What is Praise & Worship?
I was reading Psalm 117. It’s a short Psalm, only 2 verses. It says this in the Jewish Study Bible:
“Praise Adonai, all you nations! Worship him, all you peoples! For his grace has overcome us,
and Adonai’s truth continues forever. Hallelujah!”
This Psalm gives us the invitation to both praise and worship our Father. I think for many of us, when we think of the words praise and worship, we think that’s what we do on a Sunday when we go to church and sing the songs that the worship team are leading from the stage. While this is true to a degree, if we just leave it there and go no further with it, we can miss out on what is a deeply personal experience the Father is inviting us to have with Him.
When I looked up the word ‘praise’, the Hebrew definition read this: “to be clear (in sound); to shine; hence to make a show; to boast; and thus, to be foolish; to rave; to celebrate; celebrate, commend, glory, rage.” The Greek definition says, “to sing, to tell of, to give, or to confess.”
In other words, praising means to be thankful for His goodness and His blessings and to declare that goodness to others. And there are examples of this all throughout the Scriptures. Various Psalms (9, 18 and 28) describe how to praise God for what He has done for us. Hebrews 13 tells us that instead of offering sacrifices to God like the Israelites did in the Old Testament, we offer Him a sacrifice of praise. And in Acts 16 we see Paul and Silas praising God in prison, declaring His goodness before the other prisoners, even after being severely beaten.
These verses tell us that praise is an outward expression of the goodness of God to Him and to others, which flows from the heart when we reflect on and drink in how good He is. This doesn’t have to happen in church on a Sunday, and it should just naturally flow from us and our intimacy with the Father. I believe the closer we grow to Him, the more praise will naturally be a part of our vocabulary!
Worship, in both the original Greek and Hebrew, convey the idea of: “to prostrate oneself, to bow down, to fall face down, to pay homage and to pay respect.” Worship is the highest form of honour and respect that we can show towards God. This can be done in public settings, but I believe it is actually a very intimate and personal thing. And I also believe that more than physical actions (although there is a place for that), it is a posture of the heart. Isaiah 29 describes how God desires our hearts more than anything. Although if we truly worship God with our hearts, the actions will naturally follow.
An amazing example of this is in John 12, when Mary, the close friend of Jesus and the sister of Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead, anointed his feet with a very expensive bottle of perfume. This action flowed from her deep love for and intimate relationship with Jesus. And Jesus was quick to defend, affirm and honour her actions.
So, as we can see, praise and worship is more than an activity on a Sunday, and more than a ritual that we do. It is a part of walking in intimacy with our heavenly Father. It is a way of life, a core part of who we are, and as this becomes a greater and greater part of our lives, the fruit that flows out of our lives into the world around us will grow and grow!