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The word that comes to mind is wholeheartedly. I should offer praise wholeheartedly. In anything I offer (my first and my best) I need to present it well. An analogy would be a dinner served on the top of a garbage pail vs an elegant plate nicely prepared. It's all about presentation. All of my praise should be for Him and done with the best intentions, should be a sacrifice of my time, should be done in humility recognizing that I am His child but nothing without Him, and done in all reverence.

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On 15/02/2004 at 9:16 AM, Debora said:

Q2. (2:5) If your praise is primarily for God's benefit, not your own, how should you be offering praise?

With my heart and mind focused on Him (foremost in giving praise and consistent with the additional following ways I can think of, while being focused on God and Jesus in doing any one way or combination of what follows):

1. With thanksgiving.

2. With joy and exuberantly.

3. With feet - standing/sitting; bowed head and bended knee; dancing.

4. With hands - outstretched arms/lifting hands; clapping hands; playing instruments.

5. With mouth - singing, shouting, speaking.

6. With tears and crys.

7. With the many different words that speak of his name; to call them out to him as praise telling him who he is to me (us) - Adonai, Yeshua, Almighty, Redeemer, My Rock, My Salvation ............

8. In Spirit (worship flowing out of deepest part of myself)

9. In Truth (worship in sincerity and fashioned according to the pattern of God's word)

10. With gladness in my heart for all he has done for me.

11. With expectation to meet Him, the one who created me and to show Him my love for Him and gratitude.

12. With reverence.

Deborah 

I only recently joined, so you may not still be on this forum, but thank you for your words - they are spot on. Might I add my thanks to our Father God.

Father, I acknowledge You are Holy, I acknowledge You are Love, I acknowledge You are my Creator, I acknowledge You saved me through Jesus Christ, I thank You that You chose me by grace, I thank You for my breath, I thank You for giving me thought and a freedom of choice, I thank You for making me in Your image, I thank You for Your Holy Spirit, I thank You Jesus that when I call You are there (always there), I thank You that one day I will be redeemed and seated in Your glory in Heaven. I love You Lord. I praise You. I worship You. Thank You for Your Word. Thank You!

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On 2/13/2004 at 8:20 PM, Pastor Ralph said:

Q2. (2:5) If your praise is primarily for God's benefit, not your own, how should you be offering praise?

We offer praise to God by being obedient to from our heart, by our finances as we give tithes back to the Lord, by proclaiming the gospel to the unsaved and lastly by praising and worshiping him in song.   

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Q2.  (2:5) If your praise is primarily for God's benefit, not your own, how

should you be offering praise?

1. I will be obedient, a witness for him, and praise him. I will not praise him

so that men can see me, but praise will be from my heart. I will be thankful

for what he does and gives me. He will be number one in my life. I will

praise God's name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving. I will live my

life as an example of who he is. I will praise and worship him with music and

instruments.

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Q2. (2:5) If your praise is primarily for God's benefit, not your own, how should you be offering praise?

We can offer praise to God by our obedience and by bringing our Thanksgiving before him in prayer. We can praise God in song and in voice as we gather together to Proclaim our allegiance to God.

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Q2. (2:5) If your praise is primarily for God's benefit, not your own, how should you be offering praise?

We should then praise God in ways and fashions which please God and glorify him. We should then praise God in obedience and with all our hearts. Just as David put his whole heart into his dance before the Ark of the Tabernacle as it was being transported to Jerusalem so we should also put our complete heart into our worship and our praise of God our Almighty father.

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  • 1 month later...

Praising Him throughout the day, letting Him lead you to do His will, offering myself as a living sacrifice, giving of my $ or "things" wherever needed, sharing with those who don't know Him yet.

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I'm not certain that praise is for God's benefit -- this makes it sound as if I am able to do something that benefits Him, as if He was deficient in some manner and needed to be filled or completed. Since God is complete in Himself, needing nothing, what does praise mean to Him?

I don't know. I tend to anthropomorphize God, seeing Him as having exaggerated human traits -- "bigger than life." But God's love may be wholly different than the puny love I feel; God's anger may be very different than my own, too. So what it is that I'm praising if I can understand so little about Him? I must be praising the little I understand, though it's very tiny. 

But this doesn't answer the question of how I should offer praise that benefits God, not me. I don't know the answer to this. There is no way of escaping the "me" in praise and so, in a very real sense, I'm praising the parts of God I like, want to be true, or can imagine as through a glass darkly. I tend to gloss over the parts of teh Bible that are disturbing -- God demanding that the Israelites kill all the inhabitants of a particular region, for example -- because it is inconsistent with what I think God should be like: God=love, for example. But that killing is a part of God, too, and if I'm praising God for who He is, I need to praise the entire picture, not just the rosy parts.

A reality-based, even brutal acknowledgement of God -- one that takes into consideration His wrath as well as His love, His judgment as well as His salvation -- may be praising God for who He is, that is, His benefit, not mine. Praising God for my benefit would be picking and choosing only the attributes of God I desire, value, understand and need.

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