Gates of Praise

One of the ways we enter God's courts is with praise (Psalm 100:4). When we praise God together in worship we prepare ourselves to meet with God. Our expressions of praise help us to get in touch with our previous experiences of the presence of God, they remind us of the nature of the God we desire to meet, and they prepare our hearts to welcome this God who has proved his love for us.

There are some special times when we are more aware of God's presence:

• When we experience the beauty or wonder of creation
• When we realize that God has protected us or saved us or healed us
• When we notice that God has guided us in ways we hadn't imagined
• When we have received gifts of grace, forgiveness, or acceptance
• When life has welled up within us or new life has been born in us or among us
• When God has spoken directly to us through the Scriptures or in prayer
• When God has answered our prayers
• When we have seen or heard or felt God in our relationships with others

We respond with praise to our experiences of God's presence. Some of the forms this praise takes:

• Joyful exuberance
• Joyful peace
• Song and poetry
• Dance or other forms of movement
• Words without meaning, shouts, laughter
• A state of worship (when we are not working or resting or playing or planning, but simply being with God)
• Art and other creative endeavors
• Generosity

When we begin our worship with praise it helps us to become aware of the nature of the God with whom we desire to meet. We draw closer to God as we recall our previous experiences of God's presence and as we reenact our responses to those experiences. We draw closer to God as we re-member those varied experiences, as each member at worship brings his or her expression of praise and joins it together with those of the rest of the congregation.

Our rituals of praise (our call to worship and hymn of praise) and our feelings as we praise are means for us to enter into the presence of God. They are not ends in themselves.

This blog is an opportunity express our praises and to share them with one another in order that we might better know God and be ready to greet God together when we gather for worship.