Rick Warren - The Awesome Power of Praise

Good to see you. Thank you. Have a seat, everybody.

We've got a little bit different service this week. As

you can tell, I've got some friends here on stage.

They're going to help me through this service. One of

my roles as your pastor is not just to teach

you new truth, but to remind you of stuff you

already know. We have good forgetters. You agree with that.

Parents have to remind their kids of things they know.

Employers and bosses and supervisors and managers have to remind

you workers what's going on. It's part of my job

to help remind you stuff because human nature is we forget.

Now today, as we start a new year twenty and

twenty two together, I want to remind you of a

powerful habit and the benefits of this important habit, this

morton spiritual habit. It's a habit you're gonna need to

use every single day of your life in twenty and

twenty two. This habit is particularly useful when you're going

through tough times. So today I want us to look

at the awesome power of praise. But we're not just

gonna think about it. I'm not gonna just teach you

on it. We're actually going to practice this. This will

be an unusual service because I'm gonna teach you a

point about praise, and then we're gonna practice it, and

then I'm gonna teach you another one and do that.

So get out your message notes right now. Okay, go

ahead and pull them all out. And not only pull

out your message Jose, but start warming up your voice

because you're gonna use it a lot in this service.

Now at the top of your outline. Psalm one fifty

verse six says this, let everything that has breath, what

praise the Lord? Do you have breath? Yes, then you

are to praise the Lord. Everything in the universe brings

praise to God. Actually, even the stuff that doesn't have breath, trees, plants, rocks,

they honor God. They bring glory to God by being

what God created them to be. Everything brings glory to God.

Only human beings reject that. And so even Jesus once said,

if human beings don't praise me, the rocks will cry out.

Now when it comes to praise, When it comes to worship,

it's not really complicated. In fact, Jesus said, there are

only two marks of real worship. This only thing you

have to remember the entire Bible, there are only two

qualifications for worship to be correct. And Jesus says this

in John chapter four, the next verse on your outline,

verse twenty three. Jesus said, true worshippers worship the Father

in spirit and in truth, circle spirit and truth, In

spirit and truth, that's the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.

Now what does that mean? To worship God in spirit

and truth. Now, Spirit, it's not a capital s. So

it's not talking about the Holy Spirit. It's talking about

your spirit. You're not just a body. You have a

spirit in your body. And when you worship God in

the correct way, it's from your spirit. You don't just

mouth the words. You don't just mindlessly go through rituals

and prayers that you've memorized and not even think about it.

It comes from your spirit. And it has to be

in truth. In other words, for worship to be accepted

by God, it has to be authentic. You're going to

really mean it, and it has to be accurate, authentic

and accurate, devotional and doctrinal, in spirit and in truth.

The one thing that really ticks God off. If you

want to know what God doesn't like that. God really

hates it. What God hates more than anything else is

luke warm worship, where we go through the motions, we

sing the songs, we say the prayers, we do the

right thing, but we're not even thinking about it. We're

just going through the routine, the ritual without even thinking about.

God says, I'd rather you just mail it in skip

that if you're gonna do it. In the Book of Revelation,

Jesus says, I see that you're neither hot nor cold,

but you're lukewarm. He said, I don't like that. I

don't like lukewarm worship. He said, I'd rather have you

be cold totally against me, or hot totally form me,

just not lukewarm, he said. Because you're lukewarm, I'm gonna

spit you out of my mouth. That's a euphemism that

says you make me sick to my stomach. You nauseate me.

God says. When I see people who are taught coming

to worship, but they don't really mean if they're not

even thinking about he says, it makes me want to

throw up. It makes me want to puke, It makes

me want to vomit because I am so nauseated by

lukewarm worship. It needs to be in spirit and in truth.

It needs to be passionate. Now, God talks about this

in the Book of Isaiah. They're on your outline or

here on the screen Isaiah twenty nine. God says this,

these people claim to be mine, okay, and they praise

me with their lips. They're saying all the right things,

they're singing all the right things, but they don't mean it.

Their hearts are somewhere else. They're thinking about the ballgame,

they're thinking about where we're going to go for lunch.

They're thinking about all these other things said. Their hearts

are somewhere else, far from me, and their worship is

just routine, repeated without thinking. You know, anytime for the

last forty two years, as I've been the pastor of

this church, I'm out on the patio talk to people.

When somebody comes up there and say, you know, Rick,

I really didn't get anything out of that service. Today,

when somebody says that to me, I always ask the

exact same question question and I get the same answer

every single time. When people say I didn't get anything

out of worship, I say this, did you attempt to

sing all of the songs with your whole heart or

did you just stand there watching other people sing? And

I've gotten the same answer every single time. The answer

is I just stood there, I didn't try to sing.

And I reply, that's your problem. That's why you got

nothing out of the service. You didn't put anything into it.

You didn't put your heart into it. Now, let me

tell you this worship isn't for you anyway. Worship is

for God. When we come to worship, we're expressing our thanks,

our gratitude, our praise to God. Worship is not about you. Now,

anytime you do anything that God wants you to do,

God always builds benefits into it that will bless you.

So yes, you're going to get something out of it.

And we're going to talk about some really big things

you get out of praising God today. But the point

is I worship God because he deserves it. I wouldn't

be alive, I wouldn't be able to breathe, my heart

would not be beating everything in my life. I owe God,

so certainly, on the first day of each week, I

pause from you a few minutes ago, Thanks God, Thank you.

I wouldn't have anything without God. Now when you do that,

you will get something out of it. But it's got

to be in spirit and truth. It's got to be authentic.

It's got to be from your heart. That means you

put some emotion into it. Now in the Bible, I

can give you a list of over fifty different benefits

physical benefits, financial benefits, relational benefits, emotional, mental benefits, all

kinds of benefits for your life when you do what

God tells you to do when he says, let everything

that has breath praise the Lord. There. We could look

at a lot of them, but I'm only gonna give

you seven today. I just picked out seven benefits that

and the reason I only picked out seven because I

want you to have the time to not just listen

about it. I want you to practice these forms of praise.

So you're gonna get your exercise today. You're gonna do

a lot of bit of standing thing. Now, here's your

instructions for this service. Even if you have never, ever, ever,

ever in your entire life sang a song in church,

I want you to give it your best shot today. Okay.

I want you to try to sing praise to God

today with your mouth. Okay, I don't want you to

stand there with your mouth kind. I'm cool. I'm cool.

Look at everybody else. Okay, no, now, because some of

you have had a hard time with this, let me

answer the three most common excuses. It's not like I

haven't heard them for not singing in church. Okay, here's

the first one. And this particularly comes from men, but

women can do it too. Rick, I'm not really an

emotional person, and I don't feel comfortable with my emotions,

so I don't want people watching me, and I certainly

don't want to get emotional in front of them. I'm

not an emotional person. Well, the answer is this, You're wrong.

You are an emotional person. You're just frightened by your

emotions so you deny them. You're made in God's image.

God is an emotional God. God gets angry, God gets frustrated,

God gets impatient. God loves, God weeps. The only reason

you have emotions. What makes you a human being is

you have emotions. Now, the question is are you in

touch with them? Are you denying them? Are you are

you can you feel your emotions and a true man

or a true woman? Or are you are you scared

to death? You're frightened. You were taught to push your

emotions down, shut them down. I want to tell you,

saddleback Church is a place that you need to set

yourself free to feel the feelings you have. Okay, this

is a safe place for you to feel the feelings

that you have. What because you're made in God's image.

If God didn't want you to feel him, he wouldn't

have given you those feelings. But maybe you were taught

by your parents and somebody else to shove them down. Now,

let me just say this, you don't have to worry

about how you look to other people when you're praising God,

because guess what, They're not looking at you worship. They're

focusing on God. Nobody is looking at you right now.

Nobody in this auditorium is thinking about you. Nobody. So

why are you so concerned? How do I look? Look? Cool? Am? I? All? Right? There?

You know what everybody's thinking about themselves. Nobody cares how

you worship God. Nobody cares how you praise God. Why

they're focusing on God not you? By the way, you know,

sometimes people raise their hands when they praise God. People,

what's that all about? Is this some kind of wooooo

weird thing. They raise their hand, they're going to a trance. Now,

it's just a symbol of joy. You do it all

the time. It's forced games. You go to a game,

you go touchdown, or you go to a soccer game

and your kid, you know, hits a go. What do

you know? It's it's just saying touchdown Jesus, yay God.

Now let me tell you what. Why do you go

to a game and when you go to a game

you raise your hand when you're full of joy, you

called a fan But if you came and you dared

to raise your hand in church, you're called a fanatic.

So really it's okay us joy to other people, but

it's not a Kate express joy to God. Come on,

get over it. Grow up. And if you feel like Raisianda.

If you don't, don't. It's no big deal. It's not

some special uiguey thing. It's just the Bible says we

lift our hands and praise to God and says touchdown God,

yay God. You know I'm feeling this right now at

this moment, and you will. Your heart moves when your

body moves, So don't be afraid to move your body

in worship. Now another excuse people here say is this one.

You know, Rick, I'm not really a musical person. I

can't sing. I can't carry a tune in a baggy. Okay, well, first,

let me just say this. God is moved by the

sincerity of your heart, not the sound of your voice.

So you don't have to be a metropolitan opera singer

for God to like your worship. Okay, let me just

say it this way. God wants to hear your voice

because He gave you that voice. What do you think

you got your voice? God gave you your voice. He

wants to hear your praise in your voice, not in

somebody else's voice. What if my wife Kay said to me, Honey,

I don't really like the sound of my voice, so

I'm going to stand silently and let other people tell

you how much I love you. Would that make sense?

Because I don't like the sound of my voice, then

I'm not gonna tell you how great I think you are.

I'm gonna let other people say it and I'll nod. No,

I want to hear it in my kid's voice. I

want to hear it in my wise's voice. God wants

to hear your voice, not somebody else's. Some of you

have never used your voice to praise God. Today is

your day, all right. Now, here's the third excuse that

people give for not singing in church. I don't know

the tunes. Okay, it doesn't matter if you know the

tunes or not. Let me ask you this. Can you read?

Can you read? Because if you can read the lyrics

on the wall, you can say them aloud without any

tune to it. And that's praise too. You hear what

I'm saying. You don't have to sing the words, but

you do have to say the words. So if you

don't have a voice or you got laryngitis, what I

want you to do. I want you, and you've never

done this before. I want you to read the words

aloud of the songs we're gonna sing. But I want

you to read them with a little bit of emotion

and passion, not like, Oh God, you're a great God,

You're incredible, you really do great things. I'm really glad

to be one of your kids. Now, good God, thank

you God. This is You're amazing. You rose from the grave,

you got power, you could change my life. Say it

with a little bit enthusiasm, so I'm telling you, if

you can't sing, you don't know the tune, say the

word aloud, but just say it from the heart. Okay,

you don't have to sing for this to work, but

you do to receive all the blessings that I'm going

to share with you. And there's some really big blessings

that you're going to miss out on in twenty twenty

two if you don't learn the habits that I'm going

to teach you or remind you of today. But you

have to put your heart into it. So read it

dramatically like you actually mean what we're saying. Now. For

those of you who are still thinking that you can

opt out of this and you don't have to say anything,

you're dead wrong because I am watching you. More important,

God is watching you to see if you will praise

Him or not. It doesn't really matter what I'm watching.

God is watching you. Nobody else is, but God is.

But if you don't sing in this service, I may

have to put a cameraman on you to focus on

you and put your lovely picture on the screen so

everybody't see you standing there like a mannequin. I'm just kidding. Okay, relax,

take a deep breath. I would never do that. That

would be embarrassing. Embarrassing is not loving. I would never

embarrass you, So I would never do it, but I might.

So just read the words aloud with authentic feeling. Don't

give lip service. Remember God says, I'd really have you

a hotter cold, not lukewarm. Read the words while you're

thinking of something else, No, while you're thinking of him.

So I'm one thirty eight. They're on your outline. Verse

one says I will praise you Lord with what my

whole heart circle that. So that's what we're gonna practice today.

This is gonna be an exercise, and when you finish here,

you're gonna know how to praise God. By the way,

you know what we're gonna do in heaven. One of

the things we're gonna do in heaven is praise God.

So what we're gonna do here is practice. So when

you get to heaven you're not a dufus. Okay, you

know how to do this. When you get to heaven,

you don't want to get down. Oh I never really

learned how to praise God. Now today, as I said,

God gives benefits when we do what he tells us

to do. I'm gonna share with you is seven incredible

benefits and blessings to your life that God guarantees when

you praise God with all your heart. Now, I'm gonna

start with a couple real simple, real obvious ones right

up front. But as we move through these seven, we're

gonna get into some heavy duty, major, macho blessings of

God that you have been missing out on if you

haven't been praising God as a habit of your life.

All right, let's get right into this number one. This

is a real simple, kind of obvious one. Number one,

Praising God lifts my spirit. That's the first thing that does.

Praising God lifts my spirit. If I came to church

today tired, exhausted, discouraged, fatigued, praise is a mood enhancer.

In fact, praise, particularly with other people. Worship with others

is an energizer, which is why you need to come

to worship, not simply passively watch a service online. So

you're the smart people. There are a lot of our

members right now who stayed home today and they're watching

online and they're pj's, eating cheerios. They're not gonna sing,

they're not gonna get involved. They're not gonna get the benefit.

You get the benefit by being involved in the family

to get and there is power in corporate worship. One

of the reasons that I wanted to look at the

habit of praise and our first service out out of

the gate in twenty twenty two is because the thing

I've been hearing most from people in the last two

or three weeks, the week before Christmas and even since then,

the thing I've heard the most people saying, you know, Rick,

I'm feeling a little discouraged right now, I'm feeling a

little down. I'm feeling a little discouraged, a little dismayed. Well,

there's a lot to be discouraged about. If you look

in the world, there's a lot of problems out there,

But if you don't keep your eyes on God, you're

gonna get discouraged. And so praise takes your focus off

of the problems around him and put your focus back

on God. Recently, there was a cover of Business Week magazine,

and the cover of BusinessWeek magazine said searching for hope.

That's what the world's looking for right now. This is

not a Christian magazine. The world is searching for hope

right now, Well, we know where it is. So let

me ask you a couple of personal questions right off

the bat, as we start a new year together. What's

discouraging you right now? Whatever that is, we're going to

deal with it in this service. That problem, what's discouraging

you these days? And the second question is what are

you looking to for the source of your hope in

the new year? What are you going to put your

hope in in the new year? If you put your

hope in the wrong thing, you'll just be more and

more disappointed. Now, if you're feeling a little down, a

little depressed, a little tired, a little empty, that's typical

in the first few weeks of January. It's after the

holiday hangover where you spent so much time and energy

and all the holidays. Now you've taken all the Christmas

lights down, and you know, and we're just kind of

going through and you're feeling a little discouraged. I recommend

to you Psalm forty two. It's there on your outline.

Psal I'm forty two. Verse five and six says this,

Why am I discouraged? Why am I so discouraged? Why

am I so troubled and upset. Instead, I will put

my hope. Remember the world's looking for hope. I will

put my hope in God, and I will praise him

once again as my savior and my God. And when

my heart is breaking, maybe your heart's breaking right now,

I remember your kindness. Now, if you're taking notes, circle

three words in that passage, Hope, praise, and remember, because

those three go together. If you want hope in your life,

you want to be a hopeful person, you gotta do

the too. Praise and remember. When you praise and remember,

it builds hope in your life. Now, when you praise God,

Here's what God offers to you. It's the next verse

in your outline Isaiah sixty one. It says, to all

who mourn in Israel, I mean, what's morning? It's grief

when you lost something. You lost a lot the last

couple of years because of COVID and other things. There

are things that you lost out on this year, past

year and the year before that. To all who mourn

in Israel, he gives beauty for ashes, joy instead of sadness,

and praise instead of despair. God gives your choice. What

do you want, beauty or ashes? You know, praise instead

of despair, joy instead of sadness. Now we're going to

start with a song of hope. It's actually called living Hope.

And if you're going to sing it, or if you're

going to read it aloud as your praise, let me

show you how to read it aloud. Don't just read

it in your mind. Say the words aloud, but say

it expressively. Okay, put it on the screen. Here's some

of the words of the song we're about sing. Who

could imagine so great a mercy? You think about that?

Who could imagine so great a mercy God's wished to be?

What heart could fathom? Such boundless grace? God's grace to me?

You're thinking about this? The God of ages step down

from glory. Let's eat Christmas, to wear my sin and

bear my shame. Oh, the cross is spoken. I'm forgiven,

completely forgiven. The King of Kings calls me his own

beautiful savior. I'm yours forever, Jesus Christ, You're my living hope.

That's how you sing it, or that's how you read

it aloud. Okay, Now there's another benefit. This is just

a little one. We're gonna get to the heavyweight ones

in a minute. But this is another benefit of developing

the habit of praise in your life, and it says,

write this down. Praising God helps me sense his presence.

Praising God helps me sense God's presence. Now, notice I

said sense because God is always present with you, whether

you feel it or not. God is always with you.

There's never been one second of your life that God

was not with you and paying attention to you. But

I don't always feel it, and neither do you. And

sometimes I feel like God's a million miles away. He's not.

God says, I am always with you, I'm always near you,

I'm always close with you, But I don't always feel

God's presence. And I want to feel God's presence. What

do you do when you want to feel God's presence?

What should you do? What you're doing right now? First place,

get together with some other people and praise God with

your whole heart. I guarantee you by the end of

this service you will be feeling God's presence. I guarantee

it because you got When you get in the point

of praise, praise makes God's presence more real to me

than when I'm I don't feel them at all, but

God says you got to do it with your whole heart.

Now you say, well, wait a minute, Rick, how do

I praise God with my whole heart when I don't

feel like praising God right now? In fact, I don't

feel very good right now. I just kind of force

myself to come to church and I wasn't really in

the mood. I'm kind of tired. How do I praise

God when I don't feel like it? Here's the answer.

You do it anyway. You've heard me say this before.

I've taught it to you many times. It's easier to

act your way into a feeling than feel your way

into an action. If you wait for a certain feeling

to come before you do something, that feeling will often

never come. But if you act your way into the feeling,

you do act it even though you don't feel like it.

The feelings always follow actions. Now. This is true in

every air of your life. If you don't feel close

to your wife or your husband right now, or your

boyfriend or girlfriend, you feel a little estranged from them

right now, what do you do? You start acting in

a more loving way, and the feelings will return. When

God Guy comes to me and says, you know, Rick,

I'm leaving my wife. Why, oh, I just don't love

her anymore. Well, it's your choice. Love is a choice.

Don't blame anybody else. You choose to love, and you

choose not to love. So if you're not loving your wife, right,

that's because you're choosing not to love. It's your choice.

Accept the responsibility, buddy. It's not like you don't have

any control over it. Love is a choice. If you

want your wife to treat you like a king, treat

her like a queen. Let me give you a little experiment.

Next ten days, act like you're in love with your wife,

date your mate. Do all the things that you did

when you first started dating, like open the door for her,

treat her with respecting. Guess what the feelings will return,

because feelings always follow actions. Now, that's true in every

area of life. It's also true in praising God. When

I don't feel like praising God, that's usually when I

need to praise him. What I've discovered, if the only

time I ever pray is when I feel like it,

the devil makes sure I never feel like it. And

if the only time I praise God is when I

feel like it, the devil makes sure I never feel

like it. Surety is when you act on what is

the right thing to do, whether you feel it or not.

Immature people live by their feelings. I don't feel like

doing it, so I don't do That's about babies can

do that. Kids live one by their feelings. But when

you grow up, you do the right thing because you

do it out of love, not out a feeling. Those

of you who are moms, you remember when your babies

are small and you had to get up multiple times

in the night to go either nurse them or give

them a bottle. Did you ever feel like doing that? No?

But you did it because you loved that baby. And

as you nursed that baby or you gave that baby

the bottle, the love returned, and the feeling as you

held that little one, and as you cared for that

the feelings followed your actions. Now the same is true

in praise. There are many times I don't feel like

praising God. That's when I need it the most. That's

when I need because my mood is frozen. This is

the mark of maturity, Psalm verse thirteen. On the screen

on your outline, the righteous praise your name, and they

live in your presence. Now you're in God's presence all

the time. What does it mean to living in your presence?

They recognize it, they feel it, they sense it, they

know it. If you want to feel God's presence in

your life, just praise him more, because praise and presence

go together. Psalm seventy five, Verse one says this, God,

we praise you and we thank you because you are near.

We don't praise you and thank you to get you near.

We know we praise you because you are near. God

is never not near, You're just not tuned into him.

So a second, one of the smaller benefits, but it's

a big one, is that when I praise God, all

of a sudden, I start feeling his presence. All right,

let me give you a third one. Here's a third

benefit of praise. Praising God enlarges my perception of him.

Praising God makes God bigger in my eyes. Praising God

enlarges my perception of him. Now, I'll explain why that's

a big deal in just a minute. But in Psalm

sixty nine, verse thirty, it says this, I will praise

the name of the Lord. Praise the name of God

with a song, and I will magnify him with thanksgiving circle.

The word magnify, magnify is praise to do the same.

Now I've got up here. I got a little magnifying glass.

When I take a magnifying glass and I look through,

what does a magnifying glass do? It makes things bigger, bigger.

When I magnify God, God gets bigger in my eyes?

Is that a big deal? I want you to write

this down. When God gets larger in my life, my

problems shrink. When God gets larger in my life, my

problems get smaller. Now the opposite is true too, When

I look at my problems and my problems get really big,

then God gets small in my life. One thing is

going to be big in your life, either your problems

or God. When you praise God, you focus on God,

you magnify him. That makes him bigger. The bigger God

gets in your life, the less worried you're about your problems. Go.

This is nothing for God. God can handle this. This

is nothing. My problem shrink inside because God is so

much bigger than my problems. And so that's one of

the benefits. Worship and praise and magnify God are the

same thing. That's why we often call our worship team

at Settleback our magnification team, because it's their job to

magnify God, to make him bigger in all of our eyes. Now.

PS One, verse three says this, the Lord is great. Okay,

he's big. He's great, and the Lord is worthy of

our highest praise because his greatness is beyond understanding. I

can't ever know or understand how big and great God

really is. You can't either. I said this many times.

It's like an aunt trying to understand the Internet. You

don't have the brain capacity to understand how big God is.

If you could completely understand God, you'd be God. You're not.

I'm not God's God, and we're not. But when we

praise God and we sing to God in a song,

God gets bigger, our problem gets smaller. So whatever problem

that's got you scared right now, got you intimidated, got

your word read, got you fearful. The antidote is to

sing about the greatness of God, because the bigger I

see God, my problems shrink in the sign Now a

praise song. A lot of people think a praise song

has to be fast, like hippie skippy happy yappy clappy,

you know, dance around. Yeah, there's goods. There are good

praise songs. You want to you can't even Yeah, gotta

dance to them. They got to beat. Okay, And the

Bible says you can dance before the Lord. Okay. Uh.

But a praise song can be fast or a praise

song can be slow. It can be very slow, and

we're singing it very slow word for word. Either way,

a praise song focuses on some attribute of God, God's goodness,

God's greatness, God's love, God's mercy, God's holiness, which means

I'm not at all like him. He's totally different than me.

He's perfect, God's perfection. And our song, our our worship

team while back wrote a song about God's greatness. It's

called Alive and Well. And the chorus goes like this,

and if we're gonna sing it in just a minute,

but gonna, I'm gonna say a chorus to you. The

chorus does this, all things are possible. I think about that.

That means the problem. I've got no big deal with God.

All things are possible. There's nothing too hard for you.

There's nothing too hard for you. Now, let's go to

some more. We're gonna get into some of the heavyweight benefits,

but here's a big one. Number four. Praising God reveals

solutions I can't see. Praising God is the way you

see things that you can't see any other way. It

reveals solutions to problems you have in your life. You

know that you have things that you you just can't

figure out. They're like the Gordian not you can't untie them,

and you go, I don't know how to fix this relationship.

I don't know how to fix my chronic health problem.

I don't know how to fix the economy. I don't

know how to fix my finances. I don't know how

to There's all kinds of things in your life that

they are seem to be intractable problems. They're so complex,

so convoluted, and you've had them so long you wonder,

am I ever going to get a solution to this?

And you've thought, and you've thought, and you've tried. A

year after you you came to the end of twenty

twenty one and go, well, I still haven't figured out

the answer to that. What do you do when you

have a problem you can't figure out? You praise God.

You praise God, and in praise God will give you

an answer you will never come up with on your own.

Psalm seventy three is an example of this. So I'm

seventy three, sixteen and seventeen. David said this. I tried

to understand all that was happening to me. You've done

this many times, trying to figure out why is this

happening to me, What's going on in my life? Why

am I stuck here? Okay? I tried to figure out

what is happening to me, but it was too difficult

to figure out until I went into the sanctuary of God.

What do you do in the sanctuary of God? You come?

It means it's a metaphor for coming into the presence

of God. It means coming in the presence of God

with praise. What do you do in the sanctuary? You

thank God, You praise God, You worship God in the sanctuary.

He says, it wasn't until I started worshiping and praising

and thanking that all of a sudden, Bam, the idea came.

I wish I had time to give you a thousand

examples from my life as a leader. When I had

no idea what to do next in the direction, whether

I was leading saddleback or leading a movement, or coaching

and counseling a world leader in one hundred and sixty

five different nations that I've been in, dealing with businessmen,

or talking to Congress, or talking to the United Nations

which I have, or dealing with parliaments of other nations

which I have. And sometimes people will ask me questions.

I go, I haven't the slightest idea. What's the answer

to that. I don't know how to solve that problem.

But in my worship time, in my praise time, as

I'm thanking God for who he is and what He's done,

and I'm thanking God and I'm praising God, bingo, the

Holy Spirit drops that idea into my brain and I go,

that's the billion dollar idea that I was looking for.

That's the entrepreneurial key, that's the big creative idea. The

best way to be creative in your business is to

get in touch with the creator of the universe. Nobody

is more creative than God. If you want creative ideas, worship, praise,

thank God. The more you're in tune with the Creator,

the more creative you will be, David goes. I couldn't

figure out the problem until I went into the sanctuary, said, great,

how do I get into God's sanctuary? How do I

get into God's presence? Next verse some one hundred verse four,

enter his gates with thanksgiving and come into his courtyards

with praise. The doorway to creativity is praise and thanksgiving.

You want to be a creative leader. You want to

be a creative business owner. You want to be creative mom,

creative dad, creative teacher, creative artist, creative musician. Come into

the presence of God. The Creator will give you creative ideas.

That's a big benefit. You're going to have problems in

twenty twenty two. You'll never solve on your own fly

because God wants you to connect with him. And when

you connect with the Creator in praise, those ideas. Oh,

I can't tell you how many brilliant ideas I would

have never come up with. But in a moment of

me just thanking God and praising God, whether in a

crowd or by myself, the Holy Spirit goes, Rick, here's

what you need to do, Boom, And that inspiration is

genius and it's not my genius. It's the genius of

the creator of the universe. You know, we sing a

song here at Saddleback called Promises, and it's a song

about trusting God when you don't understand the situation, when

you've got an impossible problem. And it's a song about

praising God for his faithfulness when we can't see the future.

The fact is, we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow,

much less the rest of twenty twenty two. I want

us to sing to God that song promises right now.

And remember, if you don't know the tune, that's okay,

just read the words aloud, but read it with some enthusiasm,

with some meaning, with some passion. Okay, let me show

you again how to praise God just by reading. Here's

a part of that song. It goes like this, God

of Abraham, you're the God of Covenant. That means you

make promises and faithful promises time and time again. You

have proven that you do just what he said. All right, now,

these last three are really important, the last two particularly.

But here's a big one, number five. A big benefit

when you develop the habit of praise. Praising God helps

me remember his blessing now I'm going to explain why

this is really important in just a minute. But praising

God helps you remember the blessings of God. Why have

you noticed that? When you're going through a tough time,

and you may be going through one right now, When

you've got a big, overwhelming problem in your life, a

big pain, a big hurt of you know, something going

on your eye, you tend to overlook all the good

in your life and you can only see the bad.

You know what I'm talking about. You get imbalanced when

you got a big problem in your life. All you

can think about is the problem. You can't think about

smelling the roses and enjoying life and it's beautiful out

time today, all you can see is your problem. Anytime

I have a fight with my wife, Kay, the whole

world smells like Limburger cheese. It just stinks. Because you

know what I'm talking about. If you've got a relationship

that really matters to you and it gets out of whack,

everything else sucks. Okay, nothing else is good. If you're

out of whack with the person you love the most,

it just messes up everything else. And what happens is

in your problems, you tend to get imbalanced. And what

praise does is it rebalances you. Praise corrects is the

imbalance of your life. Praise reminds you that not everything

is bad in your life. Let me give you an

example of this. In Psalm one oh five, the first

five verses uh, the psawmist had been going through some

really tough times. And so the person who wrote this

decides to enumerate the things they can thank God for

and praise God for. They're going through a very tough time,

and Psal one O five says this, Praise the Lord.

I tell myself, with my whole heart, I will praise

his holy name. I tell myself, I'm talking to me.

You like you don't do this. You talk to yourself

all the time. Praise Lord, I tell myself, And I

remember all the good things He does for me. He

forgives my sin. He starts listening, just a few of them.

He forgives my sins, that's a big one. He heals

my illnesses, He saves my life. He surrounds me with

love and tender mercy. He fills my life with good things. Now,

why is it important to remember God's blessing? Well, there's

a couple of reasons. First one is that in your life,

when you get a problem, you tend to overemphasize that

to the neglect of all it's good in your life.

Your life is never all good and your life is

never all bad. You get both through life the entire time.

On the cover of kse book, choose joy as a

pair of railroad tracks, because the rails represent the good

things in your life and the bad things in your life,

and they're paralleled, and you get both of them all

the time throughout your entire life. There will never be

a time in your life when everything is good, because

we're on a broken planet. So no matter how good

things are in your life, there's always going to be

something you need to be working on. Okay, that's not right,

But there's never time in your life when everything is

bad either. Even in the worst days, there's things you

can be thankful to God for. And so what praise

does is it brings your system back into balance. It

corrects the imbalance, because when you're having a problem, you

tend to think everything sucks, everything's bad, the whole world's falling,

sky is falling down, chicken little And what happens when

you do that, when you get imbalanced. Now listen really closely,

you forget who you are and you lose your identity.

Many of you are struggling right now with insecurity. The

truth is you're pretty insecure about who you are, and

you're not even sure who you are, and you're struggling

with your identity. Who am I as a woman? Who

am I as a man? And the reason why you

struggle with your insecurity and you struggle with your identity

is because you listen to what other people say about

you instead of what God says about you. And that's

what praise is all about. Listening to what other people

say about you is none of your business. What other

people think of you is none of your business, usually

not paying any attention to it. Why you don't need

anybody's approval in life to be happy. You're as happy

as you choose to be. If you're miserable because of

what somebody else thinks about you, that's your choice and

that's dumb. Nobody can force you to be unhappy. Only

you can let other people control your emotions. When you

say you make me so bad, you're admitting you have

the power to control my emotions. So what you think

about yourself is not even important. You think stuff about

yourself that really it doesn't even matter because you lie

to yourself all the time. I lie to myself more

than I lie to anybody else. So do you. The

Bible says, the heart is deceitful. You should not trust

everything your brain tells you, because your brain isn't accurate.

You get misperceptions all the time. What matters is not

what other people say you are. What matters is not

what you think you are. What matters is what God

says you are. And He always tells you the truth.

And he says you're lovable, you're forgivable, you're capable, you're usable,

you're valuable. These are things that God tells you. That's

the truth. And so when we praise God, we remember

not only how God has blessed us, but we also

remember whose we are. We remember our identity. I'm a

son of God. I'm a daughter of God. He made me,

He created me, He sent his son to die for me.

He wants me with us in heaven. If you have

a problem with me, that's your problem. If God likes

me and I like me, what's your problem. Now? This

is why we want We're going to sing a song

called who You Say I Am? Because one of the

things of praise is it not only balances your life

between the negative and the positive, but it also balances

your life between what other people say you are, what

you think you are, and who you really are. This

is the antidote to your insecurity. This is the antidote

to why you feel bad about yourself. This is the

antidote to low self esteem. Praising God, God, why are

the universe? That the more you praise Him, the more

secure you are in who you are now. On these

last two benefits, I've been saving these because they're the

biggest ones of all. If you're experiencing any kind of

conflict in your life or any kind of frustration in

your life, these last two points about praise are going

to be especially helpful to you in twenty twenty two.

If you feel like you're in a battle right now,

if you feel like you're under attack. Maybe your health

is under attack with some kind of chronic illness, or

your finances are under attack, or your reputation or your

integrity is under attack, or your marriage is under attack,

or your business or your dream, anything that's under attack.

That's you're gonna need these next two. And if you're

frustrated and you feel like I'm caught, I'm stuck. I'm

like in prison. I can't get out, I can't get on,

and I can't get out of what I'm doing right now,

then you need to be practicing the habit of listen

praising God in advance. I'm gonna explain this. Praising God

in advance. Okay, here's the sixth benefit. Number six. Praising

God enlists God's protection. God starts fighting your battles if

you praise Him in advance. Now I'm not talking about

after the fact. The timing of your praise determines what

it is. Follow me on this. If I thank God

after he answers a prayer, that's called gratitude. If I

thank Him after he's done something for me, if I

thank Him in advance before it happens, that's called faith.

It makes you see the difference. Thinking or praising God

after God's done something in my life is called gratitude,

But thanking God and praising God before it happens is faith.

And you need both of them in your life. Both

gratitude and faith draw you closer to God. Now, classic

example of thanking God in advance when you're in a

when you're in a battle, when you feel like you're

under attack, when when you need God to defend you

and you get you need God's protection. Classic example this

is Second Chronicles chapter twenty, which is the story of

a battle that Israel is in Israel's little tiny nation,

and one day in Second Chronicles twenty in the Bible,

three larger enemy nations ganged up against Israel to annihilate them.

So it's going to be three to one. The odds

were incredibly against Israel. They were vastly outnumbered in the battle,

and so they knew the only way they could win.

The only way would be if God miraculously saved them,

because they were going to get their rears kicked by

an overwhelming odds stacked against them. Maybe you feel the

odds are stacked against you right now in some area,

and maybe in your business or your education or whatever,

the odds are stacked against you. So the king his

name was Jehosephat They probably called them fatty for short, Okay,

nick hey, fatty. So the king decides that praising God

in advance is going to be their strategy for the battle.

It's their only protection. And so he organizes a very

unusual battle plan that has never been used before or

since this particular battle. And he decides to put a

choir in front of the army as they march out

into battle. Now, here's what says, look on your outline.

Such Chronicles twenty verses twenty one and twenty two says this,

So the king appointed singers. That's what I've got next

to me. These are singers. The King appointed a choir

to walk notice a head of the army in front

of the infantry, and they were to praise the Lord,

singing praise to the Lord and praising him. What did

they sing, It says, they sang, give thanks to the Lord,

because his faithful love endures forever. We sing that song.

Give thanks to the Lord. His love endures forever. Praise God,

Praise God. His love endures forever. We sing that song. Now,

so get the picture. Here. Over here, on this side

of the of the valley are the the enemy tribes,

enemy nations of Ammon, Mohabban, Mount Seir. They're ready for bear,

They're ready, they're ready to go to battle. Over here

is the Israeli army, and the king says, okay, choir,

you guys get out in front of the infantry and

you walk out into battle singing praise. What are they doing?

They're they're symbolizing thanking God in advance. Now the three

nations over here see this choir walking out. They go

what is going on? And the choir. The army behind

the choir is going, yeah, what is going on? And

the choir the singers in front of goes, yes, we'd

like to know what's going on because we're the tip

of the sphear and we don't even have weapons on us.

Now here's what happens. This is a great miracle. Notice

the rest of the verse. The moment the people started

singing and praising the Lord caused the opposing forces to

start attacking each other, and they were completely defeated. Israel

didn't have to do anything about it. These guys get

in the fight with each other and they get confused

and they start fighting and they decimate themselves. Israel wins

the battle without even picking up a sword. Now that strategy.

General George Patten would have fainted if somebody had suggested

that to him, send a choir in front of the infantry.

It is a symbolic act of faith. They're praising God

in advance for their deliverance, for their victory, for his protection,

for winning the battle. Okay, have you ever tried that

with any of your battles? Thank you God. Maybe you

feel like you're under attack right now, under attack from

a competitor, under attack from the devil, under attack from

you know, illness, COVID, under attack who knows, But you're

in a battle right now. Have you thought about thanking

God in advance? Remember, if you wait till after God

gives you a solution, that's not faith, that's gratitude. There

is power in praising and thanking God in advance. So

let me ask you this question. You know the problem

that you're going through right now, that you feel like

you're under attack with, When are you going to start

thanking God for the answer after he's answered? Why not? Now?

The Lord wants to be your defender. The Lord wants

to be your protector. The Lord says, I will fight

your battles. In fact, in that second Chronicles twenty passages,

he says, you don't need to fight in this battle.

Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. The

battle is not yours, it's God's. And so Psalm twenty eight,

verse seven. The next verse on your outlines say, is

this The Lord protects and defends me. When I trust him,

he helps me, and he fills me with joy as

I praise him. When we see this next song, I

want you to be filled with joy and praise him.

That the battle is not yours, it's God's, and that

whatever is trying to pose you right now, God is

greater than the opposition against you. Many of you know

that for a few months now, I've been going through

some very painful health problems, but I'm not waiting for

the cure to praise God. And while the doctors I've

been trying to figure out what's causing severe pain and

paralysis all over my body, I have been practicing praising

God in advance, and you should too. And I've been

telling God, thank you that this is not the end

of the story. Lord, thank you that what I'm going through,

I'm going through, this too shall pass. Thank You that

this is not the end of the story. Thank you

that You're not finished with me. Thank You that you

are bigger than my problem, that you're greater than my pain.

And I'm thanking God in advance even when I don't

feel it. Why because I know that that's how God

fights your battles. All right, you need to do that too.

Now here's the seventh one, and this is another big

one for using thanking God in advance. The seventh benefit

is this, Praising God breaks chains and opens doors. Praising

God breaks chains in your life, things that are holding

you back, and opens doors for opportunity that you can't

seem to bust through. When you feel like you're stuck.

And many of you right now feels like, you know what,

nothing changed since last year. I went through all twenty

twenty one and nothing really changed. And you're in a

situation right now that you cannot control. You can't get

out of it, you can't get on with it. You're

just stuck. You might feel you're enslaved. You are imprisoned

by an attitude, You're imprisoned by a fear, You're imprisoned

by an addiction. You're imprisoned by a situation that's out

of your control. You're stuck, you're in chains. There's never

a time for you to thank God and praise God

in advance. Now, the classic example of this, I could

give you many in the Bible is the Acts, chapter sixteen,

and in Acts sixteen, Paul is in prison. Paul and

his friend Silas were talking about Jesus in this town

and the city council. The people didn't like them, and

so they throw them in prison. And Paul and Silas

are in this dark, dank, dirty cold down in the

Dungeon Roman prison. And in the middle of the night,

at midnight, they decide to have a praise session, a

praise and worship God session in the prison, not after out.

While they're in prison, Acts six sixteen says this verse

twenty five twenty six about midnight, Paul and Silas were

pray and praying and singing songs to God after midnight.

Paulsing in praise to God after midnight. That's what that

song is really about. You didn't know it, but that's

after midnight. Silas praised Lord after midnight. Yeah, so anyway,

it says after midnight they start praising and thanking God

and singing songs to God in prison, and it says

notice and the other prisoners listen. Well, I guess, so

it's deadly in the middle of the night. They can't help,

but hear the guys. Listen. Your praise of God is

always a witness to non believers. We think people are

impressed by our prosperity, they're actually impressed by how we

handle adversity. It's not how successful you are that makes

people want to come to Christ. It's how you handle

the problems that they're going through too, and you handle

them in a better way. Now, it says, here they

start praising God. It's at midnight, it said, Suddenly there's

a strong earthquake that shook the foundation of the jail.

Ladies and gentlemen, this was the original jailhouse rock. Okay,

I waited all week to tell you that. Then at

the doors, it says, of the prison of the jail,

the doors of the jail broke open, and all the

prisoners were freed from their chains. They came undone, and

they all walk out free. That is a miracle, But

it's also a metaphor of what God does in your

life when you praise Him when you're stuck, when you

praise Him when you're bound up, you're in chains, when

you need to be set free from an attitude, an addiction,

a habit, situation, when you need the chains broken off you.

Now here's my challenge as we start twenty twenty two together.

I want you to make the habit of praise your

natural response to everything you face, good or bad. I'm

gonna thank God. I'm gonna praise God in this situation.

Develop that habit and watch what happens. Watch all these benefits,

and there are many others we didn't cover. Second, make

the habit of attending worship every weekend, so you get

your weekly B twelve shot, you get recharged, you get

re energized. You're gonna walk out of here with a

better attitude than you came in with. So every week

you be here this on the weekend. Unless you got COVID,

then you stay home, okay, because we don't want to

get that. But otherwise we'll see you here every week.

And I just want to say that I love you.

I thank God for you. This is gonna We're starting

our forty third year together and I couldn't be more

excited about this. Now, we may have some more really

cold days in the winter, but we're gonna keep these

doors open. So we're technically an indoor outdoor church and

they're not gonna shut us down no matter what happens. Okay,

So if it rains, if it gets freezing cold the

next couple months like it was last night, It's okay

to wear a park at a church. It's okay to

bring your thermous of hot chocolate with you. Just show

up and we'll praise God together. Okay, all right, let

me pray a blessing on you, father. I want to

thank you for these people. I look out on their faces.

I love them, We love you, We love each other,

and thank you that we're part of a family called Saddleback,

and that everybody in here, all of the women, and

my sisters and all the guys, are my brothers. And

thank you that no matter what we go through in

twenty twenty two, we're not going to go through it alone.

We got a family that's going to pray for us.

It's going to support us. It's going to be with us.

And one plus God is a majority in one plus

God and a family. We got this. And so we

greet the new year with anticipation. More than that, we

greet it with praise to you. I ask you to

bless everybody here, bless their health. In twenty twenty two.

Bless their finances. For those who are out of work,

give them jobs. Lord, give them creative ideas. Give us

what you want us to have. Bless their memories, Bless

their minds, Bless their relationships, Bless their businesses, bless their vocation.

I ask you to bless every person in every way

that you can. And I pray this blessing in the

name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And everybody said, Amen, I love you guys. God, bless you.