For years I have struggled with the concept of praising God. It isn’t that I haven’t wanted to praise Him, I just didn’t understand how! I sang songs in church and prayed like normal people I guess, but I didn’t truly understand praise!
 
Recently, I have started to understand praise better! Part of my understanding has just come naturally through spiritual growth. Part of it has come from reading Psalms (although it took over 100 chapters to make me understand!). The problem is that I, and I’m sure many other people, look at praise as a complex thing!
 
We serve a God of simplicity. Sure there are some things about God we don’t fully understand (His infinite nature, the Trinity, etc) but, overall, He has made things pretty simple for us! He made salvation as simple as having Faith and calling out to Him (Romans 10:13), He made His commands as simple as loving Him and others (Mathew 22:36-40), and He made contacting Him as simple as speaking to His Son (1 Timothy 2:5). So, why should praising Him be complex?
 
The truth is it isn’t. Praising God is as easy as praising a person or pet. Yes, that is right, as easy as praising a person or pet! Think about it, you praise your dog when you teach him a new trick. You tell him how good a dog he is and how smart he is. You praise an artist for a good painting. You praise an actor for a stunning performance. You praise your spouse for just looking good (or at least you should)! God does not expect anything else!
 
Praising God is simply the act of complimenting Him and His works! We can praise God by telling Him how powerful He is and how amazing His creation is! We can praise Him by thanking Him for loving us and being merciful to us! By telling Him how just and righteous He is we are praising Him!
 
That is such a freeing thought! We are instructed to praise God (there are probably hundreds of Bible verses on this but here are two: Psalm 106:1 and Psalm 150:3) and He made it something easy and simple to do and understand! We can praise Him through prayer, writing, poems, singing, or anything!
 
Now here is something mind boggling to understand: God wants our praise! Think about this. Do you desire the praise of someone you don’t care about? Not really, right? God desired our praise so much that He not only created us and gave us life, He created the gorgeous world we live in! Like we didn’t have reason to praise Him enough for creating us, He gave us a beautiful world to draw inspiration from! If God desires our praise that much, He must think pretty highly of us!
 
This brings us full circle, though. We now have another reason to praise Him! He loves us immensely! How can we not praise a perfect, righteous, just, all-powerful God who loves weak, sinful creatures like us! In fact, He loves us so much that He wants us to enjoy praising Him! We are called to joyfully praise Him (again lots of references but here is one example Psalm 98:4)
 
God loves us. He loves and wants our joyful praise! How amazing is this?! So, what is your favorite way to praise God? Sound off in the comments below!

Not too long ago I wrote an article about what praise is. Initially, as I was writing that, I planned to cover praise and worship in the same article. I decided against that, however, because praise and worship are too often lumped together. We have “praise and worship” music, we go to church to “praise and worship”, etc. Praise and worship have been lumped together so often that many people don’t realize there is a difference between the two!
 
You can check that other article out for what praise is; here I want to focus on worship. The best place to start any study like this is with understanding. Do we really understand what the word “worship” means? Here is the definition: Reverent honor or homage paid to God or a sacred personage, or to any object regarded as sacred. From that we can boil the definition down to the nuts and bolts of it: Honoring, revering, and respecting God.
 
Once we break it down like that it is pretty easy to see how we worship God! When you show somebody respect or honor it means you do what they ask you to, you speak highly of them, and you speak politely to them. As simple as that seems that is all God asks of us in worship! He wants to be obeyed, spoken of respectfully, and spoken to respectfully.
 
I am a pretty simple person for the most part, and I don’t put too much stock in technical definitions and such. Therefore, I would like to put this another way. Have you ever heard the phrase, “worships the ground they walk on”? I’m betting you have. It is a common phrase to say that a person thinks so highly of another person that they will do anything for them and believe they can do no wrong. That is what worshiping God is all about! We are willing to do anything for Him and we live our lives in a way that reflects our belief that He is always right!
 
We can worship God in everything we do. By working hard at our jobs, refusing to act or speak dishonestly, refusing to blame God for when things go wrong, and so on. Our lives are supposed to be one big act of worship. As we do the right things and obey God’s commandments people will see that. When we attribute who we are to the God Who created us, we are worshiping Him!
 
Just like we discussed when we looked at praise, worship is actually really simple. We are usually the ones to complicate it! We worry about how to do it and whether we are doing it right, when, really, it is as simple as respecting and honoring Him!
 
How do you worship in your life?