CHAPTER 1

King David (Part 1)

EXTRAVAGANT WORSHIP

Years ago I (Dave) went to a conference where I learned something so significant about how to worship God that it completely changed my prayer life. Up to that point, when I thought about praise and worship, I automatically believed it to be corporate in nature—a practice that was done on Sunday morning surrounded by other Christians. Suddenly, after years of routine, I was being challenged biblically to make praise a regular part of my personal prayer life.

I’ve always been somewhat of a spiritual adventurer. If I see something that pleases God in the Bible, I want to do it. So I came home from that conference determined to pray prayers of praise. What happened next is now a humorous story embedded in my memory. I began to pray: “Lord, I praise You. I worship You. Lord, I praise You. I worship You. Lord . . . I don’t know what else to say!” It was a frustrating situation that awakened me to my inability to worship God through prayer.

My basic problem was that I lacked a vocabulary for praise. I was so used to praise being something that was sung using a book or a screen in the presence of others that I didn’t even know what to say. So I “cheated.” I turned to the Psalms and began to use the portions that dealt with praise and worship as the text for my own prayers. It wasn’t long before I realized the freedom that praying through the psalms of David gave me. I had ways to express my heartfelt love for the Lord that stretched my prayer life beyond its very limited boundaries. It wasn’t cheating but in fact probably the very best way for me to learn to bring prayers of praise into my own lifestyle. Today, my wife and I teach others how prayer and worship are vitally intertwined.

You will discover, as you study through this chapter on David the worshiper, a way to deepen and expand your love relationship with God that will go far beyond the prayer life you may be used to.