PRAISE IS OUR WEAPON
By Kevin Jones
Psalm 21:13 — “Accept our praise, O Lord, for all your glorious power. We will write songs to celebrate your mighty acts!”
This song was written as an authoritative roar and proclamation of our victorious King. First and foremost, Jesus is supreme. He is over all and is absolutely, positively, no-doubt-about-it, in-control. No one can mess with Him. Through Jesus, we have complete deliverance and victory over sin & death.
As a member of People & Songs, I can tell you this: we have collectively decided together that praise is our weapon—no matter how we feel, no matter what surrounds us, and no matter what may come our way, God’s GONNA get our praise!
As we give God our praise, we are doing two things:
1. We are celebrating Jesus!
2. We are defying our enemy.
I think a great example of using praise as a weapon is found in Acts 16. Let me set the stage: Paul and Silas were in the city of Philippi, ministering together in the name of Jesus. To make a long story short, they cast an evil spirit out of a girl. This particular spirit was one of “divination,” or simply put, fortune telling. The girl that the evil spirit was controlling was actually a slave. Her owners had gained much profit from her fortune telling and were now enraged at Paul and Silas.
What followed was an intense public beating. In verses 22–24 it says that Paul and Silas were stripped and beaten with rods and then put in stocks in the inner chamber of the prison. This has never happened to me but if it did, you better believe that I would be crying out to God for help like I never had before. Paul and Silas certainly prayed, but here’s what is so incredibly awesome—they also praised. Verse 25 says, “But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.”
Now, why in the world were they singing? Praying makes sense. But singing?! It was late. Midnight to be exact. I can only imagine how much pain they were in and how physically and emotionally exhausted they were. They had no idea what was going to happen to them. Will they be beaten again? When will they eat again? How long they were going to be held captive? I can only imagine that they were at a place of total devastation.
In the eyes of men, they were weaponless, but in the eyes of God, they had the greatest weapon. They had learned that singing, especially while in the face of suffering, is not merely a response to God’s grace but also a weapon of spiritual warfare. What I really love about this is that they prayed and sang together. Our enemy wants to attack us alone. Any professional zoologist will tell you that a pride of lions never attack a whole group of wildebeests. They always single out one. The Church is meant to stick together, war together, and praise together.
As you keep reading, God displays His power and mercy in response to their praise. Here’s what happens in Verse 26: “And suddenly there was a great earthquake . . . and immediately all the doors were opened and every one’s fetters were unfastened.”
Isn’t that awesome?! God accepts Paul and Silas’s praise and makes it an occasion for His power! When we praise, God flexes! Here we see the truth confirmed, that God has assigned the use of spiritual songs as a powerful and advantageous weapon against His greatest enemy - the devil.
“Like” A Lion
While we were writing “God’s Gonna Get My Praise,” we rallied around 1 Peter 5. Verse 8 says, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” I remember the moment when we realized something very profound about this particular verse. It specifically says that the devil is “like” a lion, meaning he isn’t a lion. The devil is an imposter. He is not God.
1 Peter 5 goes on to say in Verse 9 to “Resist him, firm in your faith…” I think we could all agree that it is easy to praise God when it is 75 degree weather and everything is smooth sailing. But a true test of our faith is when we praise God specifically in the midst of storms, valleys, trials, and tribulations. When we resist our enemy firm in our faith, that means we praise God in and through all seasons and walks of life. We are looking to the One (Jesus) who is for us and not against us. He gives us His strength to stand firm in our faith. Jesus is not a distant God. He is not in another room expecting you to fight all alone.
Back to that word - together. God has given us His Bride (the Church) to help us not be alone in the fight. Hallelujah! But we are also not alone in the fact that He has also given us His Spirit. The Holy Spirit is where our true power comes from. Ephesians 5:18–19 says, “Be filled with the Holy Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody to the Lord with all your heart.”
As we see here, being filled with the Holy Spirit happens when a heart is filled with praise. So if we are warring against the devil by the power and fullness of the Holy Spirit, we are weaponizing and arming ourselves with melodies. We are fighting him with song!
Honestly, Paul and Silas are just one out of many examples throughout the Bible where worship is warfare and praise is a weapon in the hands of believers. So now let us lean on each other “…knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.” - 1 Peter 5:9. Let us ultimately rely on the Holy Spirit where we obtain the power to sing in the face of our enemy. May the Holy Spirit empower our obedience & praise!
Praise is our weapon as we celebrate Jesus and defy our enemy! It doesn’t matter what surrounds me, what I’m going through or how I feel about it. God’s gonna get my praise!!
- Kev
People & Songs
Listen to “God’s Gonna Get My Praise” from The Emerging Sound Volume 5