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If you ever find yourself reeling from an attack of the Devil and you’re not sure what to do about it or how to pray, here’s something I’d always recommend: spend extra time praising and worshiping the Lord. When you’re facing a difficult situation, that’s always one of the best things you can do. Not only does it please God and usher in His manifest presence, it works as a powerful weapon to thwart the strategies of the enemy.

As my spiritual father, Dr. Kenneth E. Hagin, used to say, “The highest kind of prayer is praise and worship!”

It will access God’s presence and focus it on whatever trouble or conflict you might be going through. It will release Heaven’s forces to move on your behalf with an intensity no demonic foe can withstand. It will put you on the victory side even when defeat looks inevitable.

That’s why the Psalms, written by King David, one of God’s great warriors, are filled with statements like these:
I will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvellous works. I will be glad and rejoice in thee: I will sing praise to thy name, O thou most High. When mine enemies are turned back, they shall fall and perish at thy presence ... I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth ... O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.
(Ps. 9:1–3; 34:1, 3 KJV)
Look again at that last verse. It says that praise actually magnifies the Lord. It doesn’t make Him bigger or mightier, of course, because He’s already the almighty God. But it does magnify the effect of His power in our lives and circumstances.

To understand what I mean, think about what happens when you use a magnifying glass to amplify the rays of the sun. The glass doesn’t make the sun itself any bigger or greater. It doesn’t increase its power or dominion. It just catches the sun’s light and focuses it on one particular point.

When I was a little girl, I used to find that amazing. I’d take my magnifying glass outside and marvel at how, just by holding it at a certain angle over a leaf, I could intensify the sunshine so much it would literally burn a hole in the leaf. Sometimes I watched my cousins use the same technique to “exterminate” bugs. They’d put the magnifying glass over the bug so the sun would hit it just right and—bzzzt!—it would fry.

As a child, I could never bring myself to do that to a poor little bug. But as a grownup believer, I have no problem at all doing it in a spiritual sense to the Devil. And I really enjoy the results.

I like seeing the Devil sizzle under the magnified presence of the Lord that inhabits the praises of His people (Ps. 22:3). I like seeing the works of evil scorched by the divine power that comes on the scene when, in response to our worship, God takes His highest place. That makes me happy!

On occasion, I even go through the Bible and read about various times it happened, just so I can rejoice.

I read 2 Chronicles chapter 20, for instance, about King Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah. You probably remember what happened to them. They found themselves surrounded by hordes of enemy armies that were coming to slaughter them. Without the military resources they needed to win the fight, in the natural, they knew they were doomed. So King Jehoshaphat called everybody in Judah together for a prayer meeting and cried out to the Lord.

“We have no might to stand against this great company that is coming against us,” he said. “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon You” (2 Chron. 20:12, Amp.). The Spirit of God answered by giving a word of prophecy through one of the men in the prayer meeting. He told them they wouldn’t even have to fight this battle. All they had to do was take their positions, “stand still, and see the deliverance of the Lord” (v. 17 Amp.).

Jehoshaphat believed the prophecy and acted accordingly. Instead of telling everybody to get their swords and spears, he called for a bunch of singers and told them to march out in front of the army and sing in a loud voice, “Praise the Lord; for his mercy endureth for ever.”

That’s not the way military battles are usually won, is it? Yet it’s what Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah did. And it worked! “When they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushments against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir who had come against Judah, and they were [self-] slaughtered” (v. 22 Amp.).

Something to Shout About!
That incident by itself ought to be enough to convince anybody of the power of praise. But it’s not the only such story in the Bible. There’s also the one about the battle of Jericho. That’s another victory the Israelites won in a most unusual way.

When the Lord commanded them to take that city, He didn’t tell them to launch a surprise attack and swarm like locusts over Jericho’s massive walls. He didn’t instruct them to set arrows aflame and shoot them into the city or cut off its water source. Although those were the tactics armies normally used in those days, at Jericho, God gave Joshua and the Israelites a very different strategy.

He told them to march around the city in absolute silence once a day every day for six days while the priests followed behind them blowing trumpets before the Ark of the Lord. On the seventh day, they were to march around it seven times. “But you shall not shout or let your voice be heard,” Joshua warned them, “nor shall any word proceed out of your mouth until... I tell you to shout. Then you shall shout!” (v. 10 Amp.).

Can you imagine what those silent marches must have been like for the Israelites? Think about the pressure that must have built up inside them as they marched along anticipating the victory God was about to give them. They must have been almost bursting with the desire to shout—and eventually that’s what they got to do. After their seventh trip around Jericho, Joshua said:
Shout, for the Lord has given you the city! ... So the people shouted when the priests blew the trumpets. And it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat. Then the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.
(Josh. 6:16, 20 NKJV)
What a sight that must have been! According to historians, Jericho was a massive fortress. Its walls were 50 feet high. Yet when God’s people shouted His praises and accessed His invading presence, it registered so powerfully on the Richter scale that those enormous walls fell down.

What’s more, they fell down flat! That means when they collapsed they didn’t create a mountain of debris that would have prevented the Israelites from riding their horses into the city. They were literally leveled. The ground opened and swallowed them up.

Now, I call that something to shout about!

Copyright © Lynne Hammond Ministries
All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Author Biography

Lynne Hammond
Web site: Lynne Hammond Ministries
 
A teacher and an author, Lynne publishes a newsletter called Prayer Notes, has written numerous books, and currently serves as the national prayer director for Daughters for Zion. Her passion for inspiring and leading others into the life of Spirit-led prayer continues to take her around the world to minister to believers whose heart cry, like hers, is “Lord, teach me to pray!”
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