A Sacrifice of Praise: How Praise Deepens Our Faith

Do you ever find it hard to praise God? Does it ever feel like gratitude has become a ritual or empty routine? Maybe you are facing circumstances in your life that make praise seem difficult, or even painful. Maybe you don’t feel like you have much to be thankful for.

We’ve all been there, and so have many of the writers of Scripture. In this season of Thanksgiving, it’s an excellent time to ask ourselves this question: what role does gratitude and praise play in our daily Christian experience? How do we incorporate a practice of praise as passages like Psalm 63, Psalm 100, and Hebrews 13:15 encourage us to do? What does it really mean to offer God a sacrifice of praise?

What Is Gratitude Anyway?

Psychologists who study mental health and wellbeing have documented a correlation between regular a practice of gratitude and a more positive outlook on life, reduction in depressive symptoms, and greater overall wellbeing.

From a purely secular point of view, it’s tempting to look at research like this and come to one of two conclusions:

• Wow, that’s amazing. I can control my mental health by writing down three things I’m grateful for every day. OR
• That’s ridiculous. Human emotions are more complicated than that.

The truth is that both of these conclusions miss the mark, and so does the research on gratitude. While it’s true that where we choose to focus our thoughts can affect how we perceive our circumstances and relationships, it just doesn’t go far enough.

Gratitude isn’t just about positive thinking. It’s not just about adding another habit to our list to make us feel better. If this is the only reason for our gratitude, we will eventually run into problems:

• What happens when we encounter deep pain?
• What happens when our circumstances are filled with sorrow?
• What happens when our most important relationships fall apart or a loved one dies?
• What happens when the people, things, and experiences that matter most to us are taken away?
• What happens when we feel like there’s nothing to be thankful for?

Offer a Sacrifice of Praise

The only way to answer these questions is to change the lens through which we consider gratitude in the first place. Secular research falls short because it focuses on how gratitude helps me. But gratitude isn’t about me. It’s about God.

The writer of Hebrews admonishes us in Hebrews 13:15 to “continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name.”

But what does that mean exactly? Here are some thoughts to ponder as we head into Thanksgiving week.

• Praise is about God, not us. Praise isn’t something we offer to God as a report card of his blessings. It’s not just something we do when we feel warm and fuzzy about how things turned out. Instead, praise is about recognizing and offering thanks for the inherent nature and character of God in every circumstance, regardless of whether it seems good in the moment.
  
• Praise can be costly. That’s why Hebrews refers to it as a sacrifice. It’s easy to praise when we can immediately see the benefit of how God is working in our lives. But it’s painful to praise when things go wrong. When we don’t get the job, when we receive the diagnosis, when our children make bad choices. It costs us something to praise in these times, but God is honored when we do.
  
• Praise deepens our faith. When we engage in sacrificial praise continually, as the writer of Hebrews exhorts us to do, our faith is strengthened. We choose to meditate on God’s character even the most painful circumstances, and praise becomes our default mindset. Our faith is strengthened as we go deeper into the heart of God.

The more we praise God, the more we interact with his love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness. The more we praise Him, the more we understand why we need to praise him. And in praising, we are changed.