Prayer, Praise and Worship - By Jeff Dalton
In a church service, or in a group, or spending some one on one time with your Lord; prayer, praise, and worship often intertwine during one's time with God. Each expression, serving its purpose, which is to draw you closer to God's beating heart and to invite Him to make Himself known to you.. Here's how this usually works.
Prayer is one's notice to God that they are coming over and are on the way to God's house which is His throne room, where His manifested presence resides.
Praise is when one knocks on God's door to be let in. Sometimes, in the midst of praising God, Satan will step in and try to distract the person from coming before God's throne. These distractions can sometimes manifest themselves in different forms. Some examples are, when the sound system messes up during a song or when the phone rings. Sometimes these distractions can be in the form of wandering thoughts or out right satanic thoughts. Usually, when satan rears his ugly head and causes us to become distracted, we stop praising God, we stop knockingon God's door and in defeat, go home to try again another day.
When distractions occur you must not simply stop and do nothing. Instead, you need to turn to prayer and start to engage in some spiritual warfare with the enemy; in order to get him out of the way of you knocking on God's door. When distractions occur, you need to exercise the authority you have as a believer and in the name of Jesus Christ, command satan, to stop distracting you from coming before the throne of the All Mighty.
As mentioned earlier, in praise one will sometimes need to again resort to prayer to do battle with the enemy and then go back to praise and then worship. And sometimes one will be able to go straight from praise to worship.
When one is praising God, knocking on His door, the door starts to open. When the door opens you come in and embrace all of who God is, while He holds you closely to His beating heart. While in God's embrace, while in worship, you are signing and telling Him how much you love Him, how much He means to you. As your worshiping God you take things one step further, and begin to sing songs which only speak of His character and who He is to you based on His Word. In short, pure worship is when your focus shifts from self to God and to His character.
While in worship, God makes Himself known, He shows up, and His presence becomes manifested. In the midst of worship, while you are at God's house, He begins to offer you some water of His Holy Spirit to refresh you. He starts to offer you some food of His Word to nourish you. He opens up the medicine cabinet of His Son's broken body and by the blood of Jesus starts to heal your mind, body and spirit. While at your Father's house, He offers you some counseling so you will no longer be confused. He gives you some money to provide for your needs and shelter from the violent storms that rage around you. After God ministers to your needs, whatever they may be, you give your Father a hug and go on your way. As your leaving God's house, you notice that you are a little different then when you first came and knocked on His door.
Jeff Dalton 260-557-2600 [http://www.naturescry.com] Providing thoughts, jokes and poems and nature photography to remind Christians of Jesus' love for them and how much they mean to Him. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeff_Dalton Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2379598