Governing Praise

In "This Side of The Cross" Lyn Packer writes a very powerful article detailing a quality of praise and worship which few churches move into.

God is causing a new sound of praise to arise in the church in this day. It’s a sound of authority, it’s a sound that shifts things in the spirit realm; it’s the sound of governing praise. It’s the sound of the High Praises of God being released to bind kings and execute judgement.


Ps 149:6-9 Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand, To execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, To bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron, To execute on them the judgment written; This is an honor for all His godly ones. Praise the LORD


In Ps 149:6-9 we see a type of praise and worship that the church globally has yet to fully step into. It’s a sound that occasionally individual churches have stepped into for small periods of time but have not taken it to its place of fullness. This type of praise is a governing praise. It literally will topple kings and nobles in the spirit realm from their positions of authority. The Lord says this is a part of what he has honoured us with; the destruction of ruling principalities to make an open heaven so that the glory of God may be seen in all the earth


Preference or Presence

But for many of the church who have fallen into the trap of Preference worship instead of Presence Worship it will be a sound that they will not want to hear. Let me take a minute to explain what I mean by Preference worship and Presence worship. Preference worship is when our agenda, our timetable, our musical preferences are given higher priority in our worship times than the presence of the Lord. Most of us would say we allow the Lord to come and we want him too. But the test comes when the timetable says its time to move onto the next part of our service and we shut down what God is doing. That is when our preferences speak louder than our words.


We have not built a culture in our churches that says God comes first, we have built a culture that says we do. In many churches today the culture of preference worship is present to the point where people wander in late after worship has started and some people don’t even bother to arrive at church until worship is over with. As leaders and Pastors we can easily go along with that because we too have our preferences and even let them rule. Because of that we don’t address it because to address it would mean we have to look at what we have built. But the day will come for each of us when we have to look at what we have built, we cannot ignore it forever.

Read the full article here