Prayer of Praise or Thanksgiving

Browse more Sermon Ideas

Prayer of Praise or Thanksgiving sermon ideas

View search results for Prayer of Praise or Thanksgiving

How do I write a prayer of praise or thanksgiving?

Prayers of praise or thanksgiving can be expressed in spoken word, song, dance, art, or other expressions that prayerfully thank and praise God for all the good things God has done for us.

These prayers can happen in various parts of the worship service:

Why praise God?

We praise God because it's right and proper and fitting, and in the wisdom of God what's right turns out also to be what causes us to thrive. Praise requires a kind of recognition. You recognize greatness, then you call attention to it, and then you try to magnify it. All this, said C. S. Lewis, is simply "inner health made audible"(C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms [New York: Harvest, 1964], 179). It's healthy to praise God's greatness. It's one of the things we human beings were made to do, and when we do it, our motor starts to hum and our exhaust tone gets throaty and strong.

What is thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving is exhalation within the Christian's respiratory pattern. When you have been raised with Jesus Christ, giving thanks is simply a way to exhale. A resurrected Christian breathes in God's goodness and breathes out thanksgiving. Inhale goodness, exhale thanksgiving. That's the Christian's respiratory pattern, and Paul knew all about it. So, in Colossians 3, Paul calls everybody who has been raised with Christ to start breathing the right way. Since you have been raised with Christ, be thankful, sing with gratitude in your hearts, give thanks to God through Christ. Three times in a row Paul urges thanksgiving as a kind of first prayer for those who have been born again.

The idea is that if somebody gives you something, then you give something back. You round out the transaction. Take in something, give out something. Breathe in, breathe out. Receive, give. This is the healthy rhythm of a healthy Christian life.

Where are prayers of praise or thanksgiving in the Bible?

There are many prayers of praise or thanksgiving throughout scripture. Some feature praise for the attributes of God, actions of God, the redemption of God, and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Some of these prayers are prayers of thanksgiving that contain recitation of history, tracing the timeline of God's redemptive acts.

Psalmists had theimpulse to praise what's great or good all the time, and so the psalms ring with praise and with calls to praise. God has delivered the children of Israel. Let's praise our deliverer! God is great, God is good. Let's praise God! Let everybody praise God—even other nations, even mountains and hills and rivers! Let everything praise God! Why? Because it's right and proper and fitting.

View search results for Prayer of Praise or Thanksgiving
Browse more Sermon Ideas

Words of Praise or Adoration sermon ideas

View search results for Words of Praise or Adoration

How do I write words of praise or adoration?

Frequently, words of praise or adoration are exclamatory and can also be expressed in song, dance, art, or other expressions of praise or adoration. We can praise God for the good things that God does for us. While we can write our own words (and should), we can also use the models of praise and adoration that are found in the Bible and that have been used for generations:

Where do we find words of praise or adoration in the Bible?

The people of God have always sung their praise. And we know why! Enthusiasm makes you want to raise your voice. Enthusiasm is always looking for a tune. So the psalms are songs. The psalter is the church's songbook. Some of the faith and praise in the psalms come from believers who have "calmed and quieted" their souls "like a weaned child with its mother" (Psalm 131:2). Quiet, thoughtful praise and thanks are always available to the believer and welcome to God. That's why in some Christian liturgies there are spaces occupied by silence—a silence that is not repressive, but pregnant with possibility and promise.

But, judging by Psalm 150 and other scriptures, singing to the Lord can at other times get a little rowdy. Lute and harp are dulcet enough. But then the trumpeters sound off. People start to bang their tambourines. People "praise God with clanging cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!" They start to dance. It's as if the psalmist is crying out, "Sing, blow, shout, bang, pluck. Raise the roof. Make a ruckus." Why? Because God is straightening out our mess!

But authentic worship of God isn't just praise. Some psalms (e.g., Psalm 51) are confessions of sin. Many of the psalms are laments. People cry to God from distress, turmoil, trouble. "Why, O God?" "When, O God?" "How long, O God?" The psalms model for us the moods and postures of faith. "All praise, all the time" worship is missing this biblical richness. Importantly, worship that ignores the sin and distress of God's people fails to square up with reality.

Remarkably, almost all the lament psalms eventually resolve into praise, and they do so because the word of praise is not only the first word of faith, but also the last. It may seem as if God has gone off duty. It may seem as if God has moved and not left a forwarding address. But the person of faith cannot give up. As Peter said to Jesus, "To whom [else] can we go?" (John 6:68). Even the disquieted soul hopes in God and predicts that one day "I shall again praise him, my help and my God" (Psalm 42:11).

Of course God is to be praised for wisdom, power, and glory, which in scripture is a kind of weighty light that surrounds God. But notice that God's justice weighs a lot as a reason to praise, and especially God's salvation. God straightens out Jacob son of Isaac—one of the shiftiest men in the Bible, a real wheeler-dealer. Forever after, God is known as "the God of Jacob." This is a God with grace for the shiftiest and a knack for making them whole. And not just Jacob: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. . . . God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:16–17). No repetition of these verses can diminish their wallops. They alone give us endless motive for praising God.

What is praise?

Praise is a sign of alertness. The person who praises God, praises others, praises creation and the beauty within it, and noble accomplishments, and kindness, mercy, and goodness—this is a person who is alert. When she is out and about, her radar is on. She notices things. She reads scripture, or hears it, and she picks up on qualities of God she hadn't noticed before. A friend pays a compliment to another friend and reveals by the high quality of the compliment that she has spotted something not everyone would. She notes that woodpeckers call and respond to each other. She sees that in gusty rainstorms the trees really do look as if they are clapping their hands.

Moreover, the alert person who has a light trigger for praising also is quick to call attention to excellence. "Have you ever noticed how patient God is with imperfect saints?" "Have you reflected on the extraordinary generosity Jim and Betty show to Betty's mom?" "Look! Three porpoises are breaching and diving alongside our boat! They're perfectly lined up and they're keeping pace! Amazing!"

The person who praises doesn't merely approve or admire. He does do these things. But in classic praise he really gets into it. Here's an example: Sometime in the last several decades North Americans adopted the habit of expressing their approval by simply saying "Yes!" Actually, they don't just say "yes"; they exclaim it. Your team kicks a winning goal: "Yes!" Your paper wins your professor's approval: "Yes!" Your spouse graduates from cooking school: "Yes!"

In the Bible, praise is the long way of spelling "Yes!" Believers know that God is great. They know that God is good, and naturally they want to say so. But sometimes saying so doesn't seem good enough. Praise has to have an upsurge of enthusiasm in it. So when God redeems Israel out of Egypt, Moses and Miriam sing their praise. You can't just say your praise; you have to sing to the Lord! And they didn't just sing. They danced too. And they didn't just sing and dance. They played their timbrels too. Their innards were roiling with excitement, and it had to get out!

Good people make the world ring with praise. In his Reflections on the Psalms, C. S. Lewis remarks that good people make the world ring with praise—not only praise of God in public worship, but also of landscapes, music, friends, children, noble deeds, flowers, mountains. Praising is part of what God has designed good people to do: to notice, appreciate, laud, applaud. "Cranks, misfits, and malcontents" hardly praise at all. Good folks praise all the time, because praise is part of expressing their health. In fact, praise is "inner health made audible" (C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1958, 94).

An obvious reason this is so occurs to us on simple reflection. Widespread healthy praise is a preventative for the deadly sins of pride and envy. When we are full of praise we cannot also be full of arrogance and resentment of others' good fortune. Moreover, if we celebrate excellence in God, in other people, in all creation, we will be celebrating all the time. And celebration dissipates anxiety and depression.

Lewis adds that those who praise want others to join in. "Isn't she lovely?" "Wasn't it glorious?" The psalmists constantly tell others to "praise the Lord" ("Allelujah" in Hebrew). What the psalmists are after is not just their own praise, but a chorus of praise, a chorus of witnesses. My praise is amplified, augmented, completed when you join in (Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 95). In fact, the psalmists sometimes can hardly contain themselves when calling for praise.

So in Psalm 98, the psalmist begins by calling to his first audience—probably the temple people—to "sing to the Lord a new song." Then he calls to all the peoples of the earth: "Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth" (Psalm 98:4). Then he calls to all nature to join the celebration of God's reign: "Let the sea roar. . . . Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy" (Psalm 98:7–8).

To think of everything—all peoples, places, and things—singing and shouting for joy to the Lord is an extraordinary thought, and a true anticipation of some of the wonders in the new heaven and earth. It's not just that we will finally have peace and justice. We will also have eternal delights marked by music and acclamation as people join their voices to each other and to all nature, which sings and rings with joy, even the trees and the wolves and the lambs taking part, each in their own particular way. Children shouting in astonishment, dogs barking, ducks quacking, birds calling, whales singing, elephants trumpeting, lions roaring, horses whinnying—every creature, great and small, adding its unique voice.

This is a celebration not to be missed.

View search results for Words of Praise or Adoration
Browse more Sermon Ideas

Prayer sermon ideas

View search results for Prayer

What are the different types of prayer?

    There are many different types of prayer that are appropraite for different circumstances and concerns.

    How do I write a prayer for worship?

    In corporate worship, prayer too is corporate. Consider ways to invite the congregation to participate actively in the prayer:

    • Use phrases like "we offer . . ." or "we join our hearts . . ." or "let us bring our concerns and thanksgivings"
    • Use a corporate spoken response throughout the prayer, such as "Lord, hear our prayer"
    • Use a sung refrain throughout the prayer

    Who hears our prayers?

    In the heavenly realms prayer is heard (or overheard) by more than one listener. For one thing, God is triune. Strong trinitarians may conclude that three listen, not just one. But then there's also the heavenly council, the ranks of angels and archangels. Perhaps they hear prayer. For all we know, so do the saints and martyrs. We surely don't know they don't. The point is that we likely pray into a whole cloud of witnesses.

    Paul says that not only mere humans intercede. So what if a homeless Christian under a bridge prays to God? He doesn't have a prayer chain from his church to lobby God. The two other guys under the bridge are too out of it to intercede. But what if Christ, our mediator, intercedes for him? What if the Holy Spirit groans over him? What if angels and saints and martyrs light heaven up with their intercessions for him? "Lord—and anybody else who may be listening—hear my prayer."

    Prayer calls for reverence before a holy God. Christians are aware that it is God to whom they pray. God is high—in fact, most high. God dwells in realms of glory. God is terrifying in purity, and the sworn foe of all evil. The Bible tells us that God's holiness in the temple was sometimes so intense that the priests had to back up. God was too hot for them that day. Once upon a time people loved God, but they also feared God because God is not domestic, not predictable, not safe at all.

    Finally, prayer is opportunity for fellowship with a loving God. We have a God who listens, who loves, who yearns for the best in us. We may pour ourselves out to God, knowing that at the end we will get ourselves back—stronger, cleaner, and more deeply loved than ever.

    How do I write a prayer for students and teachers going back to school?

    Corporate prayer may provide a good opportunity to acknowledge community events and seasons in worship. For instance, you could offer aprayerof intercession or commission for students and teachers going back to school, as in these examples from our search results:

    • "Hear the word of the Lord. I knew you before I gave you life. I chose you before you were born. I send you now to school. Be my people there. Share my love with everyone you meet there. Stand up for my ways in classrooms, in locker rooms, on playgrounds, in lunchrooms, and on the bus." (from Jeremiah 1:4-10) Carolyn C. Brown from Worshiping with Children
    • "O Lord, you who have called and equipped the teachers in our community, we pray for them today. Watch over them, provide for them, guide them, sustain them. May you be their sun and shield, so that they might do the work that you have entrusted to them. Amen." W. David O. Taylor

    • More worship ideas for "back to school" from Zeteosearch.org

    Where is prayer in the Bible?

    View search results for Prayer