War Cry!

Today in reading my bible I found Psalm 100.

"Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the Earth!" ESV

Since I am a self-proclaimed bible nerd I got out my Strong's Concordance to see what exactly scripture meant by a "Joyful noise". I found it interesting that the Hebrew word, ruwa', means something a little different than a joyful noise. When you think 'joyful noise' what do you think of? A baby cracking up is what comes to my mind when thinking of a joyful noise, or even just laughter of any kind. (The bible does say laughter is good medicine...)

Ruwa' is a Hebrew verb that actually means to shout, raise a cry, give a blast as in a war cry. So here in Psalm 100 God is telling us to shout a war cry to the Lord. To do that, you would have to have some confidence in who He is and a little bit of confidence in who you are. I think some of the lack of power in God's people comes from a lack of simple vision of who He is and who they are. I would invite you to read the whole text of Psalm 100 because it is an awesome picture of who God is and who we are.

Today when you are going about your day and you are reflecting on the Lord, do you ever intend to give a war cry to Him? It isn't like you are standing in line at Walmart and raise up a might shout to heaven, right? In line at McDonald's at lunch your not going to raise your arm and shout to the Lord in worship are you? Why not?

The bible says to raise a shout of triumph to the Lord of Hosts. Could it be that you don't see your life as a triumph, or that you don't realize who He really is? We allow our culture both in and out of the church to dictate our worship to God, but shouldn't we do what the bible says to do?

A few months ago during our worship service at church my husband Skipp led our church in a shout to the Lord. Now I will tell you that there was a power inside of him that was highly attractive, think Mel Gibson in Braveheart here Ladies. He held his shout and continued to cry aloud for awhile, and honestly I think he surprised himself. He certainly surprise the church as I am not sure they knew what to do.

What Skipp did was totally scriptural but not comfortable, it was powerful but not cultural. When are we going to realize that we are not citizens of the United States but citizens of Heaven. We are the sheep of His pasture, we are the Children of God, we are His and His alone.

So today before I go off and go about my normal daily  routine; I plan to give a shout of triumph! I am going to give a war cry, a declaration that my allegiance is to Him, to Jesus. My life is a triumph, any saved life is a triumph. Maybe the power that we are missing as a church is because we aren't feeling powerful ourselves. So today, I will raise a triumphant war cry as a declaration of my allegiance to the King of the Universe and hold nothing back, simply because the Bible tell me so...