I admit that I can be a bit quirky. I am a news junky. I don’t eat bananas. And my wife teases me for nibbling chocolate chip cookies around the edges so as to maximize the number of chips left in the center.
Regular readers will find a lot of my personal quirks popping up in this blog. So, if you think that my postings become an unusual stew of oddly mixed ingredients, well, you have been warned.
Some of my quirks are religious, and I want to talk about one of them today. I happen to believe that when Christian people use Biblical vocabulary they ought to do their best to (1) understand the original Biblical sense of a word and (2) try to use that word accordingly, in ways that cohere with its Biblical meaning(s).
So, here is my pet-peeve for today: Praising God, whether in church or elsewhere, has nothing to do with raising your hands or giving God “applause,” as often happens in churches today. If you attend a church
where the worship leader [another seriously misunderstood term, but that is for another day] concludes a song by shouting, “Give the Lord some more praise!”, and everyone understands that as code for another round of applause, then your song-leader doesn’t understand the Biblical meaning of praise.
The Old Testament book of Psalms defines praise as a public declaration of either (a) the greatness of God’s character and/or (b) the greatness of His actions/behavior. If a reader understands how to interpret the Hebrew poetic device called parallelism, even a casual reading of the Psalms will make this clear.
Here are two examples from Psalm 9:
Verse 1, I will praise you, O LORD, with all my heart;
I will tell of all your wonders.
Verse 11, Sing praises to the LORD, enthroned in Zion;
Proclaim among the nations what he has done.
The psalmist first tells the people to praise the Lord (first line), and he then defines what he means by that (second line). The Lord is praised whenever his people, individually or collectively, “tell of all his wonders and proclaim among the nations what he has done.”
Consequently, praising God can be risky business.
It is not just a matter of being careful that we don’t hit the person standing next to us in the head as we wave our hands. Actually, praise has little if anything to do with lifting up our hands and everything to do with lifting up our voice in public.
Praising Jesus Christ requires stepping outside of your comfort zone and running the risk of being thought a fool for sharing your beliefs and experiences with someone else about how Jesus Christ has worked to save you, heal you, guide you, answer your prayers, worked miracles, and directed you into the service of others – especially when those others are people with whom you would not naturally associate.
Yes, we praise God the Creator when we openly marvel at the fantabulousness of creation, as we stare at a
sunset or hike in the Rocky Mountains. But we also praise God the Redeemer when we explain the good news of Jesus Christ with someone who has yet to experience that salvation for themselves. We praise God when explaining to a friend how the Lord Jesus has taken care of us in troubled times.
You can do this while sitting on your hands or stuffing them into your pockets, if you like. Or, go ahead, lift them up and wave them about if that feels better to you. But don’t forget that this is all window-dressing and ephemera when compared to the God-stories and exclamations that we share with others.
So, go out and praise the Lord Jesus today. Tell someone new about all of his wonders and proclaim among the nations what he has done.
