Mostly everything gets praised today. From new and improved toothpaste to the next hi tech wizardry from Apple. It’s always “the best thing ever” and “we could never do without it.” Praise has become very cheap. This makes it hard to understand what it means when we talk about praising God. Most of the time it sounds like God is a washed up prom queen who didn’t get enough attention or an insecure guy at the gym who needs a little encouragement. This is far from reality.

God knows that without praise our lives are incomplete. To enjoy something and not praise it leaves a bad taste in our mouth. We know that something is missing. So when it comes to God who is so big and so huge and so great–praise is necessary. It is not that He needs our praise. It is more that we need to praise Him. The hunger for praise is embedded deep in our hearts and if we do not satisfy this hunger we ache for what is missing and we lack the full enjoyment that God has to offer. Our experience of His goodness must be consummated by praise or we really have not experienced His goodness. This is what it means for the Christian to praise God. -Ramon Mayo