How to "get with God" using Prayer, Praise, and Communion

Over the years, when things were going wrong, my precious wife Kathy would say to me – “time to get with God”. That was her loving way to say it’s time for me, the spiritual leader, to go pray, praise, and even have communion together – whatever, but to get with God and get an answer!

Practice makes perfect and eventually I learned the extreme value of “getting with God” – to the point where I am now obsessed with it. I learned to die to myself, kill the pride, be still (shut up my mouth and my mind) and know Him. It worked.

I was reading a teaching by Francis Frangipane and through that inspiration, the Lord led me to do a short teaching on “getting with God” for my fellow praise warriors at our Wellspring Praise Center meeting.

PRAYER:
Prayer is an appeal to God. It is based on our personal needs and the needs of others. There are endless amounts of us that have heartfelt and urgent requests. And each prayer is welcomed and heard by our Father in Heaven. It sure “pays to pray” as I have always said. But the results come quicker and more effectively when we water our prayers with praise.

PRAISE:
We praise Him for what He does and worship Him for who He is. Either way, praise and worship is not the articulation of our need, like prayer is; it is the demonstration of our love towards Him. It is what we offer to God regardless of the status of our needs. Obviously not just on Sundays (or our Tuesday’s Wellspring meeetings), but anytime and anywhere – during good times and hard times.

To live life fully in the blessing we must continually have a grateful attitude. From that gratefulness a pure praise and worship will flow out of our hearts.

Let’s remember the Gospel record in Luke 17 of the ten lepers who cried to Jesus for healing. The Lord answered their prayers and Jesus healed them all. Then they all went their way – except one. One turned back toward Jesus and, glorifying God with a loud voice, fell on his face at the Lord’s feet and gave Him thanks. Full of gratitude to Christ, this man returned to bow in worship before God – and he did not do it quietly.

You see, many people will pray, many will find answers, but few will return to praise Him for it and even praise Him with a loud voice like they really mean it. You can bet that this man now had a more effective way to pray and praise God for what he needed instead of crying for his needs to be met. I know as a father I sure respond better to my child’s faith-filled request and praise to me rather than crying and whining.

COMMUNION:
Communion is standing before the throne recalling what He lovingly did for us and joyfully and thankfully receiving our blessing – His body and blood, His sacrifice to get us back.

Our ability to receive that marvelous gift must be done with a praise-filled, worship attitude.

It is a joyful celebration time. It is gift receiving time. Try to recall how many times in your life where you were opening a birthday or Christmas gift and you were NOT happy about doing it – probably NONE.

Communion needs to be done with a happy heart of gratitude.

Jesus was broken and that made us whole – nothing broken, nothing missing. Jesus’s blood was spilled and that made us full – full of His anointing and resurrection power as we are washed clean of our sins.

Where’s the sadness in all of that? It’s only sad if we do not receive it – and sad to our Heavenly Father, His Son, and His Spirit.

CONCLUSION:
If we want to “get with God” then we simply must pray, praise and commune with Him. And do those like we really mean it.

Now as in Faith, Hope and Love, with the greatest of these being Love – getting touched by His love then causes us to WANT to worship Him in real truth and joy. Therefore, if pure truthful praise and worship, based on love for God, flows freely from our hearts, then it will open the door for us into His presence.

Once in, we can receive, we can hear, we can change, we can grow and we can really begin to love, bless and serve others. We would then act more like Jesus – a lot more like Jesus. You can learn to act more like Him only if you hang with Him.

Getting with God, gets God. That’s what I’m talkin’ bout.