Praise and Worship! Where do you begin to explain what all that is contained in these two words?
Initially, a good start should naturally be from Scripture itself.

1 Chronicles 23 1 So when David was old and full of days, he made his son Solomon king over Israel.
2 And he gathered together all the leaders of Israel, with the priests and the Levites. 3 Now the Levites were numbered from the age of thirty years and above; and the number of individual males was thirty-eight thousand. 4 Of these, twenty-four thousand were to look after the work of the house of the LORD, six thousand were officers and judges, 5 four thousand were gatekeepers, and four thousand praised the LORD with musical instruments, “which I made,” said David, “for giving praise.”

Can you even begin to conceive of what that would be like to in the presence of 4000 musicians, all singing and playing musical instruments, and you and all your brothers and sisters there singing and praising the Lord.

But in the beginning, what was praise itself.  The first instance is from Genesis 29, we read that Leah has four sons. Her initial reason for naming each of the first three was from her perspective, a natural human (and fallen) trait found in all of us. The first son she named Reuben, ‘See, a Son’, “The LORD has surely looked on my affliction. Now therefore, my husband will love me.”

The second son, Simeon, ‘Heard’, “Because the LORD has heard that I am unloved, He has therefore given me this son also.”

The third son, Levi, ‘Attached’, “Now this time my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.”

But then comes Judah, ‘Praise’. She let go of every thing, because she says, “Now I will praise the LORD.”

Is not that our real condition and starting point of real praise – where we let go of all our self, and just surrender.

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