You could say I have visited a few churches in my day, I have never preached in a noisier group than you. But it is a wonderful sound. You know what it is like to go to a funeral home. Everybody’s whispering And some church services are like that right today, you go there and it will be Shhhh. Not good, not good. Well, this last week I accepted a very kind invitation from the nursing home over here. It’s not all nursing home. It’s a seniors, complex, different levels of care. And so I was invited to go there and speak to the people who are independent. They live in independent apartments. And they happily attend, I think it’s just maybe just one service a week. I’m unsure about that. And so these people were all wide awake. I didn’t have to keep them awake.
That was wonderful. And it was a happy little group there. I don’t know how many I didn’t count them. And I just felt impressed to share with them about what I’ve been encouraging you with, about blessing one another. Well, they ate it up like candy floss. Their faces were radiant. They were taking it in. And before I was all done, I showed them how this works. And I shook everyone’s hand before I left. One by one, I just went through the rows up and down and looking them in the eye. I said, this is how we do it. I was looking them in the eye and I was saying, here’s my prayer for you. God bless you. There were people whose eyes welled up. Others were just huge smiles. And then people were repeating it back to you, well, God bless you. One lovely lady. I was going to say an elderly lady. I didn’t have to put that in there. One beautiful youngish lady walked along the hall. What she said was so inspirational.
I told them they had to go to the guy who collects their monthly rent and say, I got a word for you, Walter. God bless you. I said, you’ll startle him. So people thanked me for that. I said, you got to say it. So on my way out, I’m talking to all the attendants and the nurses. I’m sticking my head in their offices. I’d say, well, I got, they know who I am. I’m saying, well, God bless you. And this younger one that was there looked at me. She said, well, thank you. Thank you. So it occurred to me when I’m reading the Psalms that these words come out, come bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord. There’s one that says, come bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who stand by night in the house of the Lord. Lift up your voice and worship and praise him. Well, it’s not enough that we would bless each other, but that we ought to commence, first of all, by blessing the Lord. Well, how do I do that? His house is full. He has everything that he needs. He doesn’t need anything, but he craves something. He craves something. He craves relationships. He craves relationships because that is his glorious opportunity to respond and bless us back. But the blessing began with him. He didn’t choose him. He chose us. And one marvellous opportunity to be able to return thanks and bless him. So what does it mean to bless him?
Well, it means to praise him. It means to honor his name. More than that, it means to adore him. It means to feel so compelled with love for him that you might be reduced to tears. The Hebrew word. Now, I shared this with you back how many months ago, and I just felt so elated and I felt so like this. David, you did it. I found that. I found out about this praise word. I found it all by myself and I found that story about the servant at the well, waiting for Rebecca to come and how he causes his camels to kneel down. And as I researched that, I found that kneeling meant literally to bless. But I shared that. I was so excited. So I was looking up bless on all the resources that I have, and I can’t believe that what I’ve been teaching you must have gone viral because it is on the internet.
The Hebrew word translated bless in the Old Testament literally means to kneel down. Here I thought I’d discover, so I thought I was the new Microsoft genius. But no, it’s all there to bless the Lord. I want to quickly say right now that in order to bless God and to minister to Him and show your love for Him and to pray, you don’t have to kneel down. And if you haven’t come to appreciate that yet, it’s coming. It’s coming. There will come a day when you do decide to kneel down and pray before Him, and it’s going to occur to you. Before I get up out of here, is there anything else I need to do while I’m down here? It’s a painful thing. The old knees don’t work like they used to. So the kneeling down, it’s not a philosophical term per se, but the kneeling down can mean, and often it should mean that I physically kneel.
But the kneeling posture is an attitude as much as it is a physical exercise. And so blessing the Lord means to adore Him, it means to acknowledge Him in every way. So I wanted to go on this morning and talk even more about this. And so I’m going to read to you another passage of Scripture, and this is again found in this Psalms, just a couple of chapters after the one that I ministered to you earlier. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and don’t lose your glasses. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. I want to try and unpack that particular verse as I share with you this morning. How would we sit a youngster down and explain what this means? How do we explain it even to an adult if we’re not familiar, if we’ve not delved into it and given it consideration? So here’s the psalmist David, and he’s talking to himself. He’s saying, hey, you, soul, bless the Lord.
Let’s put this into a little bit of a context if we would. We know that David lived in many dimensions, challenging, troublesome at times, wonderful, exuberant, but there was a time when David was hiding in a cave, fearful of the king who wanted to kill him. And I can about imagine, here’s David remembering that Samuel came and poured oil over his head and indicated to him that God was going to raise him up and use him in a kingly fashion. So here he is. I’m supposed to be the king, and I’m in a dark cave. There’s no internet here. There’s no juice bar. There’s nobody going to deliver me a diet Pepsi. I’m alone. He could have been hungry. It could have been smelly there. Bats could have been crawling on his nose. Like we don’t know what it was like. And I could imagine him thinking, now, can I bless the Lord in all cases? And I see him having to command his soul.
Have you never felt like this? You come into a service. You don’t feel like it. Your wife burned your breakfast this morning, and you had a little, you had a little tip over that. And on the way, somebody was on their way to church this morning and their nose started to bleed, bled all over their clothes, and they went back home. They said, please don’t tell anybody who we are. Undying to tell you. You know what a secret is? It’s a secret that I get to tell every one of you one at a time. But those people had to turn around and had home because the bleeding wasn’t stopping. And this can happen. This can happen. And you know, driving home, blood running down the front, or in our case when we were a young family on the way to church on a Sunday morning, April sitting there with our little son who had some kind of a gastric something on the go every once in a while. And that kid, nobody could fire his breakfast from here and hit that wall like that kid did. He had some kind of a pumping system going on in him. We’d be on our way to church, and all of a sudden they hear gurgles like, oh, no, no, no, no, I’m driving the car. I’m ready for the service. Place is packed. I know two Sunday morning services, and it’s going to be a long day for me. Kid, don’t mess up my day. I’ll just, and it’s going everywhere. That’s all down April’s dress and everything, and bless the Lord, oh my soul. Oh my soul. Oh my, oh that kid.
Turn around, take him back home. She’s got to clean them all up. I had to wait. I had to wait. I don’t want to be late. I’m pacing up and down in the kitchen. I gotta get out of here. Oh bless the Lord, oh my soul. And forget not all the wonderful things he’s done for you. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, David had to command his soul. I want to talk about how that works this morning. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and don’t forget his benefits. So here’s David trying to get his soul motivated to bless the Lord, and how’s he going to do that? He’s going to remember. He says, don’t forget the benefits. That will give you a reason to praise him. He forgave all your iniquities.
He’s healed all your diseases. He redeemed your life from destruction, who crowned you with loving kindness and tender mercies. Your soul must be starting to feel pretty good by now, who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like an eagles. 90 years of age and you feel like you’re 15 again. The Lord executes righteousness and judgment for everyone who’s oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses and his acts to the children of Israel. The Lord is merciful and he’s gracious. He’s slow to anger and he’s abundant in mercy. He will not always be poking at you. He will not always keep his anger against you. He’s not dealt with you according to your sinfulness. He’s not rewarded you according to your failures. For as the heaven is as high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, that’s how far he’s removed your sinfulness and your transgressions. Like a father pities his children, so the Lord pitties them that fear him. For he knows your frame. He remembers that you’re just dust with lipstick. As for man, his days are like grass. As a flower of the field, it flourishes. If the wind passes over it, then it’s gone. And the place will be remembered no more.
But God’s mercy, the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon those who fear him. Let’s remember that word, fear means awesome, a sense of awe of him. Not afraid that he’s going to hit you. No, no, no. His love and his care, his abundant blessing upon your life comes upon you and you when you look upon him with awe and his righteousness is upon his children. So bless the Lord. And it’s all through the Psalms, especially through the Psalms. Bless God, bless God. I wanted to talk about that. Bless the Lord, oh my soul. And in order to bless the Lord and you’re sitting in the cave of adullam and you’re feeling sorry for yourself, it’s not easy to get your praise, mojo, or go-wing. So the Psalmist just told us how to get your soul in order. And it’s a multifaceted thing I want to share with you this morning. So here we have an eagle and I love the eagle. There’s a few around here. I gotta watch that you don’t get my little dog. But they can do a lot of things. But when we lived out in British Columbia, I love to watch the eagle.
I’m just spellbound by them. To watch that great thing, lift off a branch and begin to move those huge wings. And you know the story if you have never observed it. It’s a wonderful thing to observe. You see how long that wee eagle will take to get up to where it really wants to go. And so with its great wings, he’s working and working like this. And that’s what it’s like to try and get your soul in order and get your attitude and get your heart up and out of the doldrums. You’ve been going through a rough time and how are you going to get going with this? And the answer is you need to fly above your problems. You need to soar up there. But how are you going to get there? And here’s how you do it. Bless the Lord. Come on, soul. Come on, soul. Come on. Bless the Lord, oh my soul. Don’t forget his benefits. Remember, remember. And it’s work that the eagle has to work out, and its energy.
it’s a wonderful thing to see those great massive birds. I forget how long the wingspan can be, but it’s huge. It’s marvelous. It’s wonderful. But if you were to watch that eagle and you can watch it on television stories, you know, these scientists will put it on national geographic and they’ll show you about the lifespan of the eagle and how they fly. And we’re told that they will come to a place because that’s where they live. The sky is their domain. So they know. They know that there will be a certain place up there in the sky if they can just work to get up there. If they can just work, just push it and get there. All of a sudden they will sense what’s called a thermal. And that is a scientific marvel where the air, the atmosphere from below is rising. It can be quite powerful. You and I wouldn’t even be aware of it. An airplane might shake you up. You’re driving all of a sudden there’s a few thermals on the go and you’re bouncing your top of your head off the top of the plane in there. I mean, you can really shake you up.
Thermals are powerful things. But that eagle’s not afraid of the thermals. That eagle was flying and looking for it. And the time will come when that crater gets up there and it knows it tips its wings just a little and it stops this flurry and this pushing and it sets its wings and it starts to hang glide right up there. Do you know how long it can stay up there? If it wanted to, it could stay up there for days. It knows where that thermal is. It knows where it’s going and it rides the wind. Come on, soul. You can make it. Come on now. Don’t forget all of its benefits. Remember the blessing. Remember what God’s promised. Come on, come on. And all of a sudden. And you’ve been there. I’m just explaining. I’m helping you remember. There comes a time when it’s not so laborious and you start to, you start to sense that he’s with you. You start to sense his presence and it’s not so difficult anymore. And all of a sudden you recognize there’s the thermal. There’s the thermal when the presence of the Lord is so dynamic. There have been times when I’ve been alone with the Lord and I thought if I opened my mouth, I could taste something.
I remember one night I was alone in the Bible college. The Bible college was not an easy thing for me. I’ve never been known to be an academic. In school I hated school. I hated high school. I wanted out. And the day that I left, I never should have left. Turns out that Ron Quinn and I had the same teacher and Ron showed the man respect and learned a great deal of things and look at the success of his life. I stood up and Mr. Zep, the teacher said, Mr. Forrest, where do you think you’re going? I’m packing up my books. And he stopped me and he said, you know I’m trying to figure out why you’re in here wasting my time and wasting your own. I said, now isn’t that something? I was just thinking the same thing. And I’m heading for the door with my books. He said, where are you going? I said, I gotta get out of here. I went down to the principal office. I said, I’m done, sir. I’m out of here.
It was such a relief. It was such a relief to get going. But then I had to find my way. And I really was convinced that the God had called me into the ministry. I wasn’t to be a bus driver anymore. I wasn’t to be a house cleaner. I was, I was called into the ministry and it was laborious. But there came a time when I sensed the thermal. And I remember in the Bible college and there I was, I had to be an academic. I had to read books. And I remember filling out book report. You wouldn’t believe the number of books. And I had a wonderful teacher by the name of G.F. Adder. He used to preach him this pulpit. And he never caught on. But I would write a book report. I’d name the name of the book, put the author’s name. And then I’d write them a little later. And I’d say, brother Adder, I just want you to know how much I love you and appreciate you. There aren’t very many teachers that can thrill me just like you do. And I’ve looked this book over, it looks like an interesting read. And I’m sure someday, sir, I will get down to reading it. I look forward to it and I would sign it. I got wonderful marks.
I was not good at it. I struggled in college. I was not a reader. And now I can’t read enough. I just can’t get enough of it. But one night I was alone in the chapel, just two o’clock in the morning calling on God. All of a sudden I felt his presence, his glorious presence. And it became stronger and stronger and stronger until I cried out, stop it, you’re going to kill me. I did. His presence was so real and so dynamic and so special and so precious. If you’ve never experienced a glorious moment when your spirit and the Holy Spirit begin to lock in. If you’ve never flown so high that the thermal was carrying you up to such a degree, beloved you haven’t lived yet. There’s something so marvelous when you in your spirit get in touch with the Lord’s Spirit. But right now you have a problem, you see, bunkie, because your mind is filled with turmoil.
You’ve been watching the news and you’re being consumed by all of these accusations about how horrible Israel is and those dirty rotten guys that are killing babies and whatever. And you say, dear God, what’s going on? Then you open the fridge to have a tuna sandwich and the tuna’s gone bad too. And the bread is stale and oh man, how you’re going to get your life is filled with difficulty. And when you go and you try and spend some time with the Lord, it’s hard to get focused on the things of God because so many things have gone wrong. Let your soul honey. Come on soul. Now the tuna’s bad and my grandkids don’t love me anymore. And so many, I feel my life is down. Come on soul, come on, you can do this. Come on soul, you’ve got to get to it. Soul and Spirit. The word of God uses two words, soul and spirit. I want to talk to you about that. What’s the difference? There’s a difference.
You see, God is a triune being, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Let us make God in our image. You’re a triune being. You have a body. You have a soul. And then there’s your spirit. Each one of these elements that God has comprised you of has a unique calling and a unique service to your livelihood. Your body is how you relate to the physical world all around you. Your body, your senses, your taste, your sight, your smell, all of those things. Our body is what we live in. But then there’s your soul. And your soul also consists of three parts. Don’t let me lose you here now. You are a triune being. You have a body, you have a soul, you have a spirit. But when it comes to your soul, your soul also has three parts. Because your soul is comprised of your mind, your emotions, and your will. And if any one of those are out of sync, you’re not going to be able to bless the Lord and be in touch with Him. How does that work, David? Well, it works this way.
Most of the time, that which is feeding your soul comes through the mental, which relies on the visual, which relies on the memory, which relies on history, which relies on the possibilities of future. Your mind is continuously being bombarded by all kinds of things. And when you want to spend time with God, when you want to be prayerful, and when you want to bless the Lord, you’re going to have to deal with all of that matter that gets into your soul. Your mind gets cluttered. So here you want to bless the Lord. You want to spend time with Him. You want to connect with Him, but your mind is full of junk. And it’s not like you’re a bad person. You just get bombarded with the stuff. So what does the psalmist say? Bless the Lord, oh, my soul, all that’s within me. All that’s within me, my soul. All am I being, and my body.
Have you ever seen the Jewish people pray at the wailing wall? You’ve noticed that, haven’t you? We stand there for hours like this, especially the Hasidic Jews who are very, very connected, who are very religious. And so I talked to a Jewish fellow and I said, what’s this all about? He said, because we are people who love God, we love to worship God, we love to pray. But our mind gets very distracted by difficulties. We’re always watching our backs. Who’s going to give me trouble today? And we got home probably, we got all the, and so there I am trying to talk to God. There I am trying to listen to Him. There I am trying to communicate. And I got all this stuff in my mind. But He said, I tell you what helps me with my mind. He said, is to get my body in this movement. And He said, that actually helps us. He said, it’s common among us. This is what helps us to pray.
Some years ago, in the 70s, I was invited at a point to go down and start ministering among the French churches. That’s where I learned about the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. I became so acquainted with them. It was my favorite place to go and preach. And I preached at their camp meetings. I went and preached revival services. And there was one particular church. It was in a place called Saint-Yal Saint. If you read it in English and you pronounce what you see as Saint Hyacinth. But I was becoming a real French man. Yeah, Saint-Yal Saint. And how did I do down there? Did my French come out there? Okay, yes, I’m down there. Hey, broader, broader. Is that good, broader? So I go down there. And the pastor was this little guy. His name was Samson. Saint-Saul. And Samson was about this tall, ruddy complexion. And this guy was a thunderbolt. When he preached, he preached like a man from another world. And he taught all these people who had migrated from Catholicism.
Many of them, because they left their original religious ways, their families absolutely rejected them. So they lost their mom, their dad, their sister, nobody would have anything to do with them. And he became a real shepherd to them. And because they had given their lives to Jesus in a fresh, fresh way now, coming to his church, he literally taught them to pray. It was an incredible thing. I go before every service. I go to what they called the prayer room. It was a room at least half again, larger than this one. And I went down, it was packed. Here’s the congregation. Services start at seven o’clock, it’s 20 after six, the room’s packed. And here they are, the ones who were standing and praying were like this. They were praying like this. And when the ones who were on their knees, they were going like this. And they would go on like that for 45 minutes to an hour.
So I asked Brother Sam Song and somebody had to do it and I said, what’s this all about? He said, it’s to keep us focused. We’re not thinking about our supper. We’re not thinking about it. We are focusing on the Lord. So when you want to bless the Lord, you’ve got to bring even, you’ve got to bring your mind under control by thinking and remembering the glorious things that God has done for you, remembering his promises because there are many. Something that he doesn’t reward you according to your failures. He’s not upset about that. He’s covered that over. He’s looking after you. He looks after you like a daddy whose child at times gets a little off to the left, a little off to the right. He doesn’t talk you over your head. He says, come on here. Let’s go for a little walk. Let’s talk this over.
You get your mind organized and that’s going to go a long way to help you. So you may have to do something with your body, but it’s not that necessary, but you may want to get into this kind of thing. I find myself walking, pacing often when I’m praying, and it’s just a way for me to keep my mind focused on God. So then we come to the emotion. If your mind is filled with distractions and if your mind is filled with negative things, you’re going to be emotionally drained by those things. You’re noticing that. You’re watching TV. How many of you recently you’re watching the newest thing and you just say, you just shut it off. You’re overloaded. Everything is negative. The guy who lives in the nursing home in Washington, D.C. falls all over the place, he can’t put two sentences together and he’s in charge of the world. Dear Lord, I shut it off. And then I hear about all these people canceling each other and shaming each other. And then I see these people on the street saying about the Jews, gas them, gas them. And these kids are scarcely over 20 years of age. Were they even alive when the twin towers were attacked? Were they even aware of all this stuff? And they’re saying, bring it on and he wants your real arm thinking, hi, you nut. I shut it off. I can’t take it anymore.
They’ve all gone crazy. I’m the only one saying, well, there’s me and you and I’m worried about you. So emotionally I get drained watching the news. The news is not a healthy diet. I’ve come to that conclusion. When your emotions are messed up by family problems, economic problems, you become emotionally drained. You’re not going to be able to connect with the Lord. Come on, soul. Oh, come on, soul. Turn off the television. Spend some time with the Lord. Come on, soul. Until you’re dealt with the stuff in the mind and filled your mind instead. First it with good thoughts. You’ll be emotionally distraught. Once you’ve dealt with remembering what God has done and your thoughts have a major part in your spiritual well-being. You do know that, don’t you?
Guard your mind. Protect your mind. Don’t let the skunks in there. That will help you to be emotionally stable and then you can control your will. Now you can bend your will toward him. It’s difficult to discipline and exercise jurisdiction over your will when your mind is messed up which has drained you emotionally and then somebody says, have you prayed about it? No. I think you should pray about it. The Lord’s going to work it all out for you and your will, your will is all messed up. This has got to do with our personal walk with the Lord, but it’s got everything to do with how we function in church. Did you notice the songs we sang first off this morning? You know those songs were designed to wake you up, right? To call you, to say, hey, and what kind of songs did we sing? We sang victory songs. We sang happy songs. Our hands were clapping. We were dealing with minds that were cluttered with challenges. I just had, before I came here, I just had to call. Won’t be there today. Here’s the challenge: I’m thinking the place is going to look empty again. What was me? So I came in here already carrying a bundle of stuff and then I looked up on the screen and was reminded that Heather Pelisero that we’ve known so many years, they were in our church when we were kids and they were kids and she’s in for brain surgery. That’s breaking my heart and I saw that up there. And you know what I did, that turned my emotional down. And I heard about people’s struggles even even here in our church, like people who are here today are dealing with very, very challenging physical issues. And that troubles me and it weighs me down.
But as soon as Al started leading in those songs, I became focused on something, it was kind of like this. I can’t explain it to you, but I left those concerns and I joined in. And your voice is coming from behind me. You can’t know what that did for me too. You can’t know what you’re singing and your participation does for the rest of the people in the room. If Elle’s up here and he’s singing all by himself and there’s only two or three people are entering in, he’d think, well, what have I done wrong? Well, what’s going on here? So then he loses his spizz-em-er-ing-dom because you’re not showing your spizz-em-er-ing-dom. Come on, soul, let’s rejoice. I don’t feel like it. You don’t know the trials I’ve had. Whoa, it’s me. So we got to get past these things and that in the earlier part of the service, we sing happy, strong, victorious song. It isn’t the Lord, good, what are… And then you see, come on, soul, the eagle, we’re at. And then all of a sudden we sense. There’s the thermal. And when we sense the thermal in our prayer time or in our worship time here, whatever the situation, you don’t keep flapping’ the wings when you hit the thermal. You set your wings and you go with the thermal. You go with the moving of the Holy Spirit among us and you have said to me, wow, what a service.
There have been people saying, I just wanted to come and fall on my face at the altar. I felt magnetized. I felt so. What was going on there? You were sensing this. You didn’t have to go like this anymore. But you were setting your wings and you were going with Him. Is it making sense to you? It works in your personal life. It works in our life here. Our Spirit begins to connect with the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 6, 18. Watch this. Slow down and read these words. Don’t rush through them with every prayer and request. Pray at all times in the Spirit. Watch this word. Oh, it’s not up there. Did I lose you? You lost me? It was never up there. Now, you know what that just did to my mind? You know what it just did to my emotions? My will has broken. This service is over. I’m so sorry. I was oblivious. That’s kind of normal for me. Okay. Somebody’s going to tell me, David, I showed you how to do that, didn’t I? And you didn’t follow through. I’m a bad boy. Okay. Listen then. Just listen. Listen. Request, pray at all times in the Spirit. So He’s separating. You can pray without the assistance of the Holy Spirit. You can make requests without the assistance of the Holy Spirit. That’s Ephesians 6, 18. Talking about praying, but then praying assisted by the Holy Spirit. Everythings with the thermal.
Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness and receive with meekness the engrafted word. So this is the admonition of the apostle. Lay everything aside. Get all that junk out of your mind and receive with meekness the engrafted word. Do you know what praise and worship is? It’s this, having found its way in here and then out of your innermost being begin to flow rivers of living water. Praise and worship is the Word of God expressed. Years ago we used to sing the scriptures. 90% of our songs in the 70s, we actually sang scriptures. God bless the Lord, all your servants of the Lord, who stand by night in the house of the Lord. Lift up your hands. That’s a verse in Scripture. We sang songs about Zion, how beautiful its situation was. We sang another one. City, oh city, oh city of God. The most dangerous things are spoken of you singing about the city of God, the city of Jerusalem. So what prompted us to sing these scriptures? Because we were digesting them. And these words and these loving thoughts that God has given us became our culture in here. And so we wanted to sing them, praise and worship is the Word of God in you coming forth in copious rivers of blessing.
So let the Word get in you richly. Get into the Word. It’ll change your ability to bless God. Let the message of Christ, Colossians 3, 16, let the message of Christ dwell in you. Let this dwell in you among you and do so richly so that you can teach and admonish one another. I love to get together with people and I like to listen to what they have gleaned from here. Because they are admonishing me. They are teaching me. But pastor, you’re the teacher. No, we are all teachers. Colossians 3:16, let the message of Christ get inside you richly so you can teach and admonish and encourage each other with all wisdom through Psalms. Listen, I’m going to read it again. Let the message of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through the Psalms, through hymns, Colossians 3:16, through Psalms, through hymns and songs from the Spirit. I’m going to tell you a little story and then I’m going to finish maybe.
So I went with a couple of my good pastor buddies and we went down to a town in Ohio. The pastor’s name was Moses Vay. Came from a great, great family of people from the Sarnia area. And here Moses was pastor in the church down there. And the Lord had dropped something into Moses’ heart and began to share it with others and things began to resonate one with another. It’s a good thing that you trust me here because otherwise you wouldn’t believe a word I was going to say as I go forward. I was there and I’m telling you what I experienced. So when we all gathered there, there were a couple of hundred pastors. They were there from California, they were there from all over the place. And it was all about praise and worship. And that’s where I learned from all of these brothers who were really focused on the difference between praise and worship.
Praise is celebrating what God has done. Isn’t the Lord good? Isn’t the Lord wonderful? Oh, bless God. Worship is not about what He’s done. Worship is not what He’s given me. Worship is not about anything. Worship is Jesus. It’s the Lord God and nothing else. What do you mean pastor Dave? A son or a daughter comes to you and says, hey dad, without any lead up, just says, I need 50 grand now I want to buy a car. And the dad says, oh hi John, how are you feeling? How’s your day going? Like the guy walks through the door and says, I mean money. I want this. I want that. And the parent feels like they’re being used. Come on, can we talk here for a moment? And so when we rush into the Lord and we say, I want this, I don’t want that. It’s not good. We don’t let our petitions be made known until first of all, we praise Him for what He’s done. We thank Him. We bless Him for what He’s done. And that lifts our own soul as remembering what He’s done.
And then when we’ve sensed the thermal, then we make our petitions known. But the thermal takes us into the holy of holies. You’ll find yourself not uttering a word. I found myself waiting upon the Lord, praying, praying, praying. And all of a sudden I just went into total silence because I felt like I was sitting on His knee. There was nothing left to say for that moment. I felt like I was being embraced. I was sitting in the presence of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And I wasn’t going to say, and by the way I’d like this. And I wasn’t going to say, sitting on His knee. I wasn’t going to say, I wrote a new song this week, would you like to hear it? He’d say, can we just sit here and be friends? Praise and worship and spending time with Him is a culture that we have to cultivate, work at. I hope you’re considering doing that. Because when you develop that culture of knowing, really knowing Him, experiencing Him, it’ll come out in your worship time. And besides that, it’ll come out when you’re sharing with each other. What you have experienced in God, you can enrich somebody else’s life with it.
I love to be with many of you. I love what comes out of you. It inspires me. It helps me. I love to be with people who are in the Word and like to walk with. Singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. So there’s a difference between praise and worship. Praise is this, dealing with the Solar’s thing. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Hey, Lord, aren’t you proud of me? I’m good. I’m this. But worship is not about me. A worship song will never have the word I in it, nor me. It’s about Him. It’s just about Him. One of the most beautiful songs that I ever heard was led by my pastor’s wife. Her name was Pauline Mallory. Her husband asked her to preach on a Sunday morning. And she stood in the pulpit. She was supposed to preach. And she started singing this song, Jesus. And that’s the only word in the whole song. The place was reduced to tears. She just sang Jesus. In that song, we weren’t asking for anything. We weren’t saying, isn’t it good? It was just Jesus. So here I was in this church in Ohio.
And we’re focused on praise and worship. And what began to come forth was an interpretation of the terminology, songs in the Spirit. Now, the apostle Paul says about his prayer life. He said, I pray with my understanding. But sometimes I pray with the Spirit. What did he mean? You know what he meant. You know what he meant. He meant that the Holy Spirit was taking over his prayer moment. You see, the Holy Spirit’s always praying about you and for you. Jesus is sitting beside the Father. He’s praying for you. He’s interceding. But the Holy Spirit’s in you since the day you gave your life to him. And he’s always interceding. And praying in the Spirit, we concluded as a conference. Praying in the Spirit is allowing the Holy Spirit, who’s always praying on my behalf and interceding. It’s allowing him to take my tongue and engaging me to be a part of it. And while I’m allowing him to take my tongue and speak in a language that he is constructing, my understanding doesn’t get it.
But watch this. My mind, my soul, my mind and my soul-ish nature, because my mind doesn’t know the words I’m praying, my mind can’t work with them. I don’t get all that emotionally. It’s not about that. I’m bypassing the soul. And what’s happening in that moment is through the Holy Spirit, I’m talking directly to the Father and I’m praying within the realm of his will. Did you ever pray, I wonder if this is okay? How do I pray in the will of God? When you pray in the Spirit, when you pray with the Spirit, you are praying according to his will. You get to participate. But in order to get into that realm where you’re totally free to allow him to take your language, you’ve got to deal with your soul. You’ve got to get the mind settled, which will give you emotional stability, which will make your will pliable.
You’ll sense the thermal and the way you go. What happened in that conference in Ohio is a fellow up at the Grand Piano, who’s from California. He was playing along on the piano and all of a sudden the place went quiet and he’s playing a tune that none of us recognized. And then the violins, it was quite an orchestra. They started playing along with him. And pretty soon it was a whole orchestra. Then somebody slipped up and took a hold of a microphone and they started singing words that they felt they were prompted to sing. And now all of us were singing a brand new song, being accompanied by an orchestra.
We were singing a new song, a song that was relevant, a song that was in the now. It was a right new song. It was a glorious moment. And for about three days it just flowed with teaching and whatever. Then we’d get into worship and new songs were being birthed. One of the last services, the place where it went kind of a gentle quiet and it was appropriate. I wasn’t being intrusive. I lifted my hands and I felt a song coming. And I started singing about it. I found a pearl of great price. The tears were rolling down my cheeks as I was adoring him. I found a pearl of great price. I don’t remember the rest of it. It doesn’t matter. I caught up with Moses, probably 15, 20 years later at a conference in California. He came up through his arms around me, and we had a wonderful little reunion.
He said, David, that time that you were at our church down in Finley, Ohio and you sang that song about the pearl of great price. I said, yeah. He said, you didn’t know this, but he said, the whole service was being recorded. He said, we as a church sent out your new song. I found a pearl of great price. We sent it all through Ukraine and Poland. We sent it all over Europe because he said there was something that resonated with everybody as you sang that song. David, are you bragging? Is there a question? I had nothing to do with it. It was the spontaneity of the moment, a brand new song. Just came forth. It was just for that time, but it turned out it was for a time and people elsewhere in the world. Praise and worship. Ephesians 5:19. I’m about to close. Really. Speaking to one another. Listen to this. Speaking to one another in Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs. Singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord. Always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father, and be subject to one another with awe.
Praise and worship. Songs, hymns. I love the old hymns. I love the old hymns. They’re so rich with doctrine. So many songs today are flimsy. I don’t know where they’re coming from. They’re just yabbat-ab-a-doo to me. The old hymns are so rich. But I’m not locked in there. I love psalms. I love hymns. And I love spiritual songs. And so many of these wonderful Christian artists are coming out with spiritual songs. I mean, you sing their songs and it just rivets you. It just captures you. And there’s a resistance in the older church to the new song. Oh, we don’t want to do these new songs. No, the Lord is inspiring some wonderful musicians with glorious songs, glorious songs that have captivated the nation. Praise and worship. It’s a wonderful realm.
