“Praise” means: to confess, laud, and give thanks… a declaration…
“Worship” means: to bow down, to prostrate one’s self before God, to fall down, to reverence (in other contexts it means: to labor and work and serve).
Both are necessary… Just like “Salt and Pepper!”
“Praise always precedes worship… Until we praise God, until we recognize how infinitely awesome He is, and until our hearts are filled with gratitude for all He has done for us, we will not worship Him as He ought to be worshiped… we will not bow down before Him as our Lord and offer our lives in service to Him… because we’re are missing just how great our God is…
Praise allows us to know the character of God… both praise and worship appear in Psalm 95 and are in this order for a reason.
The fact that this awesome, big, all-powerful God cares for us in such intimate ways… Like a shepherd with His sheep… should humble us further…
“If worship does not change us, it has not been worship. To stand before the Holy One of eternity is to change.” – Foster
Psalm 95 is a call to praise, worship and a warning against unbelief…
This is not a threat from an egotistical god. This is a warning from a loving Father who wants His children to obey Him because He knows best… and He cares for us even more than we care for ourselves…
God has not called us first to doing, He has called us first to being in His presence… We must first be worshipers… and from our experience with Him in worship let our doing flow…
Our work, our doing is good, and I’m thankful for it, but if we don’t first praise and worship we are not connecting with our first love… When we get this order right… lavishly, extravagantly praising and worshiping God daily… God works through us in ways that would not be possible otherwise, because our doing is born out of communion with God…
When I talk about extravagant and lavish worship towards God, I’m not talking about expressiveness… I’m talking about depth and genuine communion with God…
God’s calling us to praise Him…
God’s calling us to worship Him…
God’s calling us to follow Him…
And God’s calling us to be extravagant in our love for Him…”