praise belongs to You

 praise belongs to You
let songs of children rise
You silence all your foes
You set your glory in the skies

 praise belongs to You
creation’s calling out
for the King to be revealed
oh King of heaven come down
King of heaven come down 

i’ve come to worship, i’ve come to lift up Your name
for You deserve this life laid down like the one that You gave
i have but one voice, one heart, and one sacrifice
so won’t You take this life laid down and be glorified

 (glorified, by jared anderson)

praise belongs to You. all of our praise belongs to the One who created us to praise Him. all of our worship, our adoration, our longing, devotion, our admiration…all of it belongs to God. and when we are praising God, all of us should be completely focused on all of Him, or, like another song says, taking part in the art of losing myself in bringing You praise.

the weekend before i left michigan i was privileged to help out with a winter retreat for middle schoolers. now, i’m going to be honest and say that middle school kids are not necessarily my favorite age group to work with – they’re at a stage in life where they can be very influenced by their peers and generally don’t listen well to adults, plus they can be whiney and clique-y and full of themselves (but then again, can’t we all?). however, i realized during this retreat that, if put in the right kind of environment with strong leadership and sound Biblical teaching, middle schoolers can also revert back to that child-like faith, that all-out adoration that i was talking about earlier. they open up to their peers and leaders, they pray over each other, they selflessly allow others to go first in line, they step up.

so here’s what i want you to do, God helping you: take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. instead, fix your attention on God. you’ll be changed from the inside out. readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

 

they began to be different, putting all parts of their lives before God. they didn’t care so much about what their friends were thinking. they thought about the choices they were making, the things they were spending most of their time on. they rearranged their priorities. they were called, and they responded.

these kids were dancing before their King. they were sending all their adoration up to Him. they were allowing God to do something in their hearts. and it was so simple. and so pure. and all for His glory and the praise of His name.