She Reads Truth: Prayer in the BibleChikamu

Practicing Praise

For just about anything worth doing, repetition is needed to form a habit. Your first training run ever for a 10K is going to feel clumsy and painful. You’ll find muscles you never knew you had and you may even hobble your way around for a few days afterward. But through time, through practice, and through preparation, lacing up your running shoes will eventually happen without conscious thought and you’ll sail through a few miles like you’ve been doing it all your life.

The same holds true for prayers of praise and thanksgiving. They aren’t second nature—we have to be prompted, like children, to say “thank you” until it’s something that comes naturally. So when we’re writing our thank you notes on God’s heart, it’s not all that different from those thank you notes we wrote as children.

First, we address the giver. God is the giver. Forget yourself and turn your focus on Him.

Second, we acknowledge the gift. To identify God’s many gifts is a skill. Start by asking yourself, “How do I see His hand in my life?” It isn’t necessarily thanking Him for the promotion or finding the perfect house in your search, though certainly we can give Him the glory in those times. But it’s also recognizing His presence in the difficult times. It’s seeing how even those things we saw as setbacks were all part of His perfect plan for our lives. And by acknowledging His investment in your life, the blessings and the trials, we are telling Him that we’re not taking Him for granted. We’re acknowledging that we see all things, every chapter of the story He’s written, as an opportunity for praise.

Next, we give sincere thanks.  It can be poetic or conversational.  It can be flowery or simple.  You can whisper or you can shout.  Just practice saying “thank you.”

Finally, we make our affection known. We close, just like we would in that thank you note. “I love you.” “Sincerely.” “I’m faithfully yours.”

Practice giving praise to Him today. Address Him, identify His gifts through your own story of redemption, give sincere thanks, and make your great love for Him know.

And then do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. Until you are sailing through these prayers of praise like you’ve been doing it all your life.

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