The Power of Praise

I know your problem hasn't been solved yet. Get your praise on. Dr. Tony Evans says our response to a crisis should be based on who we're trusting, not what we're facing. What am I praising for when my problem hasn't been solved? I'm praising for the God who can solve it. This is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative. Even though the coronavirus pandemic has stretched us economically and stressed us emotionally, Dr. Evans says Christians possess a very powerful tool that can transform our personal outlook, especially in times like these. Let's join him as he explains.

Let me ask you a question. If your health is falling apart, you're probably going to go to the doctor because you think the doctor can help you get it back together again. If your house is falling apart, you're going to call a repair person to kind of come and fix what's broken. If your car is making all kind of noise, that means you need a mechanic, somebody who knows what they're doing, who can bring resolution to your car dilemma. If your clothes are tattered and torn, you're going to go to a tailor to kind of put it back together again.

If you're not doing well in school and the grades are falling, you got to go to a tutor to help you learn what you need to learn so you can pass what you need to pass. What do you do when your world is falling apart, when your nation is in trouble? What do you do when you've hit a crisis so big that you have nowhere to go?

What do you do when all human options have disappeared on you and no matter which direction you look in—North, South, East, West—the answers are difficult and everybody's trying a lot of things, but nobody has a definitive answer. And it's not only affecting you and your family, it's affecting your neighborhood, your church, your nation, and the whole world. Well, that's what coronavirus is, isn't it? It's a pandemic, which means it's a national and international negative crisis. A crisis is a situation that overwhelms you. Crisis can come in a whole lot of forms. There can be economic crisis.

We know what that's like due to corona. There can be a relational crisis. There can be social crises. There can be career crisis.

Crisis can come in all kind of shapes and forms and sizes. One thing is true, though, it is overwhelming. It can bring tears to your eyes. It can cause you to be disconcerted emotionally.

What do you do when there's nothing you know that you can do? Well, that's why I love 2nd Chronicles, chapter 20. It is the story of King Jehoshaphat. King Jehoshaphat has a problem on his hands.

It's a problem that has affected his whole nation. He says in verse 2, a great multitude is coming against us. He looks out and he says, every direction that I look, and he names them, he says, every direction they're coming against us and they're closing us in. He is in a predicament, a dilemma. He's in a crisis. He says that this crisis is hitting him in every direction.

And you pretty much know when you've hit that kind of crisis because your emotions begin to take charge. Because verse 3 of 2nd Chronicles 20 says Jehoshaphat was afraid. He was scared. He was terrorized because this was a problem he didn't know how to fix. This was an enemy he didn't know what to do with. This was his own corona, a problem too big for him to handle. We're told that in the midst of this problem, he turned his eyes to seek the Lord. That's what verse 3 says.

He looked up because nowhere looking out could solve his problem. Right now we're seeing more people talk about God, talk about faith, talk about religion, talk about Jesus, quoting scriptures on newscasts. Yeah, there are those detractors out there, but it's pretty clear we're in a dilemma that is a little bigger than us.

And even if it wasn't this corona, so many of us have our personal coronas, don't we? The viruses that have messed up our lives. He sought the Lord. He wanted to bring God into the equation of his dilemma. You know you're in a crisis that you can't fix when the harder you try, the deeper down you go, like quicksand. You know, the harder you try to get out of quicksand, the more it sucks you under. That's what a dilemma does that is a pandemic kind of crisis in your life and in your world.

Well, that's Jehoshaphat's problem. What he decides to do is turn to the Lord and get everybody else to do it too, because verse 4 says, he gathered together to seek help from the Lord, and they even came from all the cities of Judah to seek the Lord. In fact, we told in verse 3 he proclaims a national fast.

You know that's what we need today? We need to call our whole nation to a fast and prayer. Not just prayer, but a fast. Let me say a word about fasting. Fasting is a Bunsen burner underneath prayer. Fasting is giving up something physical to gain something spiritual. See, most people visit the spiritual while we live and are controlled by the physical, but what fasting does is it shifts that. It says right now the spiritual is more important than the physical. Heaven is more important than earth, because I can't fix earth with earth, because my problem is too big.

I need the unseen world to enter to the seen world to affect my dilemma, my crisis. So he calls a fast. Right now, everybody should fast.

You should pick up a meal a week, a day a week. When you leave the smart devices, you cut off the television, you walk away from a meal, and you say, God, we are crying out to you now for ourselves, our families, our churches, and our nation, because we're all in trouble, and we're crying out to you. This is so big and so bad that we're willing to give up something to gain something more, and that is to gain you in the middle of our pain, uncertainty, sickness, and death from an unseen enemy.

Now, before we go any further, I need to tell you something. If you want God to do something about the problem in chapter 20, you have to address something in chapter 19. You see, in chapter 19, King Jehoshaphat got all the nation to get right with God. It says in chapter 19, verse 4, that King Jehoshaphat brought the nation back to the Lord, to the God of their fathers. You see, being right with God is a prerequisite to hearing from God.

You can fast and pray all day, but if you refuse to get right with the one you're talking to, then you have no guarantee he's gonna respond, because he doesn't want to respond so you can leave him out more, so that you can ignore him more, so you can say a prayer to get out of it and then skip him. So they got right first, and then they sought the Lord. We're in trouble.

And even before this dilemma, we see all kind of trouble in our nation— political, class, race, you know, all that's kind of become secondary to this bigger problem, but we've had a lot of problems that we need solutions for. But that starts with God going Godward, and so he calls everybody. In fact, verse 13 says that they even brought their children along with their wives, which means the men went front and center.

They brought their wives, they brought their children. In other words, everybody in on this, because this thing affects all of us. If this invasion hits us, everybody's gonna be destroyed, Jehoshaphat said. And we're seeing with this coronavirus, it can hit any of us, and it can be deadly with a blow.

And so everybody got on board. That's why we want our church, our church in Dallas, to at least find some time every week and maybe a portion of every day to call you to a fast, to tell the children, no, not now. We're not—we're gonna take 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, or whatever works.

We're gonna give up meat today, or we're gonna give up a television for this period of time, and we're gonna talk to each other. We're gonna talk to God, because we want our family protected from this virus, and we want our nation to be healed of it, and we want our medical experts to find a solution to it. So let's cry out to God. It's called a solemn assembly in Scripture, a sacred gathering, where people were called to invoke on heaven because history was in trouble. And so he calls on them.

He makes a statement in verse 12. He says, The reason that we're calling on you is we don't know what to do, and our eyes are on you. Oh, you don't know what to do, huh? This is outside of your control. See, we like to be in control.

We like to be able to handle stuff. Well, God will let you know how bad you need Him by allowing things in your life, in my life, and our lives collectively that we can't fix on our own. He says, We don't know what to do, and I'm not too proud to beg.

I'm gonna be humble with this thing. He prays a prayer beginning in verse 5. Let me tell you the ingredients of this prayer. You start your praise with a prayer. He starts his prayer by rehearsing God's person and then graduating to God's power.

Let me say that again. He starts his prayer by rehearsing God's person, then graduating to God's power. He tells God how great He is, how awesome He is. He tells God that He rules from heaven. He tells God that He rules over all the kingdoms.

It is good to know that, that there's no problem on earth so big that God can't overrule it. He tells God that the enemy coming at Him is no competition for the God of the universe. So He brags on God's person, and then He talks about God's power. That's what you want. Don't just ask for His power and skip His person, because His power is tied to His character.

You want to know what He is like in order to get what He can do. So He brags on God, makes a big deal about God, because He's got a big virus, a big invasion that He needs to be able to address. And everybody was with Him, because that's how big the problem was. From the outhouse to the White House, everybody should be dropping on their knees, ideally at the same time, so He can hear all the voices calling down heaven in history and calling on God to invade this dilemma that we face. After His prayer, He got a prophetic word. It says God heard what He had to say, and He called a prophet, and He called the prophet in verse 14. He said, if you listen to the prophet, verse 20, you will succeed. You know, right now we need a word from God. Let me tell you about the prophet.

The prophet was not a particularly popular person, because they usually showed up during times of calamity and difficulty, often with negative things to say but always with a positive goal in saying it—to get right with God so that things could be reversed, so that deliverance could take place, so that the agenda could be changed. And so you want a prophetic word. We call that a rhema word.

Let me give you a few Greek words here that will help you understand the rhema word. There is the grafe. The grafe is the book. It is, as it sits on your shelf or on your coffee table, it is the written, recorded Word of God.

That's the grafe. So you could never even open the Bible, but it would still be the Bible, because it is the written Word of God. But the logos is what it says and what it means by what it says.

That's why Jesus Christ, by the way, is called the logos of God in John 1.1, because He came to explain the Father to us. But then there is the rhema word. The rhema word is the specific utterance into your specific situation. A rhema word is not a general word. It's just—it's not even a sermon, because the sermon can be one word for everybody. A rhema word is God's Word to you. They're in a dilemma, and they need a rhema word, which is a prophetic word. He says, if you'll listen to the prophet—now, just because somebody preaching don't mean that the prophet—but He does give His applicational words to the prophetic voice today.

Dr. Evans will tell us what happens next for the people of Judah in their time of trial when he continues in a moment. Stay with us. You might be breathing a sigh of relief as 2020 draws to a close. This year has been a tough one, but as we get ready to step into 2021, we're excited about the opportunities before us to reach even more people with messages of hope and life from God's Word. Your year-end gift today will help do exactly that. Please visit tonyevans.org to give today.

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I'll repeat that contact information for you again after part two of today's lesson. After they prayed, God brought a prophet, and then it was time for a praise. Look at how much praise goes on in this chapter without the problem yet being solved. It says in verse 18, they fell down before the Lord and worshiped Him. They say in verse 19, they stood up to praise the Lord. They say in verse 21, they sang to the Lord those who praised Him in holy attire. It says in verse 22, when they began singing and praising, the Lord set an ambush. In other words, praise made the difference.

They had a problem, a virus they couldn't fix, an invasion they couldn't overcome. That led to a prayer. The prayer opened the door for a prophet, and then it was time to get your praise on. Let me talk about praise. Praise is an accentuating and expressing value to God. You can worship privately. Without saying a word, you can worship. You can worship in your heart.

You can worship with your mind. You can worship in silence, but you can't do that with praise. Praise is worship gone public. Praise is declaring your stand. That's what the psalmist meant in Psalm 34 when he said, O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt and extol His name together. In other words, he says, get your praise on. When you magnify God, you can't make God bigger, but a magnifying glass doesn't make something bigger.

It just shows you in a bigger way what's really there. The Bible says that God inhabits the praise of His people. He hangs out in praise when praise is coming from the right heart. Get your praise on even though your problems, that's all. Praise God that He's bigger than corona. Praise God that He's bigger than your private coronas, however they may show up in your life. Praise Him that He's greater than whatever the greatest challenge is in your life.

It says, when God heard that praise, He set an ambush for the enemy. In football, my son Jonathan was a fullback. The fullback's job is to run through the line and open up a hole in one of the gaps for the halfback.

That's one of his main jobs. The quarterback receives the ball. The linemen, at first, are coming after the quarterback, because the quarterback has the ball. But when the quarterback hands off the ball to the halfback, everybody shifts to go after the halfback now.

Jonathan's job was to block them on the shift. You see, because you've shifted the problem to somebody else. You may have the problem right now, but when you get your praise on, you've shifted it over to God. That's why when David was facing Goliath, he says in 1st Samuel 17, verses 26 and 36, who is this uncircumcised Philistine that challenges the armies of the living God? He shifted it over to God. He said, no, you're messing with God now. In other words, he made it a spiritual battle, not just a physical battle with Big Boy.

No, he said Big Boy is big, but he ain't that big, cuz I know somebody bigger. When you learn to shift your pain, your problem, your dilemma, your coronas over to God, now you have somebody bigger than the problem you face and the problem that the medical environment faces that's worldwide. It's time to shift that thing over.

It's time to give that thing over. The Bible says in your praise, Psalm 50, verse 23, is your deliverance. That God will deliver you in your praise. You say, but my problem has not been solved yet.

I know your problem hasn't been solved yet. Get your praise on. What am I praising for when my problem hasn't been solved? I'm praising for the God who can solve it. I'm praising that it's not so big that it's bigger than Him.

I'm praising Him for what I've seen Him do in the Bible. See, that's why you have to know the Word of God, because you need to know what He did yesterday to remind you what He can do today. That's why all through the Bible it rehearses God delivering from Egypt. It rehearses God delivering through the Red Sea.

Why? To show them when they ran into their next Pharaoh, when they ran into their next army, when they ran into their next dilemma, that same God can handle it, because He's already handled it before. The problem is, if you don't have a history with God and you haven't seen what He can do, then you won't be as energized to praise Him right now, because you don't have a history with Him. Ah, but throughout the Bible, when folk got their praise on, God did something.

If you don't believe me, ask Joshua. When they were walking around the wall of Jericho once a day for seven days, for six days on the seventh day, seven times, and they were letting out a shout. You know what that shout was? That wasn't just noise.

That's a shout of praise. What were they walking around? A thick problem. A wall that wouldn't fall and an enemy that wouldn't fold. But when they got their praise on, cracks started crumbling, rumbling started taking place. When they got their praise on, things began to collapse.

The problem came to an end. If you don't believe that praise works, ask Paul and Silas in jail. They're in chains, they're in jail, but they got their praise on. And when they got their praise on, things started to shake. Things started to rumble, and they were delivered.

They even did evangelism by leading the Philippian jailer to salvation. You see, when you get your praise on, it causes heaven to move so the earth shakes, so that the rumbling down here occurs because God is moving. Praise is not praise until it's expressed.

When's the last time you've gotten your praise on? So in your fast, get your praise on. In your prayer, get your praise on. In your dilemma, celebrate God because He deserves your praise. Magnify.

Make a big deal about it. Dr. Tony Evans on the wisdom of praising God, even in the midst of troubles. And he'll come back in just a moment with a closing thought. But first, let me quickly remind you of that special offer I mentioned earlier. When you make a year-end contribution right away, we'll say thanks by sending you the best of Tony Evans 2020, an audio collection on CD and digital download containing 20 of Tony's most requested messages, as well as his powerful devotional book called For a Purpose.

See your talents and interests through God's eyes and discover the purpose God has in store for you. Both of these resources make a great gift, and they're both yours as our gift when you make a donation to help keep Tony's teaching on this station. Just drop by tonyevans.org, where you can get all the details and make your contribution online.

Again, that's tonyevans.org, or call our 24-hour resource center at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members assist you with your request. It may seem like if you focus on a problem, you're more likely to find a solution. But tomorrow, Dr. Evans will explain that sometimes your focus is the problem.

Right now, though, he's back with this final thought for today. Again, Psalm 34 says, my fears looked up to him and they got calm. If you're nervous about corona, if you're nervous about your economic situation, if you're scared about your job, tell your fears you want them to take a look at somebody else, because as long as they're looking at you, they're gonna control you. But tell your fears that someplace else I want you to look, because there's somebody else that I want you to respond to. So the more fearful you get, the more enclosed you feel, get your praise on. You will never know God is all you need until you discover God is all you have. Right now, God is all you have, so let's let Him know. We know He's all we need, because heaven can overrule earth. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative, and is made possible by the generous contributions of listeners like you.