We Pass on What We Praise - Aaron McRae

What if the stories you tell your kids reveal more about your values than you realize?
In Psalm 145, David — a king with real power — does something surprising. He refuses to take credit. Instead, he points upward and says: you are the real King. And then he passes that posture on.

Pastor Aaron unpacks what it looks like to build a life of praise — not as a Sunday activity, but as a daily practice that shapes perspective, forms gratitude, and leaves something worth inheriting. Because what we celebrate, we repeat. And what we repeat, we pass on.
If you've ever wondered what it actually means to leave a legacy of faith — this one's for you.
Scripture: Psalm 145, Isaiah 61:3

Resources: Praying the Psalms — Walter Brueggemann; Reflections on the Psalms — C.S. Lewis

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

But before I get into God's word, would you just pray with me? And I want to give you a chance in your own words to pray. And maybe the prayer that you would pray today is something like, God, would you speak to me? Just whisper that. Or maybe it's God, it's been a while since I've truly encountered you. I want to encounter you today. Maybe you're really struggling with faith or belief in God. Maybe you don't believe in God. And you would have a like a bold, courageous prayer. God, if you are real, meet me here today. So God, I pray that you would move as only you can move and speak as only you can speak. Remind us of your love. Remind us of how worthy you are. Give us this spiritual ability to hear and understand your voice, your word. Have your way in these moments, we pray. In Jesus' name. Amen. Anybody ever feel lonely in life? Anyone ever feel distant from God? In a world filled with isolation, a world filled with criticism, a world filled with division, there's toxins in the air in LA, and there are toxins in our souls. There's disinformation and there's distraction. There's anxiety and there's deceit. And for often many people, the lives that we're trying to build, lives that are strong, lives that it can endure, they're oftentimes found to be strong but not adequate. Not able to deliver what we thought they would, not ever to bridge a great divide. Maybe it feels like God is way over here and I'm way over here, or there's a break in a relationship. This person's way over here and I'm way over here. In 1998 in Honduras, there there was a bridge that was completed, the Choloteca Bridge. And the desire was that there were two pieces of land that needed to be connected, but there was a river that continually would wash out bridge after bridge. So the Honduran people said we need a bridge that is almost indestructible. So they partnered with some firm in Japan and they engineered what they said. This is going to be an absolutely indestructible bridge. And it was completed in 1998. Just a few short months after it was completed, Hurricane Mitch, a Category 5 hurricane, blew in and decimated parts of Honduras. Over 150 other bridges in Honduras were destroyed by this hurricane. The question was: would the indestructible bridge be able to last through a hurricane five storm? And the answer was this. The bridge endured, it survived. The problem is the river moved. The hurricane was so great, it didn't destroy the bridge, it just moved the whole river. So there was still no longer any access from one side to the other. And sometimes, if we're not careful, we build our lives building something that is so strong, it just doesn't work. It just doesn't get us where we need to go. So we want to talk about today a little bit of what is a habit, what is a practice, what is something to put into our lives that could help us not only stay on track, get on track, but keep getting on track and helping others to do the same. And it's this word. We've said it today, we've sung it today. It's simple, but it's crazy profound. It's praise. There's a power of praise. And and I don't just mean once in a while on a Sunday when you come to church. But I'm saying as an everyday habit and everyday rhythm that has the power to shape us, inform us into who God wants us to be. So if you have a Bible, grab it. I would love for you to join us. Psalm 145 is where we're going to be. If you have a phone, uh UVersion app, you can get to Psalm 145, or we'll have all the verses on the screen. Let me just give us a context for this massive book in the middle of the Old Testament called The Psalms, which is actually a collection of songs, collection of prayers, a collection of poems, a collection of laments. There are both celebrations and there are complaints that would make most of us a little uncomfortable. We're like, David, you're talking to God like that? Um, there's laments in there, but there's praises all throughout. Um, David, the King David, like King David of David and Goliath, kind of fame, is the writer of this Psalm, Psalm 145, as well as about half of the Psalms, about 75 or so, roughly, of the Psalms he wrote. Um this Psalm in particular, 145, it's got a Jewish tradition of being one that is very familiar in that many of the families would repeat it two times every morning and one time every afternoon. Can you imagine growing up with something like this? Two times every morning and one time every afternoon, you recited it. Would that start to form you and shape you? Um, I was gonna say something else, I won't do that. Uh, kids, look at me real quick. This psalm, it's an acrostic. So in the Hebrew alphabet, the the like English version would be it's like, A, God is, what's the word for A? That God is awesome, amazing. B, God is bold, big, beautiful. I don't know, that was a soap opera. Um, that God is the best. It's like an acrostic that they would go through, and it was it was to teach and to memorize it so they could memorize this based on the way that it was laid out in the alphabet. Last thing, and I want to get to the psalm. I I just have benefited so greatly from Walter Brugeman's overview of the Psalms in a book that he calls Praying the Psalms. He gives us a grid that matches the phases of the human experience. And this is often what happens in the Psalms that there is a place of orientation. Like sometimes you read the Psalms and it's like things are going pretty good. If you're in a in an orientation season, you're in a season of stability. Like things are going pretty good. Maybe according to plan, you feel like you've got stability in life. And if you do have that, praise God for that. Amen. Say thank you, God, for the stability, the grace in our life. But at other times, there's seasons of disorientation, season of darkness or a season of disruption. For some of us, the storm has come. How do we face a season of disruption? The Psalms gives us the ways to do that. It's not to ignore the pain, it's not to stuff the pain, it's to bring it to God. To remember the story is not over yet. And then after the disorientation, there's a reorientation, a season of surprise, a season that even in the midst of mourning, there can be joy. Surprise? Even in the seasons where things didn't turn out like we thought they would turn out, there can be a faithful God that we understand He is good. We keep our eyes on God. We still trust His future kingdom by faith is going to be a place of hope and joy and peace. And we can get in on that now. And so the Psalms have this repetition that meet us in different places of life. So if you were to ever read a Psalm and think, well, that's King David, everything was going for him. He was rich, everybody liked him. Oh, no, no, no, no. He failed greatly. He had enemies that were after him. And so he says, No matter the circumstance that we find ourselves in, praise has a power to shape us and give us perspective. Look at Psalm 145. I'll start in verse one. David writes, I will exalt you, my God the King. I will praise your name forever and ever. So we're gonna leave that verse up there for just a moment. I want to just explain a couple things. To exalt, it means to lift up. This is my sort of version. It's to make a big deal about somebody. David is making a big deal, and he's like lifting up God, saying, God, you are the highest, you're the greatest, nothing matters like you. He's lifting God up. And then the next sort of idea is I will praise you. And as exalt means to lift up, to praise means to bow down. So David says, I'm simultaneously lifting you up, my God, my king, showing allegiance, devotion to you. I'm also bowing down in worship and adoration of you. So worship is both the lifting up of who God is and the bowing down of us in an act of surrender and humility to say, but this is who you are, God. And if you know anything about kings, a king like David, especially a king like David, he's probably one of the most well-known kings of the whole ancient world and one of the best kings. He's so good that Jesus comes in the line in the lineage of King David. But King David, I don't know if you know about people in power. Often people in power don't like to talk about other people in power having power. And David says, I'm the king, but I'm not the true king. He's the real king, he's the one who has all power. And so he says, My king, the my God, the king, the king of all kings. Because if we could learn this like David, praise brings a perspective. What a difference some praise can make in our life is that the perspective that praise day after day, the difference it can make. Um, I've been the pastor here for about 14 years. I've probably made lots of bad decisions. I've at least made two good decisions. One of them is, um, and I took this from a former church that I had served at, we have a weekly, we call it like worship programming meeting. It's Monday morning at 11 o'clock, and we talk about this. We talk about what's happening here. Uh, but we had an idea that we do this. Anyone in that meeting? I don't even know who's in the room. Anybody know what we do in that meeting first?

unknown 9:59

Celebrate.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

We celebrate. Oh, Christian, I didn't see you. We celebrate before we evaluate. So it's important because there's people like me in the room who are really good critics and can see everything that goes a little bit not quite right. But we've made a decision. No, no, we celebrate before we evaluate. So that we give God praise for what he has done. We give credit and honor to one another, but we want to celebrate because we think it shapes us. And if we just jump into criticism, we're going to be a bunch of miserable people to be around. The second idea is we do our all-staff meeting every Wednesday at 1030. And in our all-staff meeting, we start every single staff meeting with Yea gods. Where we say, What have we seen? Where have we seen God at work this week? Because here's what we know and we need to be reminded of again and again and again. We may work at a church, but God is the one who does the work at a church. You know what I mean? We don't, we can't take credit for anything that God does at this church, and we want to say, Yea, God, we are so thankful for the way that you work. We want to be reminded in rhythm and patterns of saying, God is worthy of our praise. He deserves all the credit and all the honor and all the glory. And we want to intentionally and with rhythm and habits give him praise. Because I don't know if you're like me, but I'll just confess it, I'll say it. I can be not just a critic, I can be critical. Yesterday my wife called it out in me, rightly so. She's like, if you could just hear your tone sometimes. If you could just hear your tone sometimes. And I'm like, what tone? Just kidding, I didn't do that this time. Didn't do it this time. She's like, if you just hear your tone, and I'm like, well, that's sort of crazy because I already had it in my notes. That last Sunday I was back there before I came out. Um, and like I think I had my Bible or water or whatever, like dropped my Bible. I was just clumsy over and over and over again. And I was like, Oh, you idiot, as I was picking it up, and then I realized I have a microphone on my face. I hope the microphone isn't on. Can you imagine if I'm back there and you hear everything that I'm saying? That would not be good. I'm like, I don't need you to hear, you idiot, to myself. Because that negative self-talk has a way of shaping perspective. And encouragement has a whole other way of shaping perspective. C.S. Lewis says it this way. I'll set the context and then I'll give you a quote. He says, Imagine two lovers, like two people who are madly in love. Like, like when my wife and I, like we're we're two madly in love lovers 26 years later. I'm just maybe, who knows? Maybe she is, I don't know. But imagine two lovers, and they just can't stop saying, You're beautiful. No, you're beautiful, you're so beautiful. And he's like, the idea is not that they're saying it because they're supposed to, the idea is they're so enamored with one another, it just sort of flows out of them. They have to say it. And here's what here's what he says in reflections on the Psalms. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses, but it completes the enjoyment. When we say it, we feel joy, and when the person hears it, they feel joy. There's enjoyment. It is a it is it's appointed consummation. So then, here's what he says in commanding us to glorify him, God is inviting us to enjoy him. There are commands in the Bible that say, Praise God. Praise the Lord. And David's like, I'm praising the Lord because there's something that God knows about enjoyment in our lives and perspective in lives when we put him in his rightful place. So with repetition and with rhythm, we're called to praise God. Because in a culture of me-centered approaches to life, I don't know if you know it, but if you have one of these, you live in a me-centered approach to life that we have to war against. We need a new perspective of our God, the King, to remind us of our place. In a world of entitlement where we want what we want and we want it right now, we need to be reminded of a God who works forever and ever and ever and ever. In a negative, divisive, and polarizing world, we need perspective on what is truly praiseworthy and worth lifting up. See, we know this in normal relationships. We know this from psychology and sociology. If you want to encourage somebody, you need five encouraging words for every criticism, right? Like there's graphs like this. Look at it. If you want an optimal kind of relationship at home, at work, you strive for this five encouraging things for every one criticism that is given. If you want to outweigh the weight of negative words, how much more could that be true in a relationship with God? If we want a proper perspective with God, it can't be that our lives are just filled with complaint. It has to be that our lives are filled also with praise and thankfulness and gratitude. God, you've been so good to us. Amen, everybody? And the repetition of songs, the repetition of praise, it teaches theology, if it's a good song, a right song. It teaches us what to believe about God. It's one of the most impactful ways we learn. Verse 2 of Psalm 145. David writes, Every day I will praise you and extol your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise. His greatness no one can fathom. Look at the verse with me real quick. Sometimes the verbs and things are out of order, but praise you means to bless. It's an act of adoration. Again, it can even also mean to kneel down. It's to bless, it's to bless God, to praise Him. Um, to extol can also sometimes mean praise. It means to shine, it means to sing towards. It's where we get our word hallelujah from this root word, to celebrate, to commend. But but look what David says every day I will praise you, and then I'll extol you forever and ever. So it's an interesting order because you can't just say we're gonna praise him forever, but we don't really do it day to day. He says, I'm gonna do it every single day because I'm also going to end up doing it for eternity. But if I don't do it every single day, it's gonna be harder for me to move into eternity. Do you know what I'm saying? So it's a habit and a rhythm of our life that prepares us for an eternal life of worshiping God. He says, every day, I love this, I will. Could you just say that with me? I will. David says, every day, I will. He's made a decision, I will. He doesn't say every day when I feel like it. He says, every day I will. Now, uh Psalms is written in the Hebrew language. I took Hebrew way, way, way back in seminary days. So maybe we studied this, I don't remember it. But this verb is in a very funky tense. The seminary professor didn't call it a funky tense, I just said funky. It's the cohortative tense, it's a tense of the Hebrew language that implies intent. It's distinct in that it shows volition. David is saying, I have made a decision, I will do this. Period. Not when I feel like it, not when I get around to it, not when I go to church on Sunday. This will be a pattern, a habit of my life. I will do this. For all these reasons, he's the Lord, he's most worthy of praise. His greatness no one can fathom. Fathom is a nautical term saying so deep, so deep beyond full comprehension, beyond full understanding. God is so just deep. I'm gonna praise him every single day and forever and ever and ever. All right. I have an idea and experiment. Will you help me with this? Took a minute, but thank you. Let's try that one more time. I have an idea and experiment. Will you help me with this? Okay, here's what we're gonna do. In just a moment, we're gonna take 10 seconds and just praise God. Okay? We're gonna take 10 seconds and praise God out loud. Are you ready? So here's what we're gonna do. The verse is going to stay up. And if you don't know how to praise God and you don't have words, just read the verse out loud. That's why it's a psalm it's given us to praise God. But also for some of you, like maybe that's a good starting point. Some of you are ready to, I'm just ready to praise God. And you start praising God and you say, God, I thank you for it, and God, you're so glorious, and God, I want to say, you know what I mean? 10 seconds of out loud, praise God. I've got a timer right here. Are you ready? Okay, I'm on your mark, get set, go, praise God. There you go. Okay, that's 10 seconds. Whoa! That's revival broke out. People stood up. That's the first time that's happened today. Thank you for being faithful to what God said. See, here's the deal. This isn't saying do this at church on Sunday. It's say connect your heart to what God is wanting to do and get the perspective and the reminder of who He is. Because if we think that we are the most worthy or the most glorious, we have an inflated sense of self and we think the world revolves around us, and we will be disappointed constantly. If we think our family is the most worthy, we'll put them on a pedestal, the highest pedestal. And no other person on this earth can handle the weight, the pressure of being on the highest pedestal in your life. Only God deserves that. And so, worthy of worship, worthy of praise, it sort of speaks to there are postures of praise that matter, and we want to talk about a difference that praise makes in our posture. The posture of praise and what they mean. Because whatever we declare to be the most worthy, the most mighty and majestic shapes us. One of my favorite Psalms on this is Psalm 63, 3. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. Just think about that. David says that because your love is better than life. Just honest confession, don't say it out loud. Do you actually think that God's love is better than life? Like, would you say, God, I want your love more than I want that new car, a new house, or new job, or date on Tinder. Or wherever you're at. God, I want your love more than anything else. And David says, I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. So he talks about his lips glorifying, his hands being lifted up, that he's going to praise God in ways that give God the honor and give God the glory that he deserves. March 13th, 2016. I went to a Lakers game. It was a month before Kobe Bryant retired. The Lakers were terrible. And Kobe Bryant that night did not play a good game. Lakers at that point in the season had only won 14 games. The season was almost over. And that night Kobe shot all the time, but he only had 14 points. But people were losing their minds. They had spent all this money on Kobe gear. They were buying all kinds of snacks and refreshments and everything. And I'm like, I'm at one of Kobe Bryant's last games. I must record this. And so I got some video, and here's one. That's Kobe Bryant. That is fine. Right there. I mean, I'm from North Carolina. He's no Michael Jordan, but that's Kobe Bryant. That's pretty good. But at that moment, here's what's crazy: the audio doesn't do it justice. The people lost their minds. I'm like, he hit a turnaround jump shot. That's classic Kobe. But I'm like, it's a terrible game between two terrible teams. But it's Kobe Bryant. It's the people are lifting their hands. People are shouting and screaming. Can I just tell you there was no applause sign in that whole entire arena? Nobody had to say, shout now. Nobody had to say, here's a good place to clap and say, woo! There was some kind of expectation, there was some kind of an experience, and it was just happening. Because they loved Kobe, loved basketball, I don't know. I think part of what David is trying to get at it is we praise what we value. We celebrate what or who we worship. There's postures of praise that then describe this. Here's a list of a few postures of praise, not all of them. But Psalm 147, one talks about we sing unto the Lord. Colossians and James both say this in the New Testament: sing unto the Lord. And so if you ever wonder why do we sing so much at church? Because the Bible tells us to. Because it's good for us. Because it reminds us the words that we sing speak to what is true and right and remind us of who God is. So we sing these truths. We meditate. We meditate. Now, this may be different than meditation of the world. We don't just empty ourselves, we fill ourselves with the truth of God. It may be similar to what is cool in culture of mindfulness, but it's uniquely different. We're mindful in the Word of God to be, uh have our minds be made new because of the Spirit who leads us into all truth to the gospel of Jesus. So we meditate as a posture of worship. Sometimes we lift our hands. Some of you did that just a moment. We lift our hands. Okay, we just do this with you. We just lift your hands. Get out of your comfort zone and lift your hands up. Look around, and I want you to just do this. When do you ever lift your hands in society when the police officer tells you to? And some of you are familiar with that. It is in that moment, it is in that moment an act of surrender. You may be saying, I'm guilty, or you may be saying, I give up. I surrender to your ways. Lifting our hands is a biblical posture of worship. Sometimes it's we clap and we shout, woo! Yeah, for Kobe Bryant. But the scriptures say we clap and we shout for God and his glory, for the goodness of Jesus and what he has done. We bow down. The scripture clearly says that bowing down, kneeling before the Lord is a posture, and the posture itself doesn't mean that we've connected with God, it creates space in our hearts to connect with God. Maybe it's bow your head. Would you just do that with me as a posture? Just bow your head for a moment. We bow our head in reverence. Bow our head to connect with God. You can look up. Stillness and silence is a way. Sit before the Lord, wait on the Lord, be still and know that I am God, or our Psalms all throughout. Because something happens, this will be crazy. When you stop talking and you start listening and you let the Lord speak. Another one is standing. We're told many times in scripture to stand, but standing is an act of reverence, isn't an act of respect for somebody. Now these are all different kinds of postures, they're not exclusive, but the biggest posture that matters, it's not just the external action, it's the posture of the heart. A heart that wants to honor God and know Him and seek after Him. We can go through all the motions of all those other things, but it's truly the heart that God is after. Can we just put that list right up one more time? And I just want to ask you this: Is there any one posture that this coming week maybe God would say, Would you would you be an intentional? Would you step into that? Maybe it gets you out of your comfort zone. And God would say, I want you to just take a step forward in this. This morning, early in the morning in my house, nobody else was awake. I just experimented and I just want to let you know you don't have to be at church to do these things. I was still before the Lord. You can take that down. I was still before the Lord. I was reading the word and meditating on the word. I didn't clap and shout because people were sleeping. I was listening to worship music before the Lord. And this is not just about coming to church to do this. This is about day by day engaging with God and practices. Now, a couple of caveats. If you're a person who goes to a Lakers game in the last month before Kobe retires and the whole entire place is going crazy, but you're doing this, then I don't really think in church you need to be the person doing this. But if you're the person at the game and you're losing your mind, whoa, go Kobe, but then you come to church and you're doing this. There may be a heart issue with God.

unknown 27:32

Talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

There may be a heart issue with God. If you're a person who goes to Coachella or you go to stage coach, I don't do those concerts, or you go to Forrest Frank and you lose your mind, but you come to church and you can't find your passion. We got to examine what do we truly love? What are we truly desiring? How are we wanting to experience God? Look at one Psalm 145, verse 4 with me. One generation commends your works to another. They tell of your mighty acts, they speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty, and I will meditate on your wonderful works. They tell of the power of your awesome works, and I will proclaim your great deeds. They celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness. I love what David is talking about here because he's also rooting praise. He's sort of talking in one sense, there's a personal dimension to this, and there's also a corporate dimension to this. Like we don't always get together seven days a week to sing, but I before God can get together with God and praise him over and over again. But then when we do gather together, and if I have and you have and you have and you have spent six other days praising and worshiping God, then something magnificent happens when we come together. There's a time of corporate praise and preparation for God. But there's also what David says is one generation commend your works to another. To commend is literally this idea of praising, but in the sense of soothing or pacifying. One generation commends your works. One of the things I love about Hillside is we are a multi-generational church. There's really, really young, and there's really, really not so young. Always around each other at the same time. This morning, here's my conviction. One generation commends your works. Older people like me think it's always, we're older, we need to commend the work to the young people. But Summer Blast showed us. This morning just showed us as 16 and 15 and 14-year-olds lead us. Sometimes it's the young generation commends to the old generation. And in a multi-generational church, this wasn't popular at 10 o'clock at all when I said this. In a multi-generational church, the older sacrifice for the younger. In a multi-generational church, it's not 50-year-olds and 60-year-olds and 70-year-olds, well, I don't really like this music. But if the young people love it and connect to God, we need to have a different conversation. I'm plus 50 now. The average age of this church is a lot younger than that. If I'm always in every meeting saying, I'm not sure I really like that song, maybe I'm not the target. Maybe I'm not the center. All of our opinions still matter. But here's an idea of the difference praise makes. It's the passing on of praise to the next generation. And it's the passing on of praise between generations. One generation commends your work to the next. It's back and forth. It's back and forth. It makes us, it makes me wonder. It makes me ask questions like this. What stories do we celebrate? What does success look like? And if we got there, how would we celebrate? How would we honor that? Here's another way of saying it. What's important to you? And part of the way that I know what's important to you is it's what you talk about when you can talk about anything you want to talk about. When you can talk about anything that you want to talk about, and it's like, oh, that's what's important to you. Okay, I get it. That's what you value. And it may be kids, it may be sports, it may be work, it may be God. But what's important, we we pass on. I was really convicted about this a number of years ago because my kids, specifically my girls, taught me a lesson. They modeled a lesson. All five of us had gone to Kenya to be with our partners, Empowering Lives International in Living Room. And we came back, and it's like, well, what stories are we going to share about what we experienced when we were in Africa? And I came in saying, What's unique? What's maybe exotic? And I was like, Oh my gosh, you won't believe this. And I'm showing pictures. Look at how close we were to these elephants. Look at this. Isn't that crazy? And my girls are like, Oh, it was such an amazing trip. Look at us with the kids at Eolish Children's Home. I'm like, it was amazing. We saw this pack of lions hunt this warthog and kill it, and then we drove by it, and my daughter was freaking out because she was so close to it. And my girls were like, Can I tell you about living room and this man who was dying of HIV back in the day when there was no cure, but then they brought in the resources that brought about his healing, but then he met Jesus, and now he leads their security team of the whole entire area of Living Room International. And so what I'm telling you is what we emphasize and what we pass on and what we celebrate. Andy Stanley is a pastor who said this for many, many years ago that I just never forgot. He says, What we celebrate gets repeated. Gets repeated. The things that we value, the things that we make a big deal about, they get repeated. Leslie Yerkes has a similar thing. She says, What gets recognized gets repeated. What gets celebrated becomes a habit. And I think what David and the psalmists are trying to teach us is praise has to become a habit that forms us and shapes us because there's enough in this world that'll take us away from God. Praise is a way to redirect, reorient us back to God. To reorient us when the storm of life comes, that we've built something not just that super enduring and strong and successful, like a bridge that's indestructible, but that it also is in the right place, getting us to the right place. And there is a great gap between us and God. And Jesus came to look, I just thought about my shirt. Jesus came the way, the truth, and the life. He says, No one comes to the Father except through me. And it's through Jesus, the bridge to eternal life, the bridge to forgiveness and grace that God has for us. The Psalms are an invitation to worship God and experience Him, to know Him, to root our lives in Scripture so that we're strong enough to endure and thrive and even pass on to the next generation, what matters most. And God is worthy of our praise. And so in just a moment, we're going to lift our voices and I pray our hands, because we're going to sing that in prayer and gratitude towards God. Would you pray with me? Thank you, God, for reminders in scripture and songs, that you are worthy of our praise, that you are glorious, and that every good and perfect gift comes from you. I pray that even something that has been said today through scripture or a posture of praise would just give us an action, a habit to partake in. And that you would begin to shape our perspective and renew our minds. You would begin to help us understand the power that this has. To form us, to remind us more than anything that you would just remind us you are our God, the King. Jesus, you are our Lord, our Savior. You are the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus, it is at your name that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. Jesus Christ is Lord. It's for all of eternity we'll be praising. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord, the Lord God Almighty. Worthy are you to receive praise and honor and glory. There's so many things that can distract us from these truths in life. Will you remind us of what is right and holy and glorious and majestic, namely you, God. The all-surpassing God. We want to worship you. We need to worship you. And we pray that you would inhabit the praise of your people as you always do. Spirit, move in this place in power as we lift up our voices, our lives to you. Have your way. In Jesus' name we pray.