I am still regaining my footing after reading 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper.  For those of you who have read my initial reflection on this book, you’ll recall that the word “praise” or the phrase “praise God” became speed bumps in my reading.  I am regularly slowed down during my Bible readings when I come upon the phrase, “praise God.”   I read the book two months ago, and I am STILL awed by the importance of praising God. 

In the book The 5 Love Languages, the author, Gary Chapman,  articulates the five main ways we express love to another individual: 1) Words of Affirmation, 2) Quality Time, 3) Receiving Gifts, 4) Acts of Service, and 5) Physical Touch.   Most of us can read this list and know without much thought which one is the most meaningful to us.  I enjoy spending quality time with those I love, as well as receiving gifts, receiving help from others on an unsolicited basis, and hugs.  Those are all very nice and certainly not to be discounted, but the love language I find most powerful is words of affirmation.  

I have come to believe that praise is God’s love language.  We can spend quality time with Him, do acts of service in His name, give a smile or a hug to someone who just needs one, and give gifts to others just to bless them with the love of Christ.  God sees everything that we are doing and saying in His name and is pleased by those expressions of His love.  But when you get right down to it, we can’t touch God, and there is nothing we can offer others without His power and His resources.  So what does that leave us that we can truly give Him?  I think the answer is our heart expressed through affirmations, or praise.  I think He feels deeply loved by us when we just spend time expressing our love, letting Him know how much we really adore Him.  

Acts 17:24-25 says, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.  And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because He himself gives all men life and breath and everything else”.  (I invite you to re-read this verse and put your name in it.  It becomes even more powerful.)  Doesn’t this passage say it all?  He doesn’t really “need” me or my services.  So what is left is recognizing that we exist because He wants to enjoy us and for us to enjoy the personal love relationship He offers to each of us.  The only thing I can really offer is what He really wants – praise, or words of affirmation.  I want to love God the way He wants to be loved.  I will be intentional to praise Him because that’s what He desires.   

I am made in His image.  Is it any surprise that what He wants from me is the same thing I really want from others?  These last two months of praising God intentionally has been a wonderful growing experience for me.  Since I believe praise is God’s love language, I am more intentional about praising God with words of affirmation, and I have found it to be a most enjoyable way of just connecting with Him. 

Blessings,

Lee Ann

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