Rick Warren - The Awesome Power of Praise

It's good to see you.

Thank you, have a seat, everybody. We got a little

bit different service this week, as you can tell. I've

got some friends here on stage that are gonna 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 workers what's going on.

It's part of my job to help remind you of

stuff because human nature is we forget. Now today, as

we start a new year, 2022 together, I wanna remind

you of a powerful habit and the benefits of this

important habit, this important spiritual habit. It's a habit you're

gonna need to use every single day of your life

in 2022. 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 notes but start warming up your voice

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

At the top of your outline, Psalm 150 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 and it comes to worship,

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

only two marks of real worship. This is the 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 23, Jesus said, true worshipers worship the

Father in spirit and in truth. Circle spirit and truth.

In spirit and truth. That's the kind of worshipers 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

gotta 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

wanna know what God doesn't like, that God really hates it,

what God hates more than anything else is lukewarm 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 it. 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 for 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 coming to worship, but they don't really

mean it. They're not even thinking about it. It makes

me wanna throw up. It makes me wanna puke. It

makes me wanna vomit. Because I'm 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. There in your outline or here

on the screen, Isaiah 29, 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 ball game.

They're thinking about where we're gonna go for lunch. They're

thinking about all these other things. Said their hearts are

not somewhere else far from me and their worship is

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

last 42 years as I've been the pastor of this church,

I'm out on the patio talking to people. When somebody

comes up to me and say, I really didn't get

anything out of that service today. When somebody says that

to me, I always ask the exact same 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? 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 gonna get something out of it.

And we're gonna 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

for a few minutes and go, 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 gotta

be in spirit and truth. It's gotta be authentic. It's

gotta be from your heart. That means you put some

emotion into it. Now, in the Bible, I could give

you a list of over 50 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. We could look at a lot

of them. But I'm only gonna give you seven today.

I just picked out seven benefits. And the reason I

only picked out seven is 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 standing and things. 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 crammed,

I'm cool, I'm cool, look at everybody else.

Okay, no, no.

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 wanna 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

or are you denying them? Can you feel your emotions

and be a true man or a true woman or

are you scared to death? You're frightened. You were taught

to push your emotions down, shut them down. I wanna

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.

Why?

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 or 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?

Do I look cool? Am I all right?

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 go,

what's that all about? Is it some kind of weird thing,

they raise their hand, they go and do a trance? No,

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

the time at sports games. You go to a game,

you go touchdown, woohoo! Or you go to a soccer

game and your kid hits a goal, woohoo!

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're 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 to express

joy to other people, but it's not okay to express

joy to God.

Come on, get over it. Grow up.

And if you feel like raising your hand, if you don't, don't.

It's no big deal. It's not some special ooey gooey thing.

It's just the Bible says we lift our hands and

praise God and say, touchdown God, yay God, woohoo.

I'm feeling this right now at this moment.

And your heart moves when your body moves. So don't

be afraid to move your body in worship. Now another

excuse people 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 baggie. 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. Where 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 gonna 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 wanna hear it in my kid's voice. I wanna

hear it in my wife'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. I 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.

No, God, thank you. God, you're amazing. You rose from

the grave. You got power. You could change my life.

Say it with a little bit of 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 gonna share with you. And there's

some really, big blessings that you're gonna miss out on

in 2022 if you don't learn the habits that I'm

gonna 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 whether 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

can see you standing there like a mannequin. I'm just kidding. 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 that.

But I might.

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

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

hot or cold.

Not lukewarm.

Read the words while you're thinking of something else. Know

while you're thinking of him. Psalm 138, there 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 doofus, okay?

You know how to do this when you get to heaven.

You don't wanna get that, 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 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 it 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 their PJs 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 together 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 of the gate in 2022 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 say,

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 you and puts

your focus back on God. Recently, there was a cover

of Business Week magazine and the cover of Business Week

magazine said, searching for hope. So 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 gonna 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

gonna 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.

In all the holidays.

Now you're taking all the Christmas lights down and we're

just kind of going through and you're feeling a little discouraged.

I recommend to you Psalm 42. It's there on your outline.

Psalm 42 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 wanna be a hopeful person,

you gotta do the other two, 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 61. It says,

to all who mourn in Israel. I mean, what's mourning?

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 you a 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 you're praised,

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

to sing. Who could imagine so great a mercy? You

think about that.

Who could imagine so great a mercy? God's mercy to me.

What heart could fathom such boundless mercy? Grace, God's grace

to me. You're thinking about this. The God of ages

stepped down from glory, that's eat Christmas, to wear my

sin and bear my shame.

Whoa. 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 wanna feel God's presence. What do

you do when you wanna 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

when you get an appointed praise, praise makes God's presence

more real to me than when I don't feel him

at all. But God says, you gotta 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 forced myself to come to church. And I wasn't

really in the mood, I'm kinda tired. How do I

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

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

the feelings always follow actions. Now this is true in

every area 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

a 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, 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 10 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 respect and 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. Maturity 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 it. That's about,

babies can do that. Little kids, kids live 100% by

their feelings. But when you grow up, you do the

right thing because you do it out of love, not

out of feeling. Those of you who are moms, you

remember when your babies were 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 140, verse 13, on the

Psalms 140:13

screen or 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 live

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 75 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 69,

Psalms 69:30

verse 30, 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've 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.

Now why 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 gonna 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.

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

is nothing.

My problems 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 Saddleback,

our magnification team, because it's their job to magnify God,

to make him bigger in all of our eyes. Now

Psalm 145 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 ant 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 problems get smaller. So whatever problem that's got you

scared right now, got you intimidated, got you worried, got

you fearful, the antidote is to sing about the greatness

of God. Because the bigger I see God, my problems

shrink in the side. Now, a praise song, a lot

of people think praise song has to be fast, like

hippy skippy, happy yappy clappy, You know, dance around. Yeah,

there's good, there are good praise songs. You can't even,

you gotta dance to them. They gotta beat, okay. And

the Bible says you can dance before the Lord, okay.

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 worship team a while

back wrote a song about God's greatness. It's called Alive

and Well. And the chorus goes like this. And we're

gonna sing it in just a minute. But I'm gonna

say a chorus to you. The chorus says this. All

things are possible. I think about that. That means the

problem I've got, it's 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 more 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 just can't figure out.

They're like the Gordian knot, 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, there's all kinds of things in

your life that they seem to be intractable problems. They're

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

you wonder, am I ever gonna get a solution to this?

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

year after year, you came to the end of 2021

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 73

is an example of this. Psalm 73, 16 and 17.

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? It's a metaphor for coming

into the presence of God. It means coming into 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 165

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, they 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's

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.

He said, great, how do I get into God's sanctuary?

How do I get into God's presence? Next verse, Psalm

100 verse four. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and come

into his courtyards with praise. The doorway to creativity is

praise and thanksgiving. You wanna be a creative leader, you

wanna be a creative business owner, you wanna be a

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 gonna have problems in 2022 you'll never solve on

your own.

Why?

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. 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 gonna happen tomorrow, much less the rest of 2022.

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 gonna

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, something going on in your life,

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 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 got a relationship that really matters to you

and it gets out of whack, everything else sucks. 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 the imbalance in your life. Praise reminds you,

that not everything is bad in your life. Let me

give you an example of this. In Psalm 105, the

first five verses, the Psalmist 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 Psalm 105 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. Like

you don't do this, you talk to yourself all the time.

Praise the 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 reasons. First one is that in your life,

when you get a problem, you tend to overemphasize that

to the neglect of all that'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 Kay's book, Choose Joy, there's 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 parallel 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 gonna be

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

But there's never a 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 other people, what other people say about you is

none of your business. What other people think of you

is none of your business. You should not pay 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 as important. You think stuff about yourself that

really 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 gonna 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 wired 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 gonna be especially helpful to you in 2022. 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, 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.

You see the difference?

Thanking 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 battle, when you feel like

you're under attack, when you need God to defend you

and you need God's protection. Classic example of this is

2 Chronicles chapter 20, which is the story of a

2 Chronicles 20 · chapter mention

battle that Israel is in.

Israel is a little tiny nation.

And one day in 2 Chronicles 20 in the Bible,

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

So it's gonna 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 gonna 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, maybe

in your business or education or whatever. The odds are

stacked against you. So the king, his name was Jehoshaphat.

They probably called him Fatty for short, okay?

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 it says. Look on your outline.

2 Chronicles 20 verses 21 and 22 says this. So

2 Chronicles 20:21

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

These are singers.

The king appointed a choir to walk, notice, ahead 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.

So get the picture here. Over here on this side

of the valley are the enemy tribes, enemy nations of Ammon, Moab,

and Mount Seir. They're ready for bear. 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 symbolizing thanking God in advance. Now, The three nations

over here see this choir walking out, they go, what

is going on? And the army behind the choir is going, yeah,

what is going on? And the choir, the singers in

front of it go, yes, we'd like to know what's

going on. Because we're the tip of the spear 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 a 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 Patton would have fainted if somebody 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? Thanking God in advance. Maybe

you feel like you're under attack right now. under attack

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

from 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 gonna 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 20 passage, 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 28 verse seven,

the next verse on your outline says 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 sing 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's 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 have 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 of

2021 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 better 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 Acts

Acts 10 · chapter mention

chapter 10. 16. And in Acts 16, 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 him,

and so they throw them in prison. And Paul and

Silas are in this dark prison 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 16 says this, verse 25, 26. About midnight, Paul

and Silas were praying and singing songs to God after midnight.

Paul singing praise to God after midnight. That's what that

song's really about. You didn't know, but that's after midnight,

Silas praised the Lord after midnight. 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 wanna

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 says, suddenly there's a strong earthquake that shook the

foundation of the jail. Ladies and gentlemen, this was the

original jailhouse rock. 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, a situation, when you need the

chains broken off you. Now, here's my challenge. As we

start 2022 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. There are many others we didn't cover. Second,

make the habit of attending worship every weekend so you

get your weekly B12 shot. You get recharged. You get reenergized.

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 going to, we're starting our

43rd 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? If it rains, if it

gets freezing cold the next couple months like it was

last night, it's okay to wear a parka to church.

It's okay to bring your thermos 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 wanna

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

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

Thank you that we're part of a family called Saddleback

and that everybody in here, all of the women are

my sisters and all the guys are my brothers. And

thank you that no matter what we go through in 2022,

we're not gonna go through it alone. We got a

family that's gonna pray for us, that's gonna support us,

that's gonna be with us. And one plus God is

the majority and 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 2022. 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.