A New Reason To Praise | Dr. Jerry Mason

Will somebody say thank you Jesus?

Amen. If you have your Bibles turned

with me to the word of the Lord, to the book of Psalms, chapter

Psalms 40 · chapter mention

40, I want to hasten to the word of the Lord tonight.

We are thankful for all that are here, our guests that are here

this evening in house. If you're joining us online

tonight, we welcome you and we greet you in Jesus name.

The book of Psalms, chapter 40 and the verse #1 There's been a

Psalms 40 · chapter mention

few references to waiting in both song and in Word already

this evening and this afternoon in preparation for this service.

I really felt to pick up a little bit from where we left

off this morning. We, we ended this morning

talking about the waiting being the difficult part.

And I can't tell you why, I don't know, but I just felt

inclined to continue from that vein of thought tonight.

And it's been confirmed a couple of times tonight already.

The book of Psalms 40 and verse #1 David writes and he says, I

waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined unto me, and

heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an

horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet up on a

rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my

mouth. I want you to look at your

neighbor tonight, if you're willing, and tell them I have a

new song in my mouth. It's all right if you're saying

it by faith. Even praise unto our God.

Many shall see it in fear, and shall trust in the Lord for a

few moments. Tonight I want to minister on

this thought. A new reason to praise, because

that's what the waiting brings us is a new reason to praise.

Would you lift your hands one more time and ask God to

minister Jesus in your precious name?

God, we're, we're thankful for this opportunity.

God, we're, we're able to stand in your house.

We're able to stand saturated by your presence.

Now we ask God that your anointing would go before us,

make every crooked way straight. Lord, minister our minds, our

hearts, our lives. Help me to minister with wisdom

and clarity tonight and on our ears to hear what the Spirit

would say. It will not fail to praise you

for it in Jesus name. And the church said, Amen, Hey

man, you may be seated. The Lord bless you.

A new reason to praise. Truly, if there is anything

involved in this life that requires the subject of waiting,

a certain amount of patience is in order if you're going to be

successful. I'm not here to take a poll and

I'm not going to start going around asking you how patient

you are. I don't need to.

All I have to do is just observe.

I've already told you before. Maybe I mentioned it this

morning. I'm not sure.

But if you know me at all, and you know me well, you know that

patience is not my dearest virtue.

I am a little bit better than I used to be, thank God.

But patience is. The lack of patience often often

sparks problems and difficulties and situations in life,

arguments and things that we possibly could have avoided had

we had a moment of patience. Sometimes the lack of patience

only serves to aggravate situations and cause the person

with less than pleasant patience to become even more impatient

because things aren't going the way that they think that they

should go. What is patience?

It's important that we define and have a mutual understanding

tonight of what we're actually talking about.

Patience is simply the act or quality of waiting for a long

time without discontent. Now that's the key, right?

That's the patience factor. It's not the actor quality of

waiting for a long time. It's doing so without

discontent. Now I didn't plan it this way

obviously, because I didn't plan on pastor being sick and didn't

plan on the B team stepping up tonight.

But I, I'll tell you we're entering or we're in the throes

of the Thanksgiving season and we're going to go, some of us,

several of us are going to go to Nashville, TN this week as is

our custom. And we're going to go to

National Youth Convention and we're going to have a great time

and we're looking forward to that.

But Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, it's not Mom's home cooking.

It's not the impatience of pacing the living room floor

because you you smell the rolls in the oven.

It's not the I'm trying to paint you just a little bit of imagery

here. You know, the, the steam coming

up from the bird as he's taken out of the oven and, and, and

you've got the mashed potatoes being mixed and the, the heaps

of butter being thrown in. And if you don't do it that way,

God bless you. But I won't butter in my

potatoes. You can tell I've had a little

butter in my potatoes before. But you, you, you can smell it

waffing in from the kitchen and you've got a little bit of

impatience because you know what's about to happen.

Well, for those of us that's going this week, it's a little

bit of a different tradition, our tradition, and some of you

are probably going to remind me of this in four days and that's

all right. But our tradition is after

service, we head out a few miles away from the Convention Center

to a Golden Corral that normally whenever we drive into the

parking lot, they are already about 70 or 80 deep in the

parking lot just standing. Phones out, fidgeting, you

shift. Little weight on this foot,

little weight on this foot. I'm hungry, I'm famished, I'm

melting away to nothing. And we we're demonstrating the

actor quality of waiting on something for a very long time.

Sometimes it's snowing. There's been times it's rained,

there's been time the wind would blow so hard.

Your hair just goes like this. I would like to stand here and

tell you tonight that we've done so without discontentment.

I won't tell you that. Patience.

It is the suffering of afflictions, pain or calamity.

It's being provoked. It's being provoked and

withstanding it or other evils with a calm, unruffled temper.

Or it could be defined as endurance without murmuring.

I could endure a whole lot of things, but I tend to mutter

under my breath every once in a while.

You don't have to enjoy it that much.

Patience. Now I'm I'm giving you a, a bit

of transparency here that some of you already know.

Maybe some of you don't know, and that's all right.

I would beg to say that some of your experiences in your own

personal life while you laugh at me, might not be much different,

the psalmist writes. I waited patiently for the Lord.

He wasn't waiting on Bathsheba to fix her hair.

He wasn't waiting on McDonald's. We talked about that this

morning. He wasn't waiting on Burger

King. He wasn't waiting on his wife to

pick out her clothes. He wasn't waiting on the traffic

light to turn green. He wasn't waiting on his early

morning coffee to brew. He was waiting on God.

So let's talk about this for a moment because it's worth noting

in our relationship with God, it should not be something we just

simply try to present on Sundays.

Our relationship with God needs to be at the very core of who we

are. If you proclaim to be a

Christian, Christianity is not about attending church.

I attend church because I want to be Christ like, but attending

church doesn't make me Christ like.

It needs to be who I am, not what I do, because if it becomes

who I am, what I do will become natural.

The reason why some people struggle in their walk with God

so much is because they're only focused on what they're doing

and not who they're becoming. If we'll just simply become like

Him first, what I do will just follow.

So my relationship with God needs to be who I am.

And there are times in my walk with God I'm waiting on Him.

But we, we need to consider, if we're going to stop and consider

tonight who we are and this being at the core of us, it begs

the questions of who are we and what do we believe?

Paul David Hewson, known by his stage name of Bono of the rock

band group U2, made a declaration a few years ago that

it was time for all of Abraham's children to come together.

The Jews, the Muslims and the Christian, he said, and I quote,

must all come together and put away their differences and be as

one. Now, I've come to declare

tonight to this Apostolic Church that we need to make no mistake

about it. There is a difference.

There is a difference. There is a real difference

between US and them. And I'm not trying to be

divisive tonight, but we need to understand who we are.

We are the only three, only one of those three groups who

worship Jesus as God. They will call him a great

teacher, but in doing so they undermine him.

They will call him even a prophet, but they're still

undermining him. If they say he had good things

to say. They are undermining him because

they are not acknowledging the power and the demonstration and

the glory of who Jesus Christ really is.

And the Bible declares that every knee shall bow and every

tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

When God was manifest in the flesh, He was the Father and the

Son at the same time. Just like he's the root in the

branch at the same time. He's the Rose and the Lily, He's

the shepherd and the Lamb. He's the door to the sheepfold,

and He's also the scapegoat at the same time.

He's the 1st and the last. He's the Alpha and the Omega.

He's wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince

of Peace, For in Jesus dwells all the fullness of the Godhead

bodily. We are complete in Him without

controversy. Great is the mystery of

godliness. God was manifest in the flesh.

God was justified in the Spirit. God was seed of angels.

God was preached unto the Gentiles.

He was believed on in the world, and He was received up into

glory. In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the same

was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and

without Him was not anything made that was made here.

O Israel, the Lord our God is 1 Lord.

He is the epitome of everything. He's the total package.

He's God all at the same time. Somebody shout Hallelujah.

So that's a little bit about who he is.

What do we believe? We believe in the doctoral

message of the one God in Christ.

We believe in receiving the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

We believe in being baptized in Jesus name for the remission of

our sins. How you are baptized matters.

It's 4. It's not.

It's not for ceremony, it's not for tradition, it's not for pomp

and circumstance. We enjoy it.

We like it, but we like it because we know what's behind

it. We enjoy it and we celebrate it

because we know what it represents.

It's not just getting wet. It's not just following a decree

that some man wrote. It is for the remission of sins.

It is for the removal of sins. It is for me being buried in

Christ so that when my old man goes down and I come back up, I

am, The Bible declares a new creature.

I'm not the same person I was before I got wet.

And it wasn't the power of the water, it wasn't the power of

the baptizer, it wasn't the power of the ceremony.

It was simply the power of the unmatched name of Jesus that we

invoke over a life as they are baptized.

So it matters. That's why we pray for over our

food in Jesus name. I tell you what, in today's

society, you better pray over your food.

I was. You need to pray over your food

in more times than when you just don't know what it is.

But that's a good one to start. When I was in Japan a few weeks

ago, I had a thought, and it wasn't about where I was at.

It wasn't even about, it wasn't even, it wasn't about that

restaurant or the particular food that I was about to eat.

It was just about a situation that I became aware of that I

had never really thought about before.

And that is the amount of trust that we put in people that we

don't even know. And I'm not trying to scare you

from going out to eat. I'll go out to eat probably

tomorrow and I'll pray over my food and say thank you, Jesus.

But we put in an amount of uninhibited trust in someone

that when we eat, it's safe to eat well.

That's an awful lot of trust for me to put in somebody I don't

know. So it's important that I give

thanks to somebody that I do know for his protection.

We send our kids to school in Jesus name or we should we lay

hands on the sick in Jesus name. Everything we do in Word or

deed, we do it in Jesus name. Some people struggle Monday

through Saturday because their walk with God is not about him.

We need to make our walk with God about him.

We use the term being sold out to God.

That is simply nothing more than surrender.

That's all it is. It's surrender.

Total surrender. It's surrender beyond what your

family expects. Because that can be big for some

people. I know plenty of people that I

have experienced in my walk with God that hold themselves back

because of how their parents lived, of how their parents were

raised and how their parents raised them.

What their family believes of the hell they go through to get

to church because of the things their family says to them about

the church. I know where I know I'm right,

where I need to be right now. If that defines you, I want you

to. And I say this with respect

tonight, but you need to understand one thing.

When you stand before God, it will not be about what somebody

else said. And we've only got one life to

get that right. Well, it's a lot of pressure.

I understand that. And you don't have to have

family that's out of church in order to go through that

pressure. You just have to sell out a bit

more. That brings attention.

So if you're struggling with that tonight, I want to

encourage you. I'm not here to indict you or or

to condemn you, but I want to encourage you because when you

get in the presence of God, total surrender is about you and

him and where you need to get in your walk with God according to

the word of God requires you. Everybody say that's me requires

you to make a decision on your surrender between you and God,

regardless of what it causes, and I'm not making light of it.

I know people that have went through some serious junk

because they made a decision to follow him.

There are people that talk about who we are, what we believe, and

whom we believe. They don't understand.

They haven't sold. They haven't put in the

investment of understanding who He is and why He's worth waiting

on because that's where we're all coming.

We're coming back around to our scripture text here because

David said that he waited patiently for the Lord.

You are not going to wait for something that you don't think

is worth it. When I'm going back to my

Thanksgiving meal and I think back to my childhood and I think

to being being at Aunt Joyce's house and, and, and, and who,

Lord have mercy. See, I always made a mistake.

I made a serious mistake and, and I made the mistake because

I'm weak, all right. But I always made a mistake that

whenever we got in the house and as soon as oh, thank you, Jesus,

as soon as I would smell the food.

Mike Trout I didn't I didn't stay at a distance.

I had to go survey the kitchen and I had to go inspect.

I was the the the the health department inspector of the

family. I had to go check things out and

just see what stage are the are the dumplings at in in in the

pot? I'm not cooked.

So, but what stage are they at in the cooking process?

And what do the potatoes look? Are they putting enough butter

in the potatoes? And what's the birds smell?

After I got older, I, I got old enough to cut the burden.

Man, I just enjoyed that so much.

That was so much fun because when no one's looking, you can

accidentally cut a slice in half and just hope that we can't

serve that one. So I better just eat that one

right now. And, and just, and so I made a

mistake. That was a mistake because it,

it made the waiting worse. But there's one thing I

understood about it. And if you're not hungry yet, I

don't know what else to do for you.

So that's all the imagery I plan on giving you.

But the, the, the problem was I, I struggled to wait, but it was

because it was so much waiting for.

I was looking forward to it. I was excited about it, right?

I, I knew that there was chocolate chip pecan pie in the

dessert room. I didn't care what else was in

there, but as long as there was a pecan pie with melted

chocolate chip morsels in it, Holy Ghost take me right now.

But it was worth waiting for. I had excitement built up

because of the anticipation of waiting.

You're not going to wait for something that's not worth it.

And one of the reasons why we're struggling to wait on God is

because we've not yet determined His worth in our life.

I've come to remind somebody tonight, He's worth waiting on.

I've come to encourage somebody keep waiting because He's worth

it. He's better than the chocolate

pecan pie. I promise you that.

He is worth waiting. He is worth understanding.

He is worth worshipping. He is worth praising.

He is worth declaring my thanks to Him, because He is above all

through all in it all. So David waited patiently for

the Lord. Now watch this.

Now in Hebrew, this statement translates to in waiting.

I waited, meaning I waited and I continued to wait.

I waited and I kept waiting. I waited and I kept waiting.

We talked about this morning how waiting is oftentimes the larger

problem of our affliction or the larger problem of our valley

experiences because we don't like to wait.

And the more that society becomes an instantaneous

gratification society. And we want what we want right

now and we get what we want right now.

And the algorithms know what we're thinking right now.

And it takes us exactly to the information we want right now.

And we get into a place where that we've had to wait .025

seconds to get our answer. We are spoiled by society and we

are punished by God. It feels like because He doesn't

operate off of the same algorithm that Google does.

He still requires you to wait. He still requires you to wait

patiently for Him because there are things in this life that are

worth waiting for. It was not a one time prayer.

It required commitment. Waiting patiently on the Lord

required commitment. It required focus.

It required dedication. It required a seriousness.

That said, I don't know when the answer's coming, but I'm not

stopping my anticipation of my answer until I get it.

It was continuous. His prayer was not answered

immediately. I do not know the length of time

that it took David to see the fruit of his prayer and the

fruit of his dedication for God in this particular certain

circumstance. But I also don't believe tonight

that waiting in this context means that we do nothing,

because one of the most dangerous things you can do in

your walk with God is to do nothing.

I do not believe it is God's will for us to say, well, I'm

going through something tonight, so I'm just waiting on him so

when he answers me, I'll, I'll get up.

When you don't know what to do, you keep doing what you're

doing. That's why I have said it

before. I will repeat myself again,

Quitting what you're doing because of a Valley experience

is exactly what your adversary wants you to do.

Because when you stop engaging in fellowship and you stop

engaging in the the word of God and you isolate yourself,

isolation makes you a target of the enemy, makes you an easy

target because it's just you. That's why this isn't in my

notes tonight, but I'll share it with you.

That's why in the the occasions where my wife and I have went

through some to us Extreme Valley experiences, do you know

what we did? We kept coming to church.

We kept worshiping. We kept leading in worship.

We kept praising. We kept singing songs.

We kept playing music. We kept teaching Sunday school

classes, we kept teaching Friday night Youth Services.

We kept something busy in front of us because that was the will

of God. Waiting did not make it easy.

Serving didn't make it easy, but it did make it right.

So waiting tonight we find we we we go from verse one for the

Trevor, if you can put verse one up for us tonight.

He says I waited patiently for the Lord and he inclined unto me

and heard my cry. Now that we say that quickly and

somewhat poetic and it sounds like it.

He just he waited and he prayed and God answered him.

I don't know what length of time that verse covers, likely likely

a sizeable amount of time, otherwise it wouldn't have

required patience. But if you go to verse #3 by the

time we get to verse 3, we've went from waiting patiently to

having a new song. So the lesson for us here is

that when we're waiting and in the waiting we continue to

praise, and in the waiting we continue to be patient on God.

God will deliver with a new song and he hath put a new song in my

mouth. I find it a bit interesting

tonight that when he's he, he writes this verse and he shares

with us by the holy writ of God that he didn't say he put a new

song in my mind. He could have just as easily

said he put a new song in my heart because there's so many

people today because they don't want to worship God outside.

They say that they worship him in their heart.

I'm not making fun and I'm not trying to be critical tonight,

but that's not what the Bible says.

The Bible does not support us worshipping Him in our mind.

It just doesn't. The Bible doesn't even support

private praise. Not a new song in my mind.

Not a new song in my heart. Not a new song in my thoughts.

The non spiritual people who want you to pray will ask you to

think about them. It's not a new song in my

thoughts. It's a new song in my mouth.

What do we use our mouth for? For communicating, for talking.

Some more than others, some at louder volumes than others.

We we covered that this morning. But we talk.

We use our mouth to engage with one another, to talk to each

other. So if a new song is in my mouth,

then a new song requires me to do something with my mouth about

the song. I don't think it's any deeper

than that even. Praise to our God.

Many shall see it in fear and shall trust the Lord.

That is a witness and a testimony that when people see a

new song in your life that it will cause them to see it, to

fear and to trust in God. We often talk about this being

an actual song, and I think perhaps it can be.

But there's a translation in the original script here that goes

deeper than just an actual song. It literally means a new reason

to praise. The deliverance was so great

that a new expression of thanks was required, such a grand

deliverance from God that the old expressions of praise were

no longer good enough. I need to find a new reason.

And the new reason is I waited patiently, and in waiting I

praised Him. In waiting I followed him.

In waiting I showed up for him and he put a new song in my

mouth. Could you lift your hands and

thank the Lord? Tonight, as our musicians come,

we have a new reason to praise. If you'll stand with me tonight,

I want to declare I love the shout, but I want you to

understand something tonight because I don't want there to be

a misunderstanding when we talk about it.

When we say praise, that does not mean shout.

Nothing wrong with the shout. I love some good shouting music,

some good toe tapping devil stomping.

Let's let's get it on. I like it.

There's a time and a place for that, but that's not every time

and that's not every place. And if you, if you are worried

and and hesitant because you think every time we talk about

worship and praise, we think you ought to be Hucka bucket and

running the aisles and jumping over the Pew the the seats.

That's not what we're talking about.

What we're talking about is surrender.

You surrender that will lead you to the other on occasion, but

surrender is a new song in my mouth.

Surrender is a private opportunity where I publicly,

and I say private because it's it's just you, you and God.

But even when I'm in public, it's an opportunity where my

hands are lifted and my mouth is open to Him.

I've got a new reason to worship Him.

And the new reason is I waited and He showed up.

And if you're in a valley experience today and he hasn't

showed up fully yet, understand that what you think he hasn't

shown up for, he's still there. There are things that you

haven't faced yet that he's likely in front of you on.

I waited patiently for the Lord, and He heard my cry.

I want to encourage someone tonight to know that you've got

a new reason to praise. All you have to do is surrender.

Amen. Surrender.

I know it sounds scary because we don't know exactly what's

waiting for us on the other side, but let me tell you what's

waiting for you on the other side of surrender.

Acceptance, love, mercy, support in ways that you can't find

anywhere else. This altar is open.

I invite you to come tonight. And collectively as the body of

Christ, worship him, surrender to Him.

But just understand every day brings new reasons to praise.

I don't have to be stuck in what He did for me 10 years ago

because he's still a real God today and he's still a real God

tomorrow, and he's still doing great things.

Let's sing to the Lord.