Post Title: Praise: The Remedy for Introspection
The transforming power of thanksgiving is that it puts God at the center of everything. It is the difference between a God-centered or self-centered way of life. Said another way, praise trains you to look to the Son, rather than to the self.
The transforming power of thanksgiving carries us away from ourselves regarding what we have achieved or what we have failed to achieve. It turns us toward God's goodness, mercy, and love, which is abundantly embodied in the person of Jesus.
Thanksgiving has the power to transform because it is an act of repentance. It is a persistent turning from self to God, continually reminding yourself by declaring, praising, proclaiming, and confessing both who he is and what he has done. It puts God at the center of your existence.
Consistently giving thanks to God counters and overcomes this self-centered existence to which our hearts bend and culture reinforces.
If we focus on ourselves and our own efforts, typically one of two things will happen.
On the one hand, we become puffed up in pride regarding our abilities, accomplishments, and successes.
On the other hand, we become engulfed with an acute awareness of our failures, toiling under nebulous guilt that hangs over us like a cloud. We can be paralyzed by a sense of inadequacy and inability, bent down under the oppression of it all.
Can you relate? In both cases, we act out of self-centeredness—preoccupied either with our failures or successes, guilty of blocking God's grace. Both are sin, in need of confession, repentance, and forgiveness.
In thanksgiving, praise, and worship, we move the attention off of ourselves and onto God. It focuses on who he is, not on who I am. It focuses on what he has done, not on what I can or can't do. He is able, and we need to acknowledge that, persistently and consistently.
Thanksgiving and praise are fundamental to a mature overcoming life in Messiah Jesus; it is as simple as that. If you want to grow and mature, learn the power of thanksgiving and praise—get your mind off yourself, and get your mind onto the Father and the Son. Find ways to continually praise, celebrate, proclaim, and affirm their majesty.
I need to pause here and talk about a heinous sin that permeates and enervates the Christian world, especially in the West.
I am speaking of the sin of introspection. We are consumed with turning in and analyzing ourselves: our thoughts, our actions, our motives, our inabilities. You know what I mean, that nagging tendency to think about how we have failed, how we should have done this or should not have done that.
The sin of introspection is practicing the presence of self rather than the presence of God.
If introspection is left to run rampant, it can lead to mental instability. Mental hospitals are full of people who do nothing but introspect continuously. To be absorbed in oneself is a type of insanity. Yet you and I can practice a version of this which destroys spontaneous praise and worship.
Many people will go to the altar to confess and repent of sin, and God will touch them. But before they even get back to their seat, they have already destroyed that touch from God. Why? Because on the way back from the altar, they are introspecting on what just happened.
In her book, The Healing Presence, Leanne Payne tells the story of a professor who would illustrate this principle. He said to his students at the seminary, "Do you realize that you cannot kiss your girlfriend or boyfriend and think about the kiss at the same time. If you are in the act of kissing and you are thinking about the kiss, then you are missing out on the experience of kissing."
When we give in to unhealthy introspection, we do the same thing, and I see this continuously in faith communities. Christians are so hamstrung, laboring under guilt, condemnation, and a continuous sense of anxiety that they are robbed of spontaneity to be the person Jesus died to recreate. Why? Because they are too busy over-analyzing their every word and deed. Think about it. What we say about ourselves becomes more important than what God says about who we are in Jesus.
Biblical praise is a remedy for introspection.
Praise liberates us to the full expression and creativity that God has for us because it gets us up out of ourselves and onto him. Rather than leading into yourself like introspection, praise is just the opposite—it leads out of self. It empowers you to go out to the world, taking the kingdom with you. In other words, it leads to serving others.
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Want to go deeper? Click here to explore audio seminars by Dwight A. Pryor.
Interested in taking one of our dynamic online courses? Click here.
This study is from a professionally produced transcription of the audio recording. It was edited for readability by the team at JC Studies.
Dwight A. Pryor (1945-2011) was a gifted Bible teacher of exceptional clarity and depth who earned the friendship and admiration of both Christian and Jewish scholars—in the United States and Israel—as well as the respect and appreciation of followers of Jesus around the world. His expertise in the language, literature, and culture of Israel during the life and time of Jesus and the early church yield insights that nourish every area of faith and practice.
Dwight founded JC Studies in 1984 to edify the people of God. Click here to explore over fifty of his audio and video seminars.
Post Title: Hebrew's Rich Vocabulary of Praise
The goal of our study, Todah Living, is that we might praise more biblically, freely, and consistently!
Listen to Psalm 100, verse 5,
For the LORD is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
That is the fundamental nature of praise, giving expression to who God is and what He has done, and based on that, what we can expect he is doing today. And so the psalmist rejoices in verse 4,
Enter his gates with thanksgiving [todah, from yadah],
and his courts with praise [tehillah]!
Give thanks to him; bless [barak] his name!
Isn't this striking? Hebrew has such a beautiful tapestry of praise language. The idea of praise is woven into the very fabric of life for the people of God. It is a challenge to develop a deeper grasp and a broader view of our praise.
Let's look at some key Hebrew words on the subject.
Halal - is a direct synonym for yadah; it also means to praise. The root of halal comes from a word that means to shout or cry aloud. It has the connotation to shout for joy, to rejoice, to be sincerely and deeply thankful. You see the word over 100 times in the Hebrew Bible, although you don't recognize it. For example, in Psalm 135, each translation of the word praise comes from the Hebrew word halal.
Hallelujah, from halal, is a word we are all very familiar with. It is not a translation but a transliteration, the actual Hebrew word brought directly into English. But hallelujah is not a declaration of praise. Rather, it is a directive to praise.
We don't use it that way in English today; we use it as a word of praise. It is appropriate to do so because a term can be defined by how it is used. But biblically speaking, it's like having the family together for a big dinner, and you say, "Let's eat!" followed by everyone else at the table saying, "let's eat, let's eat, let's eat"—without anyone taking a bite.
Barak - can also be translated as praise. Listen to King David in Psalm 103,
"Bless [Barak] the LORD, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!
Bless [Barak] the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all His benefits"
Literally, say the sages of Israel concerning Ps. 103:1, your innards should praise God.
The idea behind barak is to adore with bended knee in reverence and love. Observant Jews praise dozens and dozens of times daily, saying, "Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu." Baruch is a form of the word barak, "Blessed art thou O LORD our God."
Tehillah - is a Hebrew word often translated as praise. As a noun, it is the word for a psalm. The book of Psalms is called Tehillim (plural of tehillah), which means the hymns of praises or the book of praises. Many of the psalms were sung. They were used in an individual context, and they were used in the corporate context of worship.
"I will bless [barak] the LORD at all times," says David in psalm 34, "his praise [tehillah] shall continually be in my mouth."
It is the idea of verbal expression with a corresponding attitude of delight and joy; that is the essence of tehillah. The psalms are Israel's hymnbook, and what a treasure to the world! They reflect this incredibly rich and diverse outpouring of Israel's heart and faith towards God—both in good times and bad.
Yes, there are psalms of lament, helping us give our emotions and duress up to God. Yes, we should not keep our troubles bottled up but confess everything to him. That is part of the transformative power; it will inexorably lead to high praise.
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
you have loosed my sackcloth
and clothed me with gladness
- Psalm 30:11
Shachah - means worship. It is remarkably straightforward. There is no mystery here because it is the same in Greek as it is in Hebrew. Chavah is another Hebrew word that describes worship. The basic idea of both is to bow down, to prostrate oneself, to do obeisance.
We all understand that when you come into the presence of royalty, you curtsy or you bow. It is also used in interpersonal relationships. Abraham honored his three visitors by bowing down to the ground. Worship is bowing down, doing obeisance, showing reverence. It is a voluntary act done in an attitude of respect and adoration.
Our English word comes from the old English word 'worthship.' Worship is attributing to someone the worthiness they deserve in accordance with who they are or what they have done. Said another way to worship is to assign worth.
The perversion of worship is idolatry, bowing to the wrong things, or the wrong ones. Idolatry gives the worth—which belongs to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob alone—to someone or something else. C.S. Lewis uses terminology which is provocative and helpful. He talks about humans being bent towards either creature (other people) or the creation (such as things)—rather than worshipping the Creator. And this leads to a myriad of spiritual and psychological dysfunctions.
What is it that bends us away from our Father? Iniquity (avon in Hebrew). Avon means to twist, distort, or bend. At the heart of avon is the impulse towards self-centeredness. Avon describes that which makes you turn from God and bend towards another. In Paul's Hebraic worldview, "they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen."
When you bow before the one, true God, he becomes the lifter of your head. He raises you into the posture he desires for you. You are his son, you are his daughter, and he says to you, "You are acceptable to me in Jesus, welcome my good and faithful servant."
The power of praise is that it combats our inclination towards idolatry and iniquity. Instead of bending towards self, we freely and willingly bow before the Lord of Glory in humble adoration.
Let all kingdom people hallelujah! (editor: that is not a typo;-)
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Want to go deeper? Click here to explore audio seminars by Dwight A. Pryor.
Interested in taking one of our dynamic online courses? Click here.
This study is from a professionally produced transcription of the audio recording. It was edited for readability by the team at JC Studies.
Dwight A. Pryor (1945-2011) was a gifted Bible teacher of exceptional clarity and depth who earned the friendship and admiration of both Christian and Jewish scholars—in the United States and Israel—as well as the respect and appreciation of followers of Jesus around the world. His expertise in the language, literature, and culture of Israel during the life and time of Jesus and the early church yield insights that nourish every area of faith and practice.
Dwight founded JC Studies in 1984 to edify the people of God. Click here to explore over fifty of his audio and video seminars.
Post Title: Three Surprising Act of Praise
Yadah (praise) is a conceptual thing that implies an awareness of who it is before whom we bow.
It is to be expressed with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. The essence of praise (yadah) is the whole person giving whole worship to God, together as his people.
Whether I’m singing a chorus or a hymn I need to concentrate on the words, the content of what I am singing.
Whether I’m dancing or waving a flag I need to connect my movement with the words and content of what is being sung.
Whether I kneel in quiet adoration or stand with hands and voice raised, my focus must be on confessing, declaring, and proclaiming who God is and what he has done.
Then your praise is acceptable to him, then it has transformative power.
If we grasp the essence of biblical praise, worship, and thanksgiving as I have explained to you, then some exciting implications emerge. For instance, there are other important expressions of praise, which we usually don’t think of in those terms. Let me give you three examples.
1. Study is one of the highest forms of worship
Do you have a better feeling now for why that is? Study can be a matter of affirming (acknowledging, focusing) on who God is and what he has done. You are looking to God’s Word to know Him, to learn how to respond. My seminar, The Highest Form of Worship is foundational to anybody who wishes to have a biblical, a Hebraic perspective.
When you realize that your act of study can be an act of worship, you are thinking biblically. In an attitude of reverence, you read what he has done, you acknowledge his attributes, you praise his actions. Even as you hear these words right now, you can connect them with your heart’s desire to know God and make him known. Gratitude grows when we become aware that he is doing just that!
In our public worship gatherings, the reading, proclaiming, and confessing of God’s Word are acts of praise, at least they should be.
In the synagogue in Jesus’ day, the public reading of the Hebrew Scriptures was the service’s focus. There were as many as seven appointed readers in every synagogue service; an extensive portion of the Word of God would be read and commented upon.
We tend to think of praise exclusively in terms of music, which is usually the first part of our service. When that is done, we enter into the second part, teaching. The result is an artificial distinction. We need to recapture the importance of praise expressed through the acts of reading and teaching, hearing and responding to God’s living Word.
Justin Martyr described an early church gathering some one hundred years after Jesus. Basically, it consisted of two things. The first was the reading and proclaiming of the apostles’ and the prophet’s memoirs (in other words, God’s Word). The second was the communal taking of the Lord’s Supper. Acts 2:42 tells us that was precisely the priority when the first church met to worship. “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
2. Taking the Lord’s supper is an act of praise and worship
How often do we think of taking the Lord’s Supper as an act of praise and thanksgiving? But it is. And that is the power of it if you would but receive it that way. The word Eucharist (which other traditions use) comes from the Greek to rejoice (chairo). It is the word for thanksgiving.
How can this be an act of praise? Because when we partake of the Lord’s Supper, we re-enact, we remember who Jesus was and what he did. He was our Passover Lamb, and because of his death, burial, and resurrection—by the shedding of his blood—we have the full provisions of atonement. The Lord’s Supper is the most powerful healing service available to the church. It is the most potent act of praise if we have but the right attitude about it.
What does Paul say about this? In 1 Cor 11:26, he writes, “whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim (show forth, herald, declare, confess) the Lord’s death until he comes.” What is the Hebrew root of praise, worship, and thanksgiving? Yadah. What is the core meaning of yadah? Professing, proclaiming, and declaring. And every time you participate (you have fellowship in his body and in his blood) in the Lord’s Supper, you are praising Jesus till he comes!
3. Confessing is an act of praise and worship
We know from Justin Martyr that before people partook of the Lord’s Supper they confessed their sins. On many occasions, this word yadah is used in the biblical text to speak of the confession of sins—individually and corporately (nationally). Here is an example from Psalm 32:5.
I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess [yadah] my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah
This is an important element of who God is and what he does. You see, the LORD is eager for us to confess because he is eager to forgive.
What about the sins of a nation? Leviticus 16 gives detailed instructions concerning the Day of Atonement. One thing that was to happen on that solemn day was a public confession of the sins of the people, and of the nation (vs.20-22). It was an integral part of the Day of Atonement and God’s reconciliation of a people to himself.
The point is this; God desires that we acknowledge and confess our sins before him. Confession is an act of repentance. When we do that, he is able to forgive and to heal. “If we confess our sins,” says John, “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” He also goes on to say, “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:9-10)
James talks about this in the context of healing. “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” This is a very Jewish way of thinking because it is biblical. Unfortunately, so many of us have missed out on the power of confessing our sins. It is another powerful expression of praise that we miss out on due to a confusion between what praise is and how it is expressed.
Thanksgiving was a way of life for the first church.
“Be thankful. Let the word of Messiah dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Colossians 3:15-17)
Read more: Previous Post | Next Post
Want to go deeper? Click here to explore audio seminars by Dwight A. Pryor.
Interested in taking one of our dynamic online courses? Click here.
This study is from a professionally produced transcription of the audio recording. It was edited for readability by the team at JC Studies.
Dwight A. Pryor (1945-2011) was a gifted Bible teacher of exceptional clarity and depth who earned the friendship and admiration of both Christian and Jewish scholars—in the United States and Israel—as well as the respect and appreciation of followers of Jesus around the world. His expertise in the language, literature, and culture of Israel during the life and time of Jesus and the early church yield insights that nourish every area of faith and practice.
Dwight founded JC Studies in 1984 to edify the people of God. Click here to explore over fifty of his audio and video seminars.