Worshiping and Glorifying God - Part 9: Victory through Worship

Victory through Worship

We had started on the theme of Worshiping and Glorifying God, and seen that prayer is about receiving from God while worship is about giving to God. To learn and understand the blessedness of worship and of giving for God, we have been looking into examples from God’s Word illustrating the theme of giving and getting from God; and essentially these examples and illustrations have been related to physical or material things, but with a spiritual angle as well.

We will conclude this sequence with a final example that illustrates how giving worship leads to victory and abundant blessings. Please read through 2 Chronicle 20; paucity of space does not permit a full discourse on this chapter. Very briefly stated, the Godly king Jehoshaphat finds himself under an impending attack by a collective army of the Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites. Realizing his perilous situation, he turns the matter over to God and involves his people to pray for deliverance by divine intervention. God assures him that God will fight for him and he will suffer no loss; all he had to do was prepare his army, take them to the battle site and set them in battle order and then sit still to see what the Lord will do (2 Chronicles 20:14-17). Jehoshaphat and his people accept the Lord’s message and worship Him for it (vs. 18-19). The next day king Jehoshaphat led his army to the battle-site, but marching ahead of the army were people praising and singing to the Lord (v. 21); and “Now when they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushes against the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah; and they were defeated” (2 Chronicles 20:22). After the attackers had been annihilated, it took Jehoshaphat and his people three days to gather the spoil from their dead enemies (vs. 24-25); following which they all gathered again to worship the Lord in the valley of Berachah (vs. 26-27).

Jehoshaphat and his people prayed once, but worshiped thrice, out which the first two instances of worship were in very difficult and trying circumstances where defeat and death were staring at them in their face. Now read again the instructions given to them by God through Jahaziel (2 Chronicles 20:14-17); at no place will you find mention of God asking for worship – God only asked for them to go to the battle-site, position themselves and then stand still to see what He does. But their Faith in God and in the promised outcome, prompted and encouraged them to worship God even before He had acted, and quite understandably after He had acted on their behalf. In the battle field, it was as they worshiped that God started to act (v.22) and the enemies were eliminated. Their giving worship to God not only got them victory in an impossible situation, but also got them an unexpected bonus of abundant wealth.

Learn to have faith and worship God in and for difficult and inexplicable situations in your life instead of worrying, complaining, grumbling and being despondent about them, or seeking the help of the world for being delivered from them; the results will be stupendous beyond imagination.

We will now start looking into impediments to our worship, things and factors that keep us from truly worshiping God.