“By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually,
that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.” Hebrews 13:15
Giving praise to the Lord is one of the best ways to express our thanks to God for His blessings and yet how many of us do it on a regular basis? Yes, we normally go through our routines of thanking God for our food before we eat, sometimes we even thank Him for the clothes we wear and praise Him for the sunshine. Around the Thanksgiving holiday we may even list out our blessings and reflect on what God has done, but to do we really “offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually” as our theme verse, Hebrews 13:15, states?
Continual doesn’t just mean once a year or even once a day for that matter. It implies that it is repeated without interruption. David said in Psalm 34:1, “…His praise shall continually be in my mouth.” He also said, “At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous judgments.” (Psalm 119:62)
When’s the last time we found ourselves up at midnight thanking the Lord? Later on in that same psalm David says, “Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments.” Do we stop seven times a day to praise God? Do we even stop once or twice to praise Him?
Now that we know that we need to praise God continually, how do we do it? If you think that all praising God involves is sitting in a small group in a quiet place, whispering quiet praise songs–think again! Praising God is an active thing.
The Bible says the following about praise. “shout for joy” (Ps. 32:11) “O clap your hands” (Ps. 47:1) “sing” (Ps. 47:6) “make a loud noise” (Ps. 98:4) “lift up your hands” (Ps. 134:2) “with the sound of trumpet” (Ps. 150:3) “upon the loud cymbals” (150:5) “make a joyful noise” (Ps. 98:4) “rejoice” (Ps. 98:4) “with harp” (Ps. 33:2) We are not to keep praising God to ourselves. We are to “…make known his deeds among the people.” (Psalm 105:1) In other words if you receive a blessing–tell someone about it.
If we are going to develop a lifestyle of praise to God continually we need to put things in perspective. Realize who God is and we who are not. “Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.” (Psalm 100:3,4) We need to recognize that all of the things we find in our blessing basket come from above.