Praise Tag

September 3, 2006

The Kind of Music God Loves

Because we are so used to being entertained, it is easy to make the mistake of thinking a worship service is to entertain the audience. If you think it is like an opera, or a play where this is the stage and we’re the performers—you’ve got it all wrong. Here’s an important spiritual truth about worship: Worship is always for an audience of One. Every song, every prayer, every offering is to be directed to God Almighty. When we applaud, we really aren’t applauding the talents or efforts of the person or group singing. Our applause is to show appreciation to the audience of One who has filled our hearts with grace and made all this possible.

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February 22, 2004

The Power of Positive Praise

Right now, some of you are in bondage. You may chained to your past, or by your problems, or by your pain. You’re still bleeding from some emotional or relational beating that you endured. You may think, “Well, when God sets me free, then I’ll praise Him.” No! Start praising Him NOW and you’ll find that the chains slipping away. Pardon me for using so many song lyrics, but I can’t help but remember the great lines in the old song from the group Truth that says, “For the chains that seem to bind you serve only to remind you that they drop powerless behind you when you praise Him” Have you discovered the liberating power of praise?

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September 30, 2001

The Prayer of Jesus

We all have sinned and we continue to make mistakes and experience failure. Jesus recognized the greatest need a person has is forgiveness.

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July 16, 2000

The First Baptist: John

Throughout your life, you will find problems are lined up like cars at a tollbooth. When you get rid of one problem, and the gate falls down on an unpleasant episode of your life. You breathe a sigh of relief and then—ding! There’s another problem (and others are lined up behind that one). The Christian life isn’t devoid of problems but God gives us strength to cope with them.

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July 9, 2000

When Your Heart is Full, You Just Have to Sing!

Have you ever had an experience of worship like Mary’s? Have you ever fallen so deeply in love with God that your heart is bursting with praise? That’s God plan for each of us. The story of Mary and Elizabeth.

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January 16, 2000

When Dreams Come True

Do you ever wake up in the morning after having dreamt all night and then you couldn’t remember what you dreamed about? Dreams are strange things. Experts tell us everybody dreams, some people just can’t remember their dreams. Out of eight hours sleep at night, on the average you’ll dream an hour-and-a-half to two hours of those eight hours. Today we’re going to be looking at a dream a king had 2,600 years ago that also had personal, national, and eternal significance.

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December 12, 1999

To God Be the Glory!

Paul says God is bigger than my brain or your brain. God is bigger than any person’s ability to even imagine God, and if you think you have condensed God down to some little thought in your mind and you’ve got him figured out where he’s convenient to you and for you, you’ve committed idolatry. God is saying, “I am the only wise God, and don’t limit who I am and what I can do.”

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September 10, 1995

Filled? You’ll Be Singing

How can you tell if you are filled with the Holy Spirit? According to Ephesians 5:19-21, there will be a spirit of adoration in your life. You’ll be singing praises. The fullness of the Spirit leads to a heart and a mouth and a life full of praise.

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May 30, 1993

The Kind of Church God Blesses

Of all of the seven churches in Revelation, this is the only church of the seven that does not receive a rebuke from the Lord. This is what you might call a church that is really blessed. Philadelphia means “the place where the brothers love one another a place of brotherly love.” This was a very small, insignificant community in Asia Minor and it was not nearly as important as Ephesus or Sardis or some of these other places, but this is the location of a group of believers although they only had a little bit of strength, God was blessing them and he was using them. If we want to be a certain kind of church of all of these seven churches, we as members of Green Acres Baptist Church we want to be like the church at Philadelphia.

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