In my much-earlier post I talked about “Why We Praise God” (that is the name of the post). If you missed it, please check it out. That post was addressed to atheists (and any unbeliever) who wondered if praising God was foolish. The post also addressed believers who wondered the same thing. In this post I address believers who are hurt or fearful, and why praising God first (before asking for help) brings us comfort.
There is a special kind of prayer we can follow, but only when we have extra time. The Bible shows this pattern in the prayers of some strong believers. The acronym A.C.T.S. represents this prayer. First we Adore God. We praise him for who he is and for his many great qualities, as well as for what he does. Second, we Confess our sins. Third, we Thank God for the many things he does for us. Finally we Supplicate or request God’s help.
When a believer is scared or hurt, she may rightfully wonder why she should praise God before she asks him for help. She knows that in urgent trauma, we immediately ask for help, and that is right. These prayers (where we cry out for help instantly) are like a kettle on fire. First we must use the fire extinguisher to douse the flame before we can thank God for getting the fire out.
But beyond rare and urgent problems, why do believers profit from praising God before telling him about problems and soliciting help? God knows a secret about how praising him actually helps us. The praising gives us spiritual armor!
In my earlier post I talked about why we praise God. Let me split these praises in two categories. First, we praise him for his qualities, such as beauty, power, purity, kindness, love, generosity, tender heartedness, and more. When we praise him this way, we are not thinking about how hard our problems are, but we are admiring how wonderful God is. We are filled with surprise and awe, because God is so different from us. He is so powerful and capable.
Second, we praise God for what he has done. Now we are looking at what this wonderful God does with his perfect qualities. He does these many great things for us. He loves us, rescues us, and cares for us tenderly. When we praise him for overcoming evil, we remember how he did this for us. For example, Cols. 2:15 says, “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” Our generalized praise for God’s works begins to become personalized: “He helped me when I was grieving in anguish,” “He gave to me when I didn’t have enough,” “He befriended me when I was alone,” etc. We remember the many times he helped us. Here we are praising him and haven’t even gotten to the Confess, Thanks, Supplicate part. We are still praying to God in the adore part of the A.C.T.S. prayer.
This is when we remember God helped us with our problems in the past. This big, kind, wise God could easily address our past problems. We recognize the power and capability of this God (The God), we are praying to. Wow, he really did those things for us in the past. He will help us again. Through our praise of him, God shows us he wants to help us. He has helped us. He will help us. Our praise enables us to remember how strong God is.
In life’s difficulties, we are like people surrounded by overcast days. We focus on the heavy clouds and wonder when we will see the sun again. We don’t mean to focus on our problems. Like those overcast days with clouds that surround us, our problems surround us. We cannot see anything but our problems. And like the enormous clouds, our problems look like they are huge and insurmountable. In our flesh, we cannot calmly overcome our fears, pain and trouble. So we need to praise God. We need to study God’s character and actions. We need to see who and what he is, so we can trust him. Our praise strengthens our trust in him and hope in him. This is why we usually praise God first before we ask him for help.
I’ll talk more about the second part of the A.C.T.S. prayer in a future post, so please keep coming back to our blog. Thanks for joining us in this post. May the Lord bless you this week! We are thankful to God for you!