Revive Our Hearts

Dana Gresh: "Magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together." That invitation is from Psalm 34, and today I'm extending it to you. If worship has become a little ritualistic to you lately, if you're just singing words on Sunday morning without marveling at Jesus, I'm hoping this episode will be deeply refreshing, like a drink of cold water that revives and reminds you that you're alive.

I'm your host, Dana Gresh. Today on Revive Our Hearts Weekend, we're answering the question: What's the point of praise? I have to tell you, I dragged myself to church a few weeks ago, grumbling most of the way. There had just been a lot of hard things going on in my life. My husband and I have a broken refrigerator, the air conditioning is not working, there is a chipmunk loose in my living room that I cannot catch.

I don't know, do you ever get to the place where it's just the little things that bog you down and you're like, "One more of the next things is going to be what breaks me"? I've just been like that. Well, I dragged myself to church—I kind of have to admit my husband dragged me to church. On the way home, I said to him, "I feel different." He said, "What do you mean you feel different?" I said, "Well, when we went in there, my body hurt from the stress, and it doesn't anymore. I feel different."

Friends, worshipping God that morning changed the way my body felt. All those problems just kind of faded away. Worshipping God refreshed and restored my soul. Let's not forget that. Let's start today with the ultimate point of our praise: to bring Jesus glory. He is worthy of all our worship today and every day. Here's my friend Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth to expand on this.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: There's a precious story told about President Abraham Lincoln. You can imagine that as the president, he had an incredibly busy schedule. One day, the story is told, a little old woman came to his office and asked to see him. Though he didn't know why she had come, he graciously agreed that he would see her.

When she stepped into his office, he introduced himself and said, "What can I do for you?" She said, "Oh, I didn't come to ask you to do anything for me." She had heard that there was a special kind of cookie that President Lincoln really liked, and she had made him some of these cookies and brought them to his office. Now, you couldn't do that today with the president, but back then you could.

The story is told that with tears in his eyes, President Lincoln looked at that woman and said, "You are the very first person who's ever come into my office not asking or wanting anything from me but bringing me a gift. I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart."

As I think of how moved a president was at the thought that someone would come to him not wanting to get anything but just wanting to give, to express appreciation to him, and how much that meant to him, my heart goes to our Heavenly King and President and Lord. I wonder sometimes if God doesn't feel, "Those people down there spend a lot of time coming into my office and asking me for things."

Now, God wants us to come into His office and ask Him for things, and that's a big part of what prayer is all about. He tells us, "Come and bring your requests before me," so there is nothing wrong with that. But I wonder if sometimes God isn't just longing for us to come and say, "I don't want to ask for anything. I don't want You to do anything for me. I just want to give something to You. I want to bring You a gift. I made something for You."

Those homemade cookies that little lady made probably were nothing compared to what the chefs of whatever it was where the president lived could have made. I'm sure he could have had fancier meals. Sometimes when we bring our praise to the Lord, I feel like this is just my little homemade cookies. It's not much, but God says, "I love it."

God loves our praise. He loves it when we bring Him our worship. As much as you love it when your little child comes to you with a handful of crumpled dandelions that you know are really weeds, but that child reaches out and gives those to you and says, "I picked these for you, Mama," you love it.

Even though to us it may look like just a handful of crumpled dandelions or a tin of cookies, God says, "Whoever offers praise glorifies me." In fact, the psalmist said, "I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify Him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs." What's he saying? More than any other gift I could bring to the Lord, it will please Him if I bring Him my song and my thanksgiving.

You see, the Lord is supremely worthy of our worship and our praise. Let me say, by the way, that we're all worshippers. We all worship and praise something or someone. We're made to worship. We can't help ourselves. The question is: who or what do we worship? The fact is most of us worship ourselves.

We worship things. We worship this earth. We worship our own hopes and desires, our families, our houses, our time, and our reputation. Those are the things that are precious to us. But true worship is coming to see the incredible value and worth of Christ as surpassing anything else that might have meaning to me.

That's why the psalmist said in Psalm 73, "Lord, who do I have in heaven besides You? And on earth, there is nothing, there is no one that I desire more than You. Lord, You are more precious than silver. You're more costly than gold. You're more beautiful than diamonds, and nothing that I desire compares with You." The psalmist said, "I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised."

Praise is due to You, O God, in Zion. It's what we owe to Him. He's worthy of our praise and our worship. That's what the angel said in Revelation chapter 4 in John's vision: "Worthy are You, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created." He created us. He owns us. If we are His children, He has bought us, purchased us to be His own. We owe Him all our praise.

Dana Gresh: Amen. He is worthy. Later in that message, Nancy spends some time in prayer, exemplifying what true praise sounds like. If you'd enjoy listening to that, we'll link to the full episode in today's transcript. Just visit reviveourhearts.com/weekend to find it.

We find so many great examples of praise in Scripture, and there's a particularly beautiful one in John chapter 12. At a Revive conference, Pastor Bob Bakke recounted this scene for us. It centers on Christ and a woman. Women were considered pretty insignificant in this time, sadly, so that should cause you and me to lean in.

Bob Bakke: This woman had few choices in life. She could be divorced easily. When she got married, all a husband had to do was say, "You burned my breakfast three days in a row. I call you into my home, I have two witnesses, I say, 'I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you,' and you are out." Her gender was not trusted in the courts of law. She was a woman who could not survive on her own apart from the hospitality of her family or her friends.

She could not survive on her own economically. She could not inherit property. She was lost. She could serve in somebody's household, be a wet nurse to somebody's baby, be loved and cherished in somebody's home. She might beg on the streets or sell her body. Those were her career options. She is the one upon whom the entirety of the Gospel of John pivots. In this moment, the least, at least in the eyes of Jewish men, becomes the greatest.

John chapter 12, let me read it in the NIV: "Six days before the Passover, Jesus arrived at Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with Him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped His feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume."

"But one of His disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray Him, objected, 'Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.' He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. 'Leave her alone,' Jesus replied. 'It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.'"

As the powerful Sanhedrin becomes the supreme expression of humankind’s refusal to believe in Jesus, the anointing of Jesus by a powerless Mary becomes the most magnificent expression of adoring faith. Both prophesy about Jesus’ death. By Mary’s humble adoration, Mary does a thing of more significance than she could possibly have imagined. She has no clue what she is doing except adoring her Lord.

Only Jesus has the eyes to see the magnitude of her actions. In verse 8, Jesus says it was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. "It was intended," He said. This is a statement full of mystery and wonder all by itself. These words aren't literally in the Greek text, but the force of the grammar of the Greek demands that we understand the words of Jesus this way.

Jesus is saying that God's design all along, before the foundations of the earth were laid, God planned that this family treasure, now in Mary's possession, would be kept for this day and this moment. Mary, again, who is oblivious to the higher meaning of her actions, participates in God's sovereign design and administers the death anointing of the Christ.

Mary, by obeying the impulse of her heart, unwittingly becomes the divine agent who prepares the Lamb of God to redeem the earth. What's John's point? The point is this: that Jesus, having been rightly adored, is now rightly prepared for the hour of His glory. Our Redeemer, who culminated His public ministry by calling Lazarus from the grave, is now readied for the cross and the grave Himself because a single woman of absolutely no consequence to her surrounding culture was compelled to worship Him at His feet.

Listen to me again, please. There is no telling what divine scheme we may be initiating, what you may be initiating, what mysteries may be unfolding, what enemies we may be defeating when we simply give ourselves for the worship and adoration of Jesus.

Dana Gresh: Wow. What a thought-provoking challenge from Pastor Bob Bakke. We just uncovered another point of praise: it's a way we participate in God's redemptive story. It centers our hearts on the Savior. When we worship, our gaze shifts. We see Jesus more clearly. The Gospel becomes more beautiful to us.

The world may respond to our worship like Judas responded to Mary's. People might say, "What a waste," but we know the truth. Our praise presses back the darkness. It confronts the enemy by holding up Christ's glory. So let's be lavish with our praise like Mary. Let's pour it out like a fragrant offering.

This offering of praise serves a beautiful dual purpose: it glorifies the Lord and encourages our brothers and sisters. That's the third and final point of praise: it's a powerful way we love our fellow Christ-followers. My good friend Aaron Davis sat down with Juelle Crowe and pastor's wife Alejandra Sleeman to talk about this. Their conversation was part of a larger series on the life of Elizabeth. Let's listen.

Aaron Davis: The Bible talks about the sacrifice of praise. I love that phrase. Why do you think the Bible calls praise a sacrifice?

Juelle Crowe: Because praise isn't always easy. It doesn't come naturally in disappointment and suffering.

Aaron Davis: Isn't that inspiring? I love Sunday morning. I love to be in church. I feel like the rest of the week there are just dogs chasing me, trying to chomp onto my ankles. Then I get into the sanctuary and I'm with the Body of Christ, and it's like somebody called off the dogs. I know enough about my local church body to know she's singing and she's going through something hard. That couple is here and they are going through something hard. His hands are in the air and he is worshipping and he is walking through a season of hard. That is the sacrifice of praise.

Alejandra Sleeman: It makes praise mean so much more. All of us can fall into the rut of knowing the words, singing the words, not even thinking about the words. But when we have to come to worship when we don't feel like it and we make that sacrifice of praise, it's hard, but it is so beautiful and precious.

Aaron Davis: Why do we continue to do it? Because Jesus is still worthy. That's what we're saying to each other. We're saying, "Yeah, we're broken, this is broken, the culture is broken, and Jesus is worthy of us being here still." So there is something about singing to each other. As you've been reading Elizabeth's story over and over again in these weeks, what struck out to you about how Elizabeth encouraged others?

Alejandra Sleeman: It doesn't record her lamenting through the years prior to receiving this miracle. Her not complaining but quietly, patiently waiting for the Lord to save, I think that says a lot about a woman. We could tend to voice things very quickly because we feel it, it must be true. She somehow—there's no scripture recorded that she complained. On the contrary, she just felt honored. When Mary came, it was beautiful how she received her with such grace and how she shared that stage of their lives with such love.

Aaron Davis: Her excitement about Mary's pregnancy is phenomenal to me. She is what I call a champion. She is going to champion Mary, and she could have done differently. She could have thought, "Here I have waited all my life, I was married, I did it right, and now I'm older and pregnant. Here this young thing is not even married, she's doing it all out of order, and she gets to have the Savior, the Messiah." She could have been embittered, but she wasn't. She's so thrilled for Mary.

Scripture doesn't necessarily say that she's singing, but she's so excited. She is saying, "This baby in my womb is leaping." She is the first human to declare Jesus as Lord. She says that baby in her womb, she calls Him the Lord. That's not a heart attitude that wasn't created over time. That's not a heart position that didn't take time to develop. She clearly was tethered to the Lord. She was excited for what the Lord would do. Maybe she did some singing over that baby in Mary's womb.

I think we have that same call to encourage each other. I'm going to read us Ephesians 5 because it gets pretty specific about how we do that. Encouragement is another one of those Christian buzzwords, but what does it mean to encourage? Ephesians 5:18-21 says this: "And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making a melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ."

How do we encourage each other? This is telling us to sing to each other. That might feel a little silly. There's an older gentleman in our church that's gone now, but he would come and he would say the psalms out loud at the beginning of Sunday. He would talk about what a great day it is to be singing in the house of the Lord, and you would go, "Yeah, it is a great day." So there is power in our songs, I think, and in singing to each other in the midst of disappointment and in encouraging the disappointed ones in our lives, which is all of us.

Alejandra Sleeman: Could it be to not disappear from the means of grace that the Lord has provided for us to be in the community of fellowship? Sometimes when I feel disappointed, guess what? On that Sunday, I'm not going to church. It's so easy to hide. I stop going to the Bible study. I have friends that as soon as they're not in Bible study, I'm like, "You're depressed." They ask, "How do you know?" I say, "I know you withdraw." I think we tend to do that, so this is so important that we understand even if you don't feel like singing, at least surround yourself with people that are singing because that is speaking into your spirit and into your heart, and that is encouraging you.

Aaron Davis: To remind ourselves: why are we singing at church? Let's read a couple passages of Scripture. If you're not sure that you should be singing, just spend a little bit of time in the Psalms.

Juelle Crowe: I have Psalm 71, verse 23, which says, "My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to You; my soul also, which You have redeemed." I love that. My lips will shout for joy. It's an "I'm going to do it." I'm going to shout for joy, I'm going to sing to You. It's a choice.

Alejandra Sleeman: I have Psalm 95, verse 1. It says, "O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation."

Aaron Davis: It's that "Let us. Come on, let's do it, Church. Let's make a joyful noise." I love that the singing is connected to the greatness of God. Even when we feel disappointed, when we do not feel like singing for our own sake, we're not singing about ourselves. We are singing about the glory of our God.

I can get a little bit squeamish about those songs that we're singing as a church that are us-focused. I have plenty of practice of focusing on myself. I'm an expert navel-gazer. I'm pretty self-absorbed in my flesh. It's this, "Oh, let us come together and sing about the greatness of God. Let us think about Him. Let us do it collectively. Let us do it loudly. Let's focus on Him."

Psalm 105:2 is the passage I wanted to read: "Sing to Him, sing praises to Him; tell of all His wondrous works." There's an exclamation point right there in Scripture. The Bible is full of that, like, "Come on, Church. Let's sing about Him. Let's sing to Him. Let's sing together. Let's sing as we go. Let's sing in the car. Let's sing in the church. Let's sing from the rooftops." You know what there's a lot of going on in the church? Hand-wringing. Like, "Oh, the culture is dark, the times are dreary, the election is whatever." I think this seems like an overly simplistic solution, but I don't have a plan better than the Lord's throughout all of time. Let us sing. Let's sing about the goodness of God.

Dana Gresh: Amen. I can't wait to go to church this Sunday and worship the Lord alongside my brothers and sisters in Christ. I hope you'll do the same. I hope you'll sing to the Lord with your local body of believers. As Revive Our Hearts continues to expand internationally and reach women around the world, I can't help but think of these words from Isaiah chapter 61: "For as the earth produces its growth, and as a garden enables what is sown to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations."

What beautiful imagery. I'm in awe of how God is allowing Revive Our Hearts to take part in this work. Through our radio program and podcast episodes, print resources, blog articles, and so much more, we get to magnify the name of Jesus among the nations. It's such a privilege and another reason for praise.

To explore our global outreaches, we'd love for you to visit reviveourhearts.com/global. It's really encouraging to read about all that God is doing around the world through this ministry. If you have a heart for the message of Revive Our Hearts and you feel prompted to help spread it further, you can partner with us through a financial gift.

When you make a donation of any amount this month, we'll send you a copy of Nancy's newly updated devotional, Dwell: 30 Days with God in the Psalms, as our thanks. To give and request your copy, visit reviveourhearts.com. If you feel worn out, weak, or even desperate today, I have good news for you: those feelings are really an invitation to depend on the Lord. He loves you and wants you to come to Him.

Next weekend, we're going to embrace our need together and marvel at the God who meets us in it. Thanks for listening today. I'm Dana Gresh. We'll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend. This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.