Sermon quotes on Praise
Augustine of Hippo
Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.
Augustine of Hippo
Oh, God, to know you is life. To serve You is freedom. To praise you is the soul’s joy and delight. Guard me with the power of Your grace here and in all places. Now and at all times, forever. Amen.
Augustine of Hippo
To confess, then, is to praise and glorify God; it is an exercise in self-knowledge and true humility in the atmosphere of grace and reconciliation.
Augustine of Hippo
Weaned from all passing fancies, let my soul praise You, O God, Creator of all. You did not allow my soul to remain attached to corruptible things with the glue of love, attached to what my senses find pleasing. For things we are attached to go where they will, then they cease, leaving the lover torn with corrupted longings.
Frederick Buechner
We learn to praise God not by paying compliments but by paying attention.
Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith, 2009, Zondervan, p.320.
John Calvin
There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.
John Calvin
In truth we know by experience that song has great force and vigour to move and inflame the hearts of men to invoke and praise God with a more vehement and ardent zeal.
Francis Chan
The point is not to completely understand God but to worship Him. Let the very fact that you cannot know Him fully lead you to praise Him for His infiniteness and grandeur.
Dorothy Day
Whenever I felt the beauty of the world in song or story, in the material universe around me, or glimpsed it in human love, I wanted to cry out with joy. The Psalms were an outlet for this enthusiasm of joy or grief.
The Long Loneliness (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1952), 29.
David Dickson
It is not sufficient to offer the empty vessel of our joy unto God, or our singing voice in musical tune only; but also it is required that we fill our joyful voice with holy matter and good purpose, whereby God only may be reasonably praised.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you were left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise God in your loneliness.
Wesley L. Duewel
The more you praise God, the more you become God-conscious and absorbed in His greatness, wisdom, faithfulness, and love. Praise reminds you of all that God is able to do and of great things He has already done.
Jonathan Edwards
The happiness of the creature consists in rejoicing in God, by which also God is magnified and exalted.
Owen Feltham
Praise has different effects, according to the mind it meets with; it makes a wise man modest, but a fool more arrogant, turning his weak brain giddy.
Billy Graham
The greatest form of praise is the sound of consecrated feet seeking out the lost and helpless.
Ole Hallesby
Praise lies upon a higher plain than thanksgiving. When I give thanks, my thoughts still circle around myself to some extent. But in praise my soul ascends to self-forgetting adoration, seeing and praising only the majesty and power of God, His grace and redemption.
Hildegard of Bingen
The fire has its flame and praises God.
The wind blows the flame and praises God.
In the voice we hear the word which praises God.
And the word, when heard, praises God.
So all of creation is a song of praise to God.
Harry Ironside
We would worry less if we praised more. Thanksgiving is the enemy of discontent and dissatisfaction.
Henry Jacobsen
Praise God even when you don’t understand what He is doing.
Samuel Johnson
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.
Woodrow Kroll
When God does it, we do more than remember it–we celebrate it.
Catherine La Cugna
Praise generates more praise; glory adds to glory. Praise works by overflow and contagion; it invites others to join in.
God for Us (San Francisco: Harper, 1973), p.338–39.
William Law
Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life; meet every rising sun with such sentiments of God’s goodness, as if you had seen it, and all things, new-created upon your account: and under the sense of so great a blessing, let your joyful heart praise and magnify so good and glorious a Creator.
C.S. Lewis
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.
C.S. Lewis
The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express the same delight in God which made David dance.
A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003, p.68.
C.S. Lewis
The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.
Martin Luther
In the bonds of Death He lay Who for our offense was slain; But the Lord is risen today, Christ hath brought us life again, Wherefore let us all rejoice, Singing loud, with cheerful voice, Hallelujah!
Crystal McDowell
We rejoice because God is good regardless of our circumstances.
Thomas Manton
Self-love may lead us to prayers, but love to God excites us to praises.
Thomas Merton
The great thing, and the only thing, is to adore and praise GOD.
Dwight L. Moody
Every good gift that we have had from the cradle up has come from God. If a man just stops to think what he has to praise God for, he will find there is enough to keep him singing praises for a week.
Dwight L. Moody
We have in our churches a great deal of prayer, but I think it would be a good thing if we had a praise meeting occasionally. If we could only get people to praise God for what He has done, it would be a good deal better than asking Him continually for something.
Florence Nightingale
Poetry and imagination begin life. A child will fall on its knees on the gravel walk at the sight of a pink hawthorn in full flower, when it is by itself, to praise God for it.
Eugene Peterson
All prayers, by definition, are directed to God, and this aim brings them, finally into the presence of God where “everything that has breath” praises the Lord. Praise is the deep, even if often hidden, eschatological dimension in prayer.
Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer (New York: HarperCollins, 1989), p.123.
Don Piper
Satan is a liar. He wants to steal our joy and replace it with hopelessness. When we’re up against a struggle and we think we can’t keep going, we can change that by praising God. Our chains will fall from us.
Meese encouraged me by reminding me of the real reason we have for fully living this life. It’s to give everything we have to God–even the heartbreaks and pain. God is our reason to live.”
John Piper
The climax of God’s happiness is the delight He takes in the echoes of His excellence in the praises of His people.
John Piper
Do not say, ‘But it is hypocritical to thank God with my tongue when I don’t feel thankful in my heart.’ There is such a thing as hypocritical thanksgiving. Its aim is to conceal ingratitude and get the praise of men. That is not your aim. Your aim in loosing your tongue with words of gratitude is that God would be merciful and fill your words with the emotion of true gratitude. You are not seeking the praise of men; you are seeing the mercy of God. You are not hiding the hardness of ingratitude, but hoping for the in-breaking of the Spirit.
When the Darkness Will Not Lift: Doing What We Can While We Wait for God—And Joy
Richard Rohr
Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise.
Richard Sibbes
The whole life of a Christian should be nothing but praises and thanks to God; we should neither eat nor sleep, but eat to God and sleep to God and work to God and talk to God, do all to His glory and praise.
Charles Spurgeon
Praise is the rehearsal of our eternal song. By grace we learn to sing, and in glory we continue to sing. What will some of you do when you get to heaven, if you go on grumbling all the way? Do not hope to get to heaven in that style. But now begin to bless the name of the Lord.
Charles Spurgeon
Doth not all nature around me praise God? If I were silent, I should be an exception to the universe. Doth not the thunder praise Him as it rolls like drums in the march of the God of armies? Do not the mountains praise Him when the woods upon their summits wave in adoration? Doth not the lightning write His name in letters of fire? Hath not the whole earth a voice? And shall I, can I, silent be?
Charles Spurgeon
No chorus is too loud, no orchestra too large, no Psalm too lofty for the lauding of the Lord of Hosts.
Charles Spurgeon
Prayer and praise are the oars by which a man may row his boat into the deep waters of the knowledge of Christ.
Charles Spurgeon
Whenever we have to praise God, what do we do? We simply say what He is! ‘You are this and You are that.’ There is no other praise. We cannot fetch anything from anywhere else and bring it to God; the praises of God are simply the facts about Himself! If you want to praise the Lord Jesus Christ, tell the people about Him.
Joni Eareckson Tada
Like supernatural effervescence, praise will sometimes bubble up from the joy of simply knowing Christ. Praise like that is…delight. Pure pleasure! But praise can also be supernatural determination. A decisive action. Praise like that is…quiet resolve. Fixed devotion. Strength of spirit.
Teresa of Avila
When we accept what happens to us and make the best of it, we are praising God.
A.W. Tozer
In almost everything that touches our everyday life on earth, God is pleased when we’re pleased. He wills that we be as free as birds to soar and sing our maker’s praise without anxiety.
Rick Warren
In happy moments, PRAISE GOD. In difficult moments, SEEK GOD. In quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD. In painful moments, TRUST GOD. Every moment, THANK GOD.
Rick Warren
Every human activity, except sin, can be done for God’s pleasure, if you do it with an attitude of praise.
Thomas Watson
Praise is a soul in flower.
John Wesley
Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing.
Aim at pleasing Him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this
attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.