"Our praise precedes our miracles"

Writing has always meant a lot to me, but the last couple of days with my phone being broken has made me realize how much writing little things as instagram captions has really satiated my need for writing. Maybe in a bad way, maybe in a good way.
I constantly have a need to put my heart-thoughts into words, and most of the time it ends up on instagram. Which is fine because I love sharing there, and I love hearing from the people who take the time to read that stuff. But like I said, my phone has been broken this week and it's actually been amazing. Big shocker there, huh? You mean real life ain't so bad?? What a surprise.
But I felt compelled to share something today and figured I'd write it here.

Today I've been locked in my room listening to sermons and listening to worship music.
A quote from one of the sermons I heard recently was "Our praise precedes our miracles" and that quote literally floored me. It's changed my perspective. It went along perfectly with something HUGE that God has been teaching me for the last couple of years. Thankfulness and praise. Thankfulness and praise must always come first. Choose a thankful heart. Praise God always. In all circumstances. Always. And since I've begun learning how to do that, everything has changed. It's honestly a pretty easy thing to teach yourself once you start to get your head around how incredibly worthy God is. Stacked up against anything. No matter what you're facing or what is going on in your life. God is always bigger. And if you don't feel it, declare it every day until you do. If God isn't bigger than your circumstances it's because you haven't magnified him in your mind. If everything else isn't paling in comparison to God's sheer goodness and glory, it's because you haven't acknowledged him in your heart. And once you start to do and to declare that, everything changes.
Choosing to thank God even when things are going horribly horribly wrong is the only response that we should have. Having an awful day? Worship. Can't make sense of anything in your life? Praise God. Because worship is the doorway to God's presence, and God's presence changes everything.
It changes our outlook and rearranges our priorities. Why? Because God is good at his very nature. In him is no darkness at all. He can't leave anything he touches the same as it was before. So when we worship and when we lean in to him, we're reaching out to a God who is ALWAYS reaching back out to us.

I could go on about this forever right now because it's what God has been drilling into my head and my heart lately. And the more I choose to worship him and draw near to him, the more things shift and my perspective is lifted towards heaven.
But I just want to encourage you to try it. Your words have power. Declare the goodness of God over your life and your circumstances and recognize that he is bigger and is capable of more than you ask or think or imagine. And then watch how things change. Worship. Worship is not limited to singing songs. You worship with your heart. With your actions. With your life. With your voice. If you can't sing, do it anyways. If you can't dance, do it anyways. We can waste our breath complaining about how things aren't exactly as we want them to be or we can choose to use our voices to declare God's goodness instead, and realize that if we have the Lord, we have everything we need.

I have a playlist of my favorite worship songs if anyone wants to listen. Find a good worship song and let it be your anthem. Declare the lyrics over your life. Music is so powerful and I truly believe God works so much through worship music in my own life. I know a lot of "Christian" music is cheesy, but there is some really great worship music out there if you look for it! Here's some of my favorites: worship