In this cold and severe weather, I pray that our Lord keeps all our members and families safely. With my prayer, I would like to share how powerful prayer with praising God is.

Hebrews 13:15 says, “Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.”

Prayer is a way to ask and tell God about things we want to confess, repent, thank, ask, and share what we think and what we need. There are many ways to show our love to the Lord beside the prayer, like singing, meditating, and praising to the Lord. I believe our Lord would listen to our intention through obedient lips and hearts in Jesus Christ.

When we pray with praising God and thanksgiving to Him with our humble hearts, the Lord answers our prayer, delivers us from our issues and situations, and saves the lost souls. You may know Chaplain Merlin Carothers, who wrote Power in Praise. In his book, he had many powerful testimonies of how God answered when he prayed with praise and thankful heart. The following stroy is quoted from Power in Praise.

A mother came and wanted prayer for her daughter who was a go-go dancer in a nightclub. I told her I would be glad to pray with her and thank God for her daughter’s situation. She looked at me in horror. “Don’t tell me I’m supposed to thank God that my daughter mocks common decency and laughs at religion.” The mother was faced with a difficult choice.

Together we searched the pages of my Bible for verses stating that God is able to work all things for good for those who love and trust Him, and that He wants us to be thankful in everything, regardless of how bad our situation appears. “You can go on thinking that your daughter’s situation is controlled by the Devil–and by your lack of faith in God’s supreme power make it difficult for Him to work out His perfect plan for her–or you can believe that God is at work, thank Him for everything, and thereby release His power to work in her life.”

At last the mother agreed to try. “I don’t understand why it has to be this way,” she said, “But I am going to trust that God knows what He’s doing and I’m going to thank Him for it.” We prayed together, and the mother went away with a new peace in her heart about the whole situation.

Later she told me what happened. That same night her daughter was dancing nearly nude on her little platform when a young man came into the nightclub. He walked up to the girl, looked straight at her and said, “Jesus really loves you!” The go-go dancer was used to hearing all kinds of remarks from young men, but never anything like this. She came down from her platform, sat down with the young man at a table and asked, “Why did you say that?” He explained that he happened to be walking down the street when he felt that God was urging him to go into that particular nightclub and tell the go-go dancer that Jesus Christ was offering her the free gift of eternal life. Stunned, the girl stared at him; then tears filled her eyes, and quietly she said, “I’d like to receive that gift.” And she did, right there at the table in the nightclub.

Pastor Carothers explained what would happen when we pray with praising and thanksgiving:

“Praising God is not a magic formula for success. It is a way of life that is solidly backed up in God’s Word. We praise God not for the expected results, but for the situation just as it is. As long as we praise God with an eye secretly looking for the expected results, we’re only kidding ourselves, and nothing will happen to change us or our situation.

Praise is based on a total and joyful acceptance of the present as part of God’s loving, perfect will for us. Praise is not based on what we think or hope will happen in the future. We praise God not for what we expect will happen in or around us, but we praise Him for what He is and where and how we are right now! It is, of course, a fact that when we honestly praise God, something does happen as a result.

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Praise is not a bargaining position. We don’t say, “I’ll praise You so that You can bless me, Lord.” To praise God is to delight ourselves in Him, and the psalmist wrote, “Delight thyself also in the Lord; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart” (Psa.37:4). Notice the order of importance here. We don’t make a list of our heart’s desires and then delight ourselves in the Lord in order to get them. We’re first to be delighted, and once we’ve experienced being really delighted with God, we’ll discover that everything else becomes secondary.

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But praising God is something more than a change in our own attitude. When we sincerely accept and thank God for a situation, believing that He has brought it about, there is released into that situation a supernatural, divine force that brings about changes beyond what can be explained as an unfolding of natural events.”

His explanation matches with Philippians 4:4-7, “⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. ⁵ Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; ⁶ do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Let’s praise the Lord through our prayer every day in Christ. I pray it helps you to overcome any unbearable situations, and the peace and joy of the Lord are with you throughout the year in Christ.

Thinking of you in Christ,

-Pastor David