Praise

It’s a new day, but let me ask you something. Are you short on joy today? It can happen. We race toward special days or live expectantly of something and then it comes and goes. Or, things don’t go as we expected or wanted. What do we do when that happens? We have a choice. We can get down and discouraged. We can dwell on the negative. Or, we can go into God’s presence and talk things over with Him. We can be mindful of Jesus’s love for us and how He longs to fill us and be our companion. I encourage you to choose to see life today through His eyes and every day as a gift. Use today to express gratefulness to Him for every single blessing before you: a place to live, family, work, the blessing of a ministry, friends, and your health.  Thank God for the freedom to live in a country where you can worship with other believers…if that is the case. I know some of you who receive this worship under oppressive circumstances. Thank God for those partnering with you and the protection God has given you to continue the work you do. In whatever circumstance you find yourself, ask God to fill you with His Spirit and joy. Yield to His divine direction throughout the day. Be a Christian who is known by your love and joy. Meditate on and live by the following:

You (God) will make known to me the path of life;
*In Your presence is fullness of joy*; In Your right hand there are
pleasures forever. Psalm 61:11

By this all people will know that you are My disciples: if you have love for one another. John 13:35

Prayers of My Heart journal can help. I speak from experience. The habit, the discipline of beginning every day focusing my mind on what I’m grateful for that God did the day before is a powerful mind and thought shaper. It begins my day thinking on the positive and God’s powerful sway in my day and life. Writing is a proven brain changer. There is no reason to go into the next year with the same old negative thought patterns when God tells us what to not do – be anxious and what to do – be thankful and to think on whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good report, excellent, and worthy of praise. Philippians 4:8

Lord God, thank You for the blessings in our lives. Turn our hearts and thoughts toward You today. Help us to see life through Your eyes and fill us with Your Spirit and joy. 

It’s a new day, but let me ask you something. Are you short on joy today? It can happen. We race toward special days or live expectantly of something and then it comes and goes. Or, things don’t go as we expected or wanted. What do we do when that happens? We have a choice. We can get down and discouraged. We can dwell on the negative. Or, we can go into God’s presence and talk things over with Him. We can be mindful of Jesus’s love for us and how He longs to fill us and be our companion. I encourage you today to choose to see life today through His eyes and that every day is a gift. Use today to express gratefulness to Him for every single blessing before you: a place to live, family, work, the blessing of a ministry, friends, your health.  Thank God for the freedom to live in a country where you can worship with other believers…if that is the case. I know some of you who receive this worship under oppressive circumstances. Thank God for those partnering with you and the protection God has given you to continue the work you do. In whatever circumstance you find yourself, ask God to fill you with His Spirit and joy. Yield to His divine direction throughout the day. Be a Christian who is known by your love and joy. Meditate on and live by the following:

You (God) will make known to me the path of life;
*In Your presence is fullness of joy*; In Your right hand there are
pleasures forever. Psalm 61:11

By this all people will know that you are My disciples: if you have love for one another. John 13:35

Prayers of My Heart journal can help. I speak from experience. The habit, the discipline of beginning every day focusing my mind on what I’m grateful for that God did the day before is a powerful mind and thought shaper. It begins my day thinking on the positive and God’s powerful sway in my day and life. Writing is a proven brain changer. There is no reason to go into the next year with the same ole negative thought patterns when God tells us what to not do – be anxious and what to do – be thankful and to think on whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good report, excellent, and worthy of praise. Philippians 4:8

“O LORD, open my lips, that my mouth may declare Your praise.”

   Psalm 51:15

Shut your mouth. Close your mouth. Don’t say that. Often during the early years of one’s life, words of instruction center on keeping one’s mouths closed. However, David, the psalmist, understood that our walk with God isn’t only about what we don’t say. It’s also about what we say.  We may get a gold star for not cussing. But do we get a gold star for praising God? If not, perhaps we should recognize that God is the one who not only inspires us to refrain from evil words, but is also the one who inspires us to praise.  “LORD, open my lips. Change me from a grumbler to a praiser. Open my lips to praise You.” That’s a good prayer to the ONE who can open our lips that our mouths may declare His praise; don’t you think?    

LORD God, You are not just the One who tells us what not to say. You are also the One who is powerful and able to lift our spirits and OPEN OUR LIPS to praise You. And, that we do! 

*We pray you are blessed by 365 DAYS of PRAISE. If so, find more encouragement on our ministry page HERE. 

Friends,

At the last P.R.A.Y. with Passion Conference, I promised my Wisconsin sisters I would provide the A – Z list of God’s names and attributes from my book, Pray With Purpose, Live With Passion. You will find them listed below. I suggested that a great way to begin your day is by looking up one of the Scripture references and praising God for how He is revealed in that passage. You can then continue your prayer time, repenting and confessing ways in which you realize you may be missing the mark in relation to that aspect of His divinity. Then, you can ask God for help in that area; as well as intercede for others. As discussed at the PRAY Conference, our prayer lives expand as we focus our prayers on God’s attributes.

For instance, we might worship God saying, “Lord, You are the Almighty God! I praise You.” Praising God for being Almighty may then cause me to contemplate on how I don’t always bend my will to His. Neither do I walk by His strength which He so willingly offers. With that prayerful realization, an opportunity to repent presents itself.

Next, I open my heart to God. “Fill me with Your power. Help my husband and children walk in Your strength today. Help the unsaved turn to You, the Almighty, and be saved.”

Having praised, repented, and asked, I now focus on yielding to God. My prayer time doesn’t end with my “Amen.” It begins as I listen to God’s voice and yield to the Holy Spirit’s promptings.

The following list of A-Z attributes contans 26 names and attributes to get you started. If you’d like to continue broadening your praise, repentance, asking, and yielding, I have a complilation of 225 + Names, Titles, and Attributes of God. In addition, Pray with Purpose, Live with Passion provides valuable Scriptural insights, personal examples, stories, and guided prayer opportunities for you with each A-Z attribute. It also has discussion questions if you’re reading it with a group or using it for your Bible study. You’ll also find a P.R.A.Y. chart that gives examples for how to praise, repent, ask, and yield in relation to the 26 A-Z attributes included in the book.

For those new to Prayers of My Heart Prayer Journal, I suggest you label your first column in the Week at a Glance section, “LORD.” At the Wisconsin P.R.A.Y. Conference, we labeled April 5, “Almighty” and agreed to lift our voices each morning, praising God for a different attribute each day. This morning as I praised God as Immanuel, it was a blessing knowing that my Wisconsin sisters were joining me.

I pray the following is just the beginning of a lifetime of praising God!

Love,

Debbie

Sunday Almighty, Ps 91:1
Monday Beloved, Mt 3:16-17
Tuesday Comforter, 2 Cor 1:3
Wednesday Door, John 10:10
Thrusday Eternal, Deut 33:27
Friday Faithful, Rev 19:11
Saturday Guardian of My Soul, 1 Peter 2:25

Sunday Holy, Psalm 99:5
Monday Immanuel, Is 7:14
Tuesday Just, Deut 32:4
Wednesday King of Kings, Ps 5:2-3
Thursday Light, John 8:12
Friday Majestic, Psalm 8:1
Saturday New Life, 2 Cor 5:17

Sunday Overcomer, John 16:33
Monday Potter, Is 64:8
Tuesday Quickening Spirit, Ps 80:18 KJV
Wednesday Righteous, Psalm 7:17
Thursday Shield, Psalm 3:3
Friday Tower, Proverbs 18:10
Saturday Upholder, Is 41:13

Sunday Vinedresser, John 15:1
Monday Wonderful, Psalm 105:2-5
Tuesday eXalted, Psalm 34:3
Wednesday Yahweh, Exodus 3:14-15
Thursday Zealous, Is 9:7

PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO OTHERS SO THEY CAN JOIN US AS WE P.R.A.Y. Across the Nation. If I haven’t been to your state and your church can host 200+ women, email me about having a P.R.A.Y. with Passion Conference. debbie@hillcountryministries.org.

Friends,

There is no greater joy than knowing God and serving Him. If you’ve heard me speak or teach you know a significant time in my life was when God directed my heart to understand that there is nothing in and of my old self that He can use. All that is good and glorious pours from HIS Holy nature. Since that time, my prayer and life mission has been to increasingly know God and the power of His resurrection. (Phil 3:7-8)

Whether you recently received your journal or have been journaling for years, I’d like to encourage you to use the first column in the Week at a Glance section for the Lord. Yes, title the first column “Lord.” Then, each day when you pray, select a different attribute for which to praise Him. For those of you who also ordered the 200 A-Z Names, Attributes, and Titles of God, you may be checking the boxes beside each attribute on which you focus. Others of you may simply be prayerfully focusing on different attributes of God for which you praise Him. I have already added 20 more attributes to the 200! The list keeps growing and it is such a delight to increasingly know and love my Lord!

Here’s how to do it. This morning, when I rose, I went to my study and knelt as I always do. Truly, as Isaiah 39:15b says, “In quietness and trust is your strength.” I find that beginning each day in quietness before God is the key to walking by His Spirit the rest of the day. In addition to beginning each day on my knees, God’s Word is the powerful sword that clears the clutter from my mind and sharpens me to His Words and ways. Lately I’ve been reading through Isaiah. Today, I read Isaiah 30. And, guess what? I added to my list of 200 Names, 3 more names. It’s so much fun! I pray you have your Bible open beside your journal every day. I pray as God reveals Himself to you through the Word, that becomes a springboard from which you broaden your prayers for others and yourself.

The 3 names I added and you can add?
Isaiah 30:20 Teacher. Yes…can you believe I left “Teacher” off the 200 Names list? What was I thinking???
Isaiah 30:29 Rock of Israel. We already have “Rock,” but I like the addition of “of Israel.”
Isaiah 30:30 Voice of Authority. Oh, friends, if we ever need to be reminded of this attritubute of God, it is now. HE is the Voice of Authority. When other voices in our heads tell us to turn to the right or left, we need to remember God is our Teacher. We need to heed HIS VOICE of AUTHORITY in all areas of our lives.

Consider Isaiah 30:20-21 in conjunction with verse 30 as the springboard for your prayers today. “Although the Lord has given you bread of privation and water of oppression, He, your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher. Your ears will hear a word behind you, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left.”

Although these verses are a reference to the glories of the Millennium, they hold true for believers today. God speaks to us the way, the right and left, through the Bible and through the voice of His Holy Spirit. The question is, are we listening?

Today, dear one, focus your prayers by beginning your prayer time praising God as your Teacher, Rock, and Voice of Authority. Then repent. Yes, too often we forget this part. However, it’s an important part of P.R.A.Y. (praise, repent, ask, yield) We need to repent where we’ve fallen away from the image of the One who created us and called us into conformity with Him.

“Father, forgive me. You are my Teacher, yet I’ve ignored your teaching in this area: ______. You are the Rock of Israel and my Rock, yet I’ve chosen to totter in this sin, _____________.
You are the Voice of Authority, yet I’ve listened to other voices that have lured me from pure devotion to You. Forgive me.”

Yes, friends. Let us praise God each morning for who He is. But let us not forget to repent where we have sinned. Praising God should not only direct our hearts to the glory of who God is, but should also serve as a reminder of ways in which He wants to conform us to His beloved Son.

Rejoice with me today, loved one. We have a Teacher. We have a Rock. We have a Voice of Authority. And, as you rejoice, remember to pray for others that they will learn from the Teacher, stand on the Rock, and heed the Voice of Authority.

Love,
Debbie