"EVERYTHING HAS BREATH (PRAISE)"

Written by Katie Torwalt

If you love Jesus and you love music, then we are living in an incredible time in history! With one simple click, you can have a seemingly endless flow of worship music filling your house, car, and life. I love it! Even though I’m a little biased, because I happen to write worship songs, I’m incredibly grateful for the gift of so much beautiful music that’s been released with the purpose to bring glory and honor to God. There have been many seasons when a song has shown up at the right time in my life to help give language to a feeling or longing deep in my soul and help me bring praise to God, or even met me with words and melodies that remind me of God’s faithfulness and love when I’ve needed it the most. However, there are still moments when I can get stuck in the routine of listening to my favorite songs, or singing along with the words in church but not actually responding to the presence of God.

There’s a passage in 2 Samuel 24:24 when King David had sinned and was following instructions to build an altar for a sacrifice on a plot of land owned by Araunah the Jebusite. When Araunah was ready and willing to give King David the land, David’s response was “No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer a sacrifice to the Lord my God that costs me nothing.”

I love this passage so much because it’s a glimpse into the heart of David. He’s a hero of the faith who also failed just as much as the rest of us, but it was his life of continuously coming back to God in repentance, thanksgiving, and worship that inspires us all: a life willing to lay it all down time and time again is what causes us to talk about him as “a man after God’s heart”.

We learn a lot about praise from the life of David, both through the Psalms and different moments in his life where he exemplified what living a lifestyle of praise was all about. He boasted in the Lord, danced foolishly, sang and wrote songs of His greatness, but it’s what he wrote in Psalm 22:3 that sticks out to me all the time: “You are holy, and enthroned upon the praises of Your people”. It’s David’s constant awareness of the presence of God and his longing to make sure that He was enthroned upon a life of praise. I want to become more aware every time I walk into church, or turn on a worship playlist, that it’s God’s intent to come and inhabit and be enthroned upon that praise. I pray that like David, no matter the season of life, the highs and lows and in the in betweens, that we would be a people who are willing to bring a sacrifice of praise to God.