Psalm 89 in the Message version says:

God! Let the cosmos praise your wonderful ways, the choir of holy angels sing anthems to your faithful ways! Search high and low, scan skies and land, you’ll find nothing and no one quite like God. The holy angels are in awe before him; he looms immense and august over everyone around him. God-of-the-Angel-Armies, who is like you, powerful and faithful from every angle? You put the arrogant ocean in its place and calm its waves when they turn unruly. You gave that old hag Egypt the back of your hand, you brushed off your enemies with a flick of your wrist. You own the cosmos—you made everything in it, everything from atom to archangel. You positioned the North and South Poles; the mountains Tabor and Hermon sing duets to you. With your well-muscled arm and your grip of steel— nobody trifles with you! The Right and Justice are the roots of your rule; Love and Truth are its fruits. Blessed are the people who know the passwords of praise, who shout on parade in the bright presence of God. Delighted, they dance all day long; they know who you are, what you do—they can’t keep it quiet! Your vibrant beauty has gotten inside us— you’ve been so good to us! We’re walking on air! All we are and have we owe to God, Holy God of Israel, our King! (Ps 89:5-18)

In this day and age, we have passwords for just about everything and it’s hard to remember them all! I have passwords for computers at work and at home, passwords to access different websites and online banking and so on. Life seems to consist of endless passwords and it can be difficult to access all kinds of things without them.

The passwords of praise are not like computer passwords. They are not secret, kept for just a favoured few, for the special ones. They are available to all who know God, for they consist in shouting and singing about who God is and what He has done. We know who God is. We know what He does. We can’t keep it quiet. Let’s praise God!

I believe with all my heart that praise is a choice we make. We choose to praise God. It’s nothing to do with personality or happiness; it’s all to do with obedience.

Many of the worship songs we sing have been birthed in tragedy and pain. Matt and Beth Redman wrote ‘You Never Let Go’ when Beth suffered yet another miscarriage on her 30^th birthday. They were determined, in their grief, to hold on to God and to worship God despite their pain. Darlene Zschech, who wrote ‘Shout to the Lord’, writes about miscarrying a child and feeling a ‘depth of sadness that was too heavy to bear.’ She writes that as she came from the hospital and sat in her car:

‘I heard the Holy Spirit whisper, ‘Sing’. In that moment it was the absolute last thing I wanted to do. Sing? I couldn’t think of anything that I felt less like doing… My head didn’t sing, and I do not even know if my heart sang, but my soul sang.’ (‘Extravagant Worship’, P 57)

God knows our heartache and our griefs better than we do, but He still asks us to praise Him. There will be times when that costs us, when it is truly a sacrifice to sing. Do not think that those who sing do so always from a place of joy. Jeremy Camp, another Christian songwriter, lost his first wife to cancer in her early twenties. He is candid about how that felt, about the hurt, disappointment and frustration her death brought him: ‘I would read about how God healed in the Gospels and I would throw my Bible across the room. I questioned whether God is a loving God. In frustration I would say, ‘I don’t want to share in your faithfulness because I don’t think you are faithful.’ So many times I would pound on my bed because I wanted to punch something. The hardest part was trying to understand why she had to suffer. We would watch her cringe and cry because of the pain.’ (see here).

His father told him, only minutes after she had died, to get up and worship God, because that was the only place he would find victory. Jeremy’s song, ‘I Still Believe’ has the line ‘even when I don’t see, I still believe’ and his song, ‘Walk By Faith’ says ‘this broken road prepares Your will for me.’ It’s not easy to bring a sacrifice of praise in times of grief, bereavement, trouble and pain, but when we shout to the Lord and sing to Him from our brokenness, we find blessings and victory we cannot gain any other way. It’s a mistake to think that praising God comes only from happy hearts. Sacrificial praise comes when we refuse to let our circumstances or feelings have the last word, but choose to obey God and praise Him for who He is and what He has done even when there seems to be no current evidence for praise.

Singing and shouting are Biblical ways of exalting God and acknowledging – not only to our own feelings or other people, but also to the whole spiritual realm of unseen powers – that God is worthy of praise. Shouts of praise are found in many places in the Bible (e.g. Judges 7:20, Ezra 3:11, Ps 98:4, Ps 100:1, Ps 47:1, Is 26:19, Jonah 2:9), and there are even more Biblical references and exhortations to sing to the Lord (e.g. Ps 96:1-2, Ex 15:1, Ps 13:6, Ps 68:4, Ps 98:10). Heb 13:5 reminds us we should ‘continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that openly profess His name.’

Many of us find it difficult to sing and shout to God. We are held back perhaps by our feeling that this is a little bit fanatical and are afraid of what others may say about us. Like David who danced before the Lord with abandon when the ark of the covenant was return to Israel, we may attract scorn (see 2 Sam 6:14-16) and are not sure we want to ‘stand out from the crowd’. Jesus reminded the Pharisees who wanted a less tumultuous welcome from people for Jesus as He entered Jerusalem, ‘if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out!’ (Luke 19:40) When our hearts overflow with who God is and all He has done, we will not want to keep quiet!

A more insidious reason for not praising God is the belief that we can only do this when we are happy, that it is hypocritical to praise God when we are anxious, hurt and grieving. We have to learn that the sacrifice of praise is given even when we see no reason to praise God. God is most worthy of praise (2 Sam 22:4, 1 Chron 16:25, Ps 18:3, Ps 48:1, Ps 96:3, Ps 145:3) – worthy of praise on good days and bad days. ‘What is true in the light is true in the dark.’ As Kutless sing,

‘When days are gold and life is good,
When the plans we make go as they should,
Or when the sky turns dark and heartache falls,
And a lonely painful season calls.

We will worship with all of our hearts,
We will worship all that You are,
Through the best, through the worst,
Jesusm we choose: we will worship You.’ (‘We Will Worship’, Kutless)

This morning’s sermon (unrecorded because of technical difficulties) continued the ‘Battles and Blessings’ series and looked at two battles won through the power of praise. In Josh 6:2-11, we see how Jericho is won by a very unconventional battle strategy using three strange weapons: people’s feet (as the Israelites marched around the city), trumpets made from rams’ horns (which the priests blew) and a loud shout on the seventh day. In 2 Chron 20:15-26, we see another battle won with the singers leading the way praising God for the splendour of His holiness and proclaiming ‘His love endures for ever.’ On both occasions, God demonstrated His power and ability to bring victory in ways that confound logic or reasoning (see 1 Cor 1:25).

Praise is a spiritual weapon (see Ps 149:6-9) with divine power to demolish strongholds (2 Cor 10:5). Spiritual battles can only be won with spiritual weapons, and praise is the ‘foolproof’ method God has given His people of lifting our eyes beyond our circumstances and trial and seeing God as He really is: high and lifted up, sovereign over all, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sustainer of heaven and earth, the one true God who is all-powerful and all-loving. When we magnify or glorify God (Ps 34:3), we are not making Him any bigger than He really is, but we are enabling our eyes to see Him as He truly is! Praise is a powerful weapon because it turns our eyes away from ourselves, with all our inadequacies and limitations, and turns our eyes onto God who is limitless in power and for whom nothing is impossible.

In both these battles, God’s people saw amazing things. They saw the walls of Jericho, seemingly so impregnable, crumble and fall. They saw dead bodies scattered everywhere and gathered so much plunder it took 3 days to carry it all away! Yet their part in these victories was relatively simple. They simply praised God through shouting and singing. May we learn to do the same.

‘You are good and what You do is good.’ (Ps 119:68)

Over the years, I have found this one of the most challenging and reassuring verses in the whole Bible. It’s challenging to me because so much that happens in our world is not good, and it’s very easy to be swayed by people who declare ‘if your God is so good, why does He allow…?’ before going on to list a whole host of horrendous suffering and evil (and it can be easy to feel swamped by suffering and evil), but it’s reassuring to me because it teaches us something totally fundamental about God’s nature which cannot be altered.

God is good. He is a good, good Father. ‘It’s who You are… and I’m loved by You; it’s who I am.’ The lyrics of this song by Pat Barrett and Tony Brown, sung here by Chris Tomlin, are a reminder to us that not only is God good, He wants to be in personal, close, intimate relationship with us. He is the only One who can provide us with the answers for which we search. He is perfect in all of His ways to us.

Pat Barrett and Chris Tomlin have written a children’s book based on the idea that God is a good, good Father. The book tells the story of a little bear named Tucker whose life and townspeople are forever changed when they learn just how great the King’s love is for them. When Tucker’s friends need help, he goes to see the King who lives in a castle where the door is always open.

Tucker wants to take the perfect gift to the King in hopes he will be convinced to help. Along the way, Tucker encounters a variety of humorous animals filled with advice who leave him confused about what the King is like. He doubts whether the King would be willing to help. Just as Tucker is ready to give up, he meets the King who runs to him with open arms offering love, acceptance, and help.

Children’s books and songs often contain profound truths. As we celebrate Fathers’ day today in the UK, many families don’t have the security and assurance of a good, good father and wonder, deep down, about the goodness of God. All of us, however blessed we have been in our earthly fathers, need more than any human parent can give us. Today, let’s meditate on the goodness of God. He is a good, good Father to us. He loves us unconditionally and longs to give us good and perfect gifts (James 1:17). We may not have all the answers to all the questions of life, but we can have the security of knowing we are accepted, loved and wanted by God.

Apart from our usual meetings on Sunday, there are some extra meetings coming up soon.

On Tuesday 20th June at 10.30 a.m. we will be hosting a ‘Churches Together’ prayer meeting. Please do come along to pray for our churches, our community and our nation.

On Saturday 24th June at 6 p.m. we will be having our Annual General Meeting. Come along to find out what has been happening over the past year and to pray about the year to come!

On Monday 26th June at 1.30 p.m., we will be holding a service to celebrate the life of Lorraine Austwick. Please let us know if you can help with preparing and serving refreshments after the service.