Devotions - Prayer

Worship that is fresh, leads to a witness that is faithful.

Psalm 96:1-2 Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. Sing to the LORD, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day.

God is righteous, and we are born sinners. He gave us an opportunity to be saved, and we need to grab a hold of the opportunity. We must share this salvation. We can’t build friendships just to share the Gospel. We can’t wait, as it needs to happen now.

God calls us to be fresh in our worship. * “Song” speaks of worship.
* Our mind is in AWE of God
* Our heart is in LOVE with God
* Our will is SUBMITTED to God
*** “New”= Fresh
**** God wants a FRESH WORSHIP!

God commands us to be faithful in our witness.
*Worship 1st/Witness Second
*If we praise Him, we will proclaim Him
* Believers are commanded to witness by:
*Verbally speaking
*Visually showing
*Generously sharing.
God exhorts us there to express our praise to Him in various ways. In particular, He says that we are to “sing to the LORD a new song.” God never wants His praise to become old, to become stale, to become just a matter of ritual and routine.

In the New Testament, the apostle Paul writes to Christians in the epistle to the Ephesians. He speaks about three different ways in which we can bring praise and worship to God.
He speaks about psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.
1. Psalms, I understand to mean, are those which are recorded for us in the inspired words of Scripture.
2.  Hymns are the great traditional songs of the Christian church which have been consecrated by age and usage and which express our faith and our worship.
3. But there are also spiritual songs. I believe that’s what the psalmist speaks about when he speaks about a “new song.” That’s not something that’s written down in advance. That’s something that’s Given to us spontaneously by the Holy Spirit just as we enter God’s Holy Spirit and begin to worship Him, just as we recognize some new facet of His salvation.  So the Holy Spirit gives us a new song.  It’s a spontaneous response to a fresh revelation of God’s ongoing salvation.

How does the Psalmist say to represent Him among the nations?  By telling two things.
1).  His Splendor
2).  His amazing deeds

So what does this mean for us?  It means two things.
1).  It means we need to corporately be worshipping God together, experiencing Him, knowing Him,

2).  and it means we need to be telling the “nations” (the unbelieving) about how great He is and what He has done.  Scripture says “His amazing deeds”–during the Psalmists time, those deeds are recorded in Scripture: the plagues in Egypt, the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, miraculous wins in battle, enemies being swallowed up, people being healed, people being killed, fire falling from heaven and consuming sacrifices…the list goes one.

But for us, His most amazing deed would in fact be the death and resurrection of Christ, that God’s own Son, through whom all things were created, should die in our place, and then rise again, and THEN bestow within us the Holy Spirit that we might be indwelt by God’s Spirit.  Those are pretty amazing deeds.  I wonder what the Psalmist would have said to that?
We are so Blessed!!
Lord help me to live my life in a constant awareness of God and who he is and what he has done.
God, help me to lie totally for you, aware of you and thankful for all you are and all you do.   Thank You LORD for saving my soul and for revealing in me your glory! I will decare You among the nations!  Amen