our pride? Yup, they do. I don't know if you've been picking up on this, but pride's come up a few times already this summer. It's possible it's come up literally every week. I I'm not sure. I can't remember if it came up last week in prayer. But pride. Pride is deeply connected to our words. It's actually the enemy's key weapon against our words. It causes us to open our mouths when we should close them, and it causes us to keep our mouths closed when we should open them. Do you think the devil is just gonna come at you head on every day? You think he's gonna come to you saying, Hi there, I'm the devil. You should consider sinning today. No, of course he's not gonna do that. You'd run the other way if he came at you like that. He's the father of lies. He's not gonna come at you with zero deception. He was able to corrupt Adam and Eve in the garden by playing on their pride. What reason does he have for changing that play? Why would that not work today? Nine days out of ten, it's actually my pride that puffs up the armor of the Lord, that creates gaps for the arrows of the enemy to slip in. It's my pride that creates these holes for the enemy to attack me. You might have actually already received prayer. You might be like, man, when Danny talked about the power of our words, I actually felt convicted. Here's the thing: pride grows like bamboo. I don't know if you know this, but bamboo is the fastest growing plant that exists on our planet. Some species can actually grow up to four feet per day. If you let it go, it'll overrun anywhere it is. And that's the way that our pride is. It'll overrun us. If pride's my enemy, well then praise is gonna be my machete. Praise has this ability to pull our gaze up off ourselves. Pride, which so wants us to focus inward on ourselves, praise forces us to defy that pride. It forces us to break through the obstacles that pride throws in our way and to build a throne with our praises for God to come in on, and then we humble ourselves before that throne by declaring that He's worthy, that He is worthy of all our praise. We're gonna move back into a time of worship right now, and the tables will be open for communion, and there's also gonna be people ready to pray for you. If you need help believing that God's bigger than the obstacles that are in front of you, if you feel like there's a mountain of unbelief in front of you, come and receive prayer. If you feel like you just want someone to come alongside you to help you repent of pride, repent of feeling like, man, everyone's looking at me in worship, so I can't worship, come and receive prayer. Practicing confession and repentance with other believers is the best way, one of the very best ways to confront pride within our lives. And if you just feel empty, like I can't praise because I just have nothing to give. If you need a pep talk, you need someone to lift your hands for you, come and receive praise, or come and receive prayer. For the rest of us, let's praise with freedom this morning. Let's build a culture of praise in Radiant Church.