One of the quickest ways to lose a battle on the spiritual battlefield is to fail to praise God. Hell cannot stand the sound of praise because it magnifies the Lord and shrinks your perspective of the devil. Praise celebrates how big and powerful God is while dwarfing the power of the enemy. Take a moment to meditate on these powerful verses on praise.
Psalm 144:1 says, “Praise be to the Lord My Rock who trains my Hands For War my Fingers for Battle.”
Psalm 100:4 “Enter His Gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with Praise. Be thankful to Him and Bless His name. For the Lord is Good His mercy is everlasting and His truth endures to all generations.”
James 4:7 “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”
One of the prerequisites for God revealing himself powerfully in certain atmospheres is a heart that is full of praise and lips that are ready to declare the praises of God! Don’t ever underestimate the power of praise. Not only does praise usher in the presence of God it also becomes a weapon in the spirit realm. When praise ushers in the presence of God and He begins to move in any battle you can consider that battle done for you have won the victory. Allow me to give you three powerful aspects of praise.
1. PRAISE IS A CHOICE WEAPON OF WAR
Praise is a choice weapon of war on the battlefield! Praise means to declare the excellence of someone or something. It also means to glorify by the attributions of perfections. Praise is commending, by speaking or singing the perfections of God.
Hebrews 13:15 says, “Therefore by Him let us continually offer up a sacrifice of Praise to God that is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His Name.”
Praise is about releasing words toward God that are marked by a thankful heart. Praise is the measuring rod of God’s worth in your Life. If God means everything to you then you will certainly express that through praise.
The Bible says we ought to enter His gates with thanksgiving. The word enter means to go in but it also means to lead in. Praise takes you into the presence but it is also spiritually contagious and causes others to want to go into the presence of God. The word gates means a palace, castle, temple court of a tabernacle, or heaven. Praising God repositions you to fight on the spiritual battlefield from the King’s palace in heaven and shifting atmospheres in the earth.
God calls us to come through His courts with praise. The word courts means settled abode, settlement, like a village or a town. No matter what things look like on this earth praise will cause your heart to be settled in heaven able to deal with anything on this earth.
2. PRAISE BREAKS THE ENEMY’S OPPRESSION
Secondly, praise will break the enemy’s oppression. When you feel oppressed, weary, or discouraged by the devil then start praising God for who He is and all that He has done in your life and it will break the chains of oppression off of your life. When a person is oppressed by the enemy, it means that the enemy for whatever reason has been able to afflict the body, mind, will, and emotions of a person. A person oppressed by the enemy means that they are experiencing unjust treatment or control and the direct source is the devil himself. You must push back your enemy with praise!
Consider the Children of Israel when they were in bondage under the Oppression of Pharaoh, they had a promise that God would send them a deliverer. The more Pharaoh oppressed the children of Israel the more they waxed mightier. God told Moses in Exodus 3 that I have heard the Cry of My people So I have come down to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians to bring them up to a land that is flowing with milk and honey. You know the story as Moses obeys God and gets the children out of Egyptian bondage they broke out in praise.
Exodus 15:1-2 says, “Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord, and spoke, saying: “I will sing to the Lord, For He has triumphed gloriously!
The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea! The Lord is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; He is my God, and I will praise Him; My father’s God, and I will exalt Him.”
I have personally never met an oppressed believer in Jesus Christ who has a lifestyle of praising God. Consider Paul and Silas who destroyed the power of oppression through praise when they praised God in the jail cell and then there was a jail break.
Acts 16:25-28 says, “But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were loosed. And the keeper of the prison, awaking from sleep and seeing the prison doors open, supposing the prisoners had fled, drew his sword and was about to kill himself. But Paul called with a loud voice, saying, “Do yourself no harm, for we are all here.”
3. PRAISE CONFUSES THE ENEMY
Finally, not only is praise a choice weapon of war that activates the presence of God it also breaks the powers of oppression and confuses the enemy. Consider 2 Chronicles 20 the enemy was coming against the people of God and Jehoshaphat was afraid and he said, “We have no power against the great multitude that is coming against us nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.” The Bible says that they rose early in the morning and went out into the wilderness and as they went out Jehoshaphat appointed those who should sing to the Lord and who should praise the beauty of Holiness as they went out before the army and were saying, “Praise the Lord for His mercy endures forever!” They sang about who God is and what He is capable of doing and when they began to sing and to praise God, the Lord set ambushes against the enemy, who had come against Judah and they were defeated! The enemy was suddenly confused and began to fight against themselves.
2 Chronicles 20:22 says, “Now when they began to sing and to praise, the LORD set ambushes against the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah; and they were defeated.”
Praise shifts the entire spiritual battlefield until the enemy suddenly becomes confused and victory is in your hands. I challenge you to push back the enemy with praise as your choice weapon of war and overthrow the power of His oppression in your life.
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