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For it is written, As I live, says the Lord, every knew shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God, acknowledge Him to His honor and to His praise.

Romans 14:11

A day is coming when ALL will bow down and worship God, whether they want to or not. I can’t imagine at that moment what it will be like for those that turned their back on Him. We have such a privilege to be able to worship Him freely, with all the darkness that surrounds us.

I love how Paul encourages the Philippians in chapter 2 v 16 “Holding out to it and offering to all men the Word of Life, so that in the day of Christ I may have something of which exultantly to rejoice and glory in that I did not run my race in vain and spend my labor to no purpose.”

You aren’t running this race in vain my friend, there is a purpose and by choosing to worship Him now there are blessings so abundant. “Blessed and happy and to be envied are those who have never seen Me and yet have believed and adhered to and trusted and relied on Me.” John 20:29.

Jesus said you are to be envied because you believe in Him now because you praise Him now. Sing a Hallelujah today that gives Him honor.

A time will come, however, indeed it is already here, when the true, genuine, worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth (reality); for the Father is seeking just such people as these as His worshipers. God is a spirit, a spiritual Being and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth, reality.

John 4:23-24

I love the tender story of Jesus with the woman at the well. I love that the most unlikely person, the most unacceptable person is the one He chooses to review He was the Messiah too.

It is interesting that right after Jesus speaks the truth about her life, she asks Him about worship. I wonder if deep inside her was a yearning to worship God in truth and that is why as soon as she decides He’s a prophet that she starts seeking the answers she needs.

We were created to worship God and it’s no surprise that our need as humans to worship things is so consuming. I don’t think we even realize how much we need to worship. Football fans worship their teams, we worship actors, reality tv stars, authors, musicians, whole industries exist for the worship and adorable of people and things. Like Jesus said to her “you do not know what you worship (v22).

She wanted the truth, because customs and traditions said to worship on the mountains but the Jews said to worship at the Temple. How often do we find ourselves in this situation? How many churches have a sales pitch based on the praise and worship. Some even go to the extreme of having a million different services on Sunday for each type of music style possible. I know I’m being silly and I don’t mean to offend but it all seems too staged.

Like the song says, “when the music fades, and all is stripped away, and I simply come, longing just to bring something that’s of worth, that will bless Your heart.”

“Worship the Father in spirit, from the heart, the inner self, and in truth”. This is what He is seeking. A time is coming, it is already here…

We have had the luxury for too long of casual worship. The inner self doesn’t worry about the noise or lights or words, just truth.

It sees past the lies of our circumstances, tradition, ritual, habit and comes from that deep-down desire for fellowship with God.

When we find ourselves in this place, we can sing a Hallelujah not based on our emotions or our mood or our circumstances but simply because God is good and His steadfast love for us endures forever.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name. Bring an offering and come before Him; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness and in holy array.

1 Chronicles 16:29

I love how this scripture calls us to worship the Lord ‘in the beauty of holiness’. I love that beauty is attributed to holiness.

Holiness has always had a huge part to play in the worship of God. In Solomon’s temple, the Holy of Holies was where the final part of the worship would happen. This is where the High Priest would enter and bring the prayers and praise before God, in His presence.

There was a whole process the High Priest had to go through to make sure he was completely pure to enter into God’s presence.

There is beauty in holiness. Holiness means to be set apart. The beauty part is that when we are set apart for God we can experience fellowship with Him in the way we were created to. The Holy of Holies is free of Daunters. The Veil separated the rest of the Temple from the Holy of Holies where God’s presence was. We know when Jesus died on Calvary the Veil was split and the separation between man and God’s presence was removed. We now can come boldly before His throne.

But Daunters try to place another Veil between us and the beauty of holiness, the Veil of Unbelief. This Veil stops us from seeing the undaunting power of what Christ did on the Cross. It stops us from seeing the promise that Jesus has deprived the Daunter of its power to harm us.

When we tear down the Veil of Daunted Unbelief and step into the beauty of holiness we will find that we can worship God in a way beyond any Hallelujah ever heard.

I will praise You, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will show forth, recount & tell aloud, all Your marvelous works & wonderful deeds!

Psalm 9:1

When a Daunter loses its power over you it will settle for you being quiet about it. A lot of us live with the shame that we carry about our pasts.

There are hidden places in our hearts that we hide pain and shame but God wants us to worship Him with our WHOLE heart, including those places.

Freedom from a Daunter is a wonderful thing and one that we need to not be afraid to share.

A few years ago, I knew a lady but never knew her testimony. I thought a lot of her and knew she was a woman of God. It wasn’t until her husband shared their story with my husband that I realized how much God had done in her life. It made me sad that after years of knowing her she had never shared such a powerful story of God’s strength and faithfulness and redemption. God had saved her husband, her marriage, everything. It truly was marvelous what He had done. But I think the shame of the situation God had rescued them from kept her from sharing the testimony.

There is no condemnation for what is under the blood of Jesus. We don’t need to be afraid of where we were or our Daunters, but we do need to show forth, recount and tell aloud what He has done in our lives.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying to take out an infomercial and tell anyone and every one your story, there needs to be some wisdom. Maybe your dream, heart or life had to be broken so that you could give hope to someone else and it is for their sake you faced and defeated the Daunter.

There will be times when your testimony will give someone else hope and courage against their Daunter. Can you sing aloud a Hallelujah for the marvelous works He has done in your life?

But about midnight, as Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them, suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the very foundations of the prison were shaken; and at once all the doors were opened and everyone’s shackles were unfastened.

Acts 16:25-26

This has probably been one of my favorite scriptures through the last few years. It should be a story of hope for every time we find ourselves as prisoners. Oh, how these situations can be turned around to be something so life-altering.

We can stand in our chains of captivity and cry and moan and wait for the end of our sentence. Or we can raise our voices to sing a Hallelujah in the captivity. Then something amazing will begin.

In the same prison are other people that are listening and watching you. Music is soothing, David used to sooth the demons in Saul when he played his harp. The praise was probably soothing to the other prisoners. Piercing the dark, damp, heavy silence and distracting them from the pain and misery.

Then the most beautiful thing happened, and this is the point of this whole story. Paul and Silas brought the Holy Spirit into that prison by their faithfulness to prayer and worship. And right at the darkest part of the night, the Holy Spirit moved and not only were Paul and Silas freed but so were all the others in the prison.

There are people in your prison with you and their freedom depends on yours. When you invite the Holy Spirit to move in your captivity to your Daunter then when those chains are broken, others will be set free too.

It might be your children. Oh, how often cycles continue from one generation to another because no one has the courage to praise God in the prison and see the walls of captivity destroyed.

If you read on in this story you will see that the Prison Guard also got saved through this. When he came to check on the prisoners, afraid they had escaped, he found them still there, Paul and Silas were able to lead him and his family to the Lord.

What we do in our prisons can have such a profound effect not only on our lives but on the lives of those around us. Will you lift your hands despite the shackles of captivity and sing a Hallelujah that will make Heaven move?

Through Him, therefore, let us constantly and at all times offer up to God a sacrifice of praise, which is the fruit of lips that thankfully acknowledge and confess and glorify His name.

Hebrews 13:15

A sacrifice of praise. Why would praise be a sacrifice? Webster’s says surrender means the surrender of something for the sake of something else. That’s what true worship is, we are surrendering our glory for the glory of God.

Three things are stated here, acknowledge, confess and glorify.

Acknowledge, we need to acknowledge our need for Christ in our lives, we need to acknowledge that He is Lord and in control and do it thankfully!

Confess, again we need to confess our need for Him, our shortcomings, our Daunters. We can’t fix problems until we confess they exist.

Glorify, we need to put God back in the highest position in our lives. We need to give Him the praise.

When our hearts are focused on glorifying God then the fruit of that will show and be seen by all. Can you surrender your worry and stress today and sing a hallelujah that acknowledges and glorifies God’s name?

Hannah prayed, and said, My heart exults and triumphs in the Lord; my horn (my strength) is lifted in the Lord. My mouth is no longer silent, for it is opened wide over my enemies, because I rejoice in Your salvation.

1 Samuel 2:1

What a beautiful prayer from Hannah. She went from being held under the taunting grasp of the Daunter of infertility to receiving the beautiful promise of a child.

Daunters can make us silent because of the pain we feel at their hands. When God answers the deep desires of our hearts it’s easy to open our mouth wide over our enemies and praise Him.

I love how she says her strength was lifted in the Lord. I see such an intimate relationship between her and God. I can’t imagine having to give my boys to the Temple to be trained. She only got a few short years to be with him but she knew that he belonged to the Lord. God honored her faithfulness and she was blessed with 3 more sons and 2 daughters.

“My mouth is no longer silent”. Hannah endured so much pain because of her Daunter. Her Daunter was the lies and jealousy of a rival, her husband’s other wife, who had lots of children. Hannah was barren, it says because the Lord shut up her womb, but her husband loved her best.

Her despair had lead her to such a place that when the High Priest Eli saw her at the temple praying he thought she was drunk. Our despair can lead us to places where people think we are mad or drunk but the reality is our brokenness leaves us in such a deep place of pain that even though our lips move sound cannot come out. I really believe Hannah was experiencing the deep groaning of the Holy Spirit.

These barren places of despair are not necessarily bad places. They are places where something great is birthed in us. Not only did God give Hannah a child to replace her physical barrenness but He also replaced the spiritual barrenness in her soul with such a mighty desire to serve God.

From soundless prayers that made her appear drunk to a mouth that was no longer silent but filled with praise for God and what He had done.

Once a barren place taunted by a lying Daunter but now a testimony of trusting praise to God.

Will you break your silence and sing a hallelujah to God for the victory He has given you in the barren place in your life? Can you do it even if a Daunter still stands there taunting you?

Serve the Lord with gladness! Come before His presence with singing!

Psalm 100:2

Oh, how easy it is to let life make us come into God’s presence with heavy hearts and sadness. Think about it for a minute, if your husband or your kid or other loved one was always coming into the room sad and heavy it would make you sad that they weren’t happy to see us. I do it all the time. I come to God with my problems and my worries and I can’t find a song.

Psalm 100 is a psalm of thanksgiving. Like the scripture from Luke, we need to have that overflowing gladness in our hearts towards God.

Serving the Lord with gladness can be hard. Some services are not things that make us glad. Sometimes the place we are serving isn’t fun but when we count it a privilege to do anything for the Kingdom of God we can find joy. Like we talked about on the 10^th, in Matthew 25 Jesus talks about those that are faithful with the little things.

So often we let the worries of this life, the anxiety, the Daunters steal our gladness. In the fallen world we live in even nature groans for the ultimate restoration that will come from Christ’s return. But we don’t see nature letting these Daunters stop them doing what they were created to do.

Consider the lilies and wildflowers, how they grow in the open field. They neither labor nor spin wool to make clothing; yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory and splendor dressed himself like one of these.

Luke 12:27

I love this time of year and how the sides of the road are full of the beautiful color from the wildflowers. The absolute beauty and splendor they display. Some of them grow in less than ideal conditions but they blossom none the less. If God has given it the ability to share His beautiful creation then how much more does He want to give us the ability to shine where we are.

Come before Him today with a song of praise on your lips, let your Hallelujah be filled with gladness.

O Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth!

Psalm 96:1

A Daunter will strip you of your song and your desire to sing. Trust me I understand. I wish I could stand here and say that in the darkest times of my life I was found with songs of praise on my lips. But the times that I could even find a song at all it was a sad song. It was a song of pity and heartbreak, of broken dreams and shattered hopes, of weariness and heaviness.

There comes a moment in our lives and today may be that moment for you where you must decide. This sad song is out of tune and nothing flows together, it has this dulling sensation that lulls me to sleep. On the other hand, we can sing a new song.

Have you ever noticed how every singer has that one song that is their song, it’s that career maker or that signature song that no matter who sings it before or after them, it belongs to them? Their voice was made to sing it. Yes, they will sing other songs but nothing has the same impact as that song.

New can be scary but new can also restore excitement.
You need to find your song, the one that defines you. Don’t get stuck in that old tired melody that the Daunter taught you to sing.

Today can you ask God to give you a new Hallelujah chorus that will revive your heart and restore your spirit.

From the rising of the sun to the going down of it and from east to west, the name of the Lord is to be praised!

Psalm 113:3

I don’t know how or when we relegated praise to a segment of the Sunday morning service and the music we listen to in our cars but I think we have missed the point.

From the rising of the sun to the going down of it. Every waking moment should be a praise to Him.

Now I’m not saying walking around singing the entire day like your life is a musical or opera unless that’s your thing and then please continue. It’s about our lives being an expression of gratitude to God.

The word for praise is the Hebrew word Halal which as well as meaning to be praised means to shine. The name of the Lord is to shine through us from sun up to sun down.

True worship is the life that is walked in surrender to God.

We have all met those rare jewels of Christians that have or had truly grasped this perfect surrender. They didn’t have to say a word because they brought the sweet scent of Christ with them everywhere they went. Their every waking moment they shone for the glory of God.

God knows we will never be perfect until we see Him face to face but we can strive to that sweet savor of Christ everywhere we go.

Today, sing a hallelujah in your heart all day that will shine through you and praise the name of the Lord.