Praising God Is Not the Same As Having Faith

It is important to realize that having faith is specifically the act of someone: saying what he wants and believing that it will happen, or asking God for what he wants, and believing he will receive it (Mark 11:22-24). Praising God, and the other things people do while praying, is not the same as having faith. As a consequence, the more things a person does other than 'saying and believing' or 'asking and believing' while praying, the less effective that person's prayers will be. Further, because a person's righteousness increases with the amount of faith he has, the less time a person spends actually 'saying and believing' or 'asking and believing' while praying, the less righteous that person will become. Praising God does not cause a person's prayers to become more effective, or a person to become more righteous, rather, praising God bears witness to the fact that a person has significant faith. That is what the following scriptures mean:

Psalm 40

3 He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD.

(NKJV)

John 15

7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
8 By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.

All of the above have a very important implication: if you spend a significant portion of your praying, praising God, instead of having faith, you run the risk of performing the work of (righteousness of) praising God, instead of having faith a lot, which is what produces all the godly qualities seen in you. Even worse than this: praising God directly at the cost of having faith a lot, can cause you to sink into - or even below - the threshold level of having faith, required for your relationship with God to be sound. (This means you could actually slide away from salvation because of it.) Therefore when you pray, please ensure you do a whole lot of 'saying and believing' or 'asking and believing'. If you have a strong inclination to praise God, then do so by all means. However, do not let anything cut into the valuable time you have allotted to having faith. Praising God directly is not having faith, and does not save you. Rather, praising God bears witness of your salvation, which is made possible by your having faith to begin with (Ephesians 2:8-9).

 

One other thing, John 15:7-8 indicates the main way a person glorifies / praises God. When a person has faith, his behavior becomes godly, and this more than anything is what glorifies God. It is the same with any man who has a good son and a bad son. It is the son who conducts himself according to the wishes of his father, who really glorifies his father: not the son who verbally says nice things to his father, but acts against his wishes.