Recently, we learned about how to praise God. You can read about it in our last post. We learned in that post how much God enjoys praise, and how beneficial it is for us. Then we decided to spend our entire prayer time for one week only praising and thanking a God.
Fears Going In – Mostly My Needs!
One of my trepidations when I decided to try this mode of prayer was the lost opportunity to make requests to God.
There are a lot of needs in the world. I have a lot of needs, real and imagined. We all have places in our lives we need God to work in. In light of those, we do not want to completely stop asking God to work in and around us. Yet, we desire to learn how to – and how to get proficient at – offering praise to God. This becomes a matter of faith.
Is God all-knowing? Yes!
Is God all-powerful? Yes, he is!
Is God loving and kind? Indeed!
If I believe God is all of these, then I must be able to believe that God can take care of me for one week without me telling him how to do it. So, to acknowledge both my continued need for his help, and my faith in his oversight, I began each prayer time with these lines:
“Lord, you know everything, including all of my needs. You are also all-powerful. You can easily take care of everyone of those needs. So, for the next few days I am going to trust you to know what I need and to take care of it while I just praise you.”
And then I would praise God and thank him for his work.
What I Experienced Only Praising God
As one might expect, the removal of any requests from my planned time of prayer led to a very different experience of prayer. This new experience of prayer manifested itself in three main ways.
Sense of Giving to God
It felt different to only offer praise to God for one week. So often in my time with prayer, I feel like I am trying to get God to do something. Or I am trying to get God to give me something. It is right to make requests of God. Philippians 4:6 tells us, “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” (ESV) However, I see now in my own heart, how prayer was – in a subtle way – my time to “get mine.” I had an agenda – right or wrong – I was after something. And that something was not always joy in the presence of the Lord.
That sense was flipped on its head when I offered only praise and thanksgiving to God. No longer did I come to God each day seeking something material. No more did I enter his presence hoping to leave with something I did not arrive with. Now, instead, I came to God to give him something. To give him something valuable, to offer him something he treasures. I entered God’s presence just to give – and it felt good.
I was not expending effort trying to convince God I needed something. And, I was not stressed about receiving what I wanted. In God’s presence, I just gave to him.
I found the comparison between my old and new ways to pray was similar to comparing the experience of Christmas as a child versus as an adult. As children, despite our folks’ best efforts, we spent a lot of time worrying about our Christmas list. We wrote it out. It was edited frequently, often after new TV spots appeared. We made sure it was communicated to Santa and to our folks. Christmas was about getting what we wanted.
Like little Ralphie and his Red Ryder BB gun from The Christmas Story. Ralphie’s desire was clear, and it was pervasive. Christmas for Ralphie was all about getting that BB gun.Years go by, and now as a parent, I have enough stuff. What I want most is to give my kids presents that they will love and enjoy. As I move from kid to parent, Christmas moves from stress about what I want to the joy of giving.
Limiting my prayer to praise and thanksgiving had a similar affect on my experience of prayer.
Praise is Uplifting
Only offering praise and thanks to God for a week turned out to be uplifting. In order to truly praise God for who he is, it was necessary that I spend a fair amount of time understanding and contemplating God’s character and attributes.
It was uplifting to me to be reminded of how awesome God really is. It was encouraging to remember that this person I spend all of this time praying to is so powerful, caring, holy, wise, kind and so on and on.
Refocused by Praise
Along with the emotional uplift, I found a refocusing occurring in my heart. As I spent so much time contemplating God’s amazing attributes – I felt encouraged and uplifted as I said – but I also began to think more about God. I began to focus more on how able he was to act and about how willing he was to act in our behalf. To think more about these, in turn, led me to think less about all the things I wanted, all my requests.
It reminded me of a story Tim Keller tells about a woman in his church. He preached a sermon on the Lord’s prayer and advised his people to praise God before they make their requests. A few weeks later a woman came to him and relayed how praising first had affected her:
“”Before,” she said, “I would run right to my prayer list and the more I went through all the problems and needs, the more anxious and burdened I would get. Now I’ve started spending time thinking about how good and wise he is, and how many prayers he’s answered of mine in the past. And when I get to my own needs – now I find I can put them in his hands and I can feel the burden coming off me rather than on me.”” (Keller, Prayer, 190)
My sentiments exactly. Placing focus on the greatness of the provider shrunk the size of the needs. And the corresponding levels of concern.
Limited Time Only
In practicing only praise and thanksgiving for one week, I gained a lot. I took on the knowledge of how to really praise God. I also became comfortable with the process. And, I gained the aforementioned joy of giving, the uplifting, and refocusing.
The practice did seem to have a shelf life however. For me, after five days things began to change a little. I still enjoyed praising God. But I was beginning to miss the other forms of interaction. Whereas most people who pray are imbalanced away from praise, I could feel the imbalance moving into the direction of praise. I continued on for the full week, but the best results came in the first five days.
If you want to try this, I would recommend planning to do it for only 3-5 days. Long enough to actually learn something and to be changed by it; yet not long enough to dig a new rut. Inserting a single day of praise and thanksgiving into your prayer routine could also be beneficial.
Going Forward
The skills I learned have their place in my normal prayer routine as well. After completing my week of praise only, I returned to the outline that Jesus taught. We learned this outline in an earlier post. That outline opens with praise. Now when I open with praise, I open the Word. I read a few verses about God’s attributes, or I read through a Psalm. As I read I keep the eyes of my heart open to God revealing himself – and I respond in praise. Then I continue to move through Jesus’ outline of prayer.
I am considering future “Praise Binges” of 3-5 days. Single days of praise only are also on my radar. I think they would really have their place on days when I am particularly discouraged or anxious. When the problems are overwhelming and threating to overrun us, putting all our attention on love and power of God seems a new best-practice.
Praise Only – A Great Place to Restart the Prayer Life
Many have tried prayer in the past. For whatever reason it did not work out. We did not receive what we wanted. What we begged for. What we sought for over YEARS. And so, we gave up on prayer.
Yet, now, the desire to pray returns. It won’t go away. We want to come back, but we are afraid. Afraid God will not come through. Concerned we will once again not receive what we wanted – what we needed. If we are feeling this draw to pray and at the same time feeling fearful, praise and thanks only is a great way to come back.
Praying in a way that is made up entirely of praise and thanksgiving is totally non-demand. God can’t fail to receive praise. He won’t drop the ball on accepting our thanks. Praying this way transforms prayer from a test of God and his willingness or ability to act and turns it into a space where we can acknowledge the reality of his greatness. In that space, over time, we can become comfortable in God’s presence again. Over time, our hearts will refocus. The focus will move away from the hurt to the felt need. And over more time, it will hopefully shift from our felt needs, to the good Lord.
As we are focused more on God and his attributes by praising those traits, hopefully our spirits will be lifted and a spark of confidence will ignite. A tiny little spark that will give us the confidence to once again ask God for something. However small a request it is.
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