Psalm 145:1-3 (NIV) I will exalt you, my God the King; I will praise your name for ever and ever. Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.

A lot of our praise is in the form of thanking God for something that He has done for us. That is a totally appropriate and right thing to do. When Jesus healed the ten lepers and only one came back to thank Him, He took note that only one came back. We are even instructed in scripture to enter the "gates of the Lord" (into His presence) with thanksgiving (Psalm 100:4). But I believe that the thanksgiving that we are instructed to give is not so much for what He has done personally for us but for the fact that He has made a way for us to be able to come to Him. In other words, it's another form of praise and worship because of who He is, not necessarily for what He has done for us personally.

I have so much to thank the Lord Jesus for and I do it on a daily basis. But I begin my time of prayer with praise coming from my heart just because He is God and is worthy of all the praise I can muster. It wasn't always so. When I was first learning to worship God actively and apart from singing a few hymns at a Sunday service, my praise generally consisted of me thanking Him for this thing or that thing. I didn't know that I should praise Him for what we think is no reason at all but that is actually the primary reason that we should worship and adore Him. It's because of the awesome wonder that He is. It's because He is not only the Creator of the entire universe and is supreme over all creation, but He is our personal Creator. He made you by forming you in your mother's womb (Psalm 139:13-14). He is your Heavenly Father and even invites you to call Him "Abba." The reason that you should focus on this kind of praise is because while thanking Jesus for the things that He does for you such as healing, provision, and deliverance from difficult circumstances is right and even necessary, your praise will stop once a little time passes on the latest thing that Jesus did for you. Your praise will be attached to Him doing something new for you, when your praise should be everlasting because of the awesome God that He is.

Let's graduate from praising and thanking God for the things that He does for us and the things that He gives us to praising Him for who He is and thanking Him for being our God and Heavenly Father. This will keep our hearts like David, who the Bible says had a heart after God's own heart. He said that he would praise the Lord as long as he lived just because of who God is (Psalm 63:1-5). Let our thanksgiving be another form of praising God for not only being God, but for being our God. He is worthy of all of our praise, all the time!

Pastor Joey Vazquez