Lift Up Your Hands

Love you all, praying for you.
 
I just love God’s Word.  It is insight and instruction.  It leads you to a deeper level of understanding, so you are not just doing, but you know the significance of it, the reason for it, and the benefit that it brings.  So you can operate with new authority, and walk in new victory.  It gives instruction and explanation so you don’t just do it, but understand why.  Psalm 88:9 – I call to you, O LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you.  This was a David’s habit, a man after God’s own heart.  It was something he thought was important enough, that he did it every day.  Psalm 119:48 – I lift up my hands to your commands which I love, and I meditate on your decrees.  Psalms 141:2 – May the lifting of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.  One of the postures of worship – is the lifting up of our hands to the LORD.  It is a powerful thing.  Psalms 63:4 – This is how I will bless you as long as I live: I will lift up my hands in your name.  Psalms 143:3 – I lift up my hands to you.  I thirst for you like a parched land thirsts for rain.  Nehemiah 8:6 – and Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God.  And the people answered, Amen, Amen, with lifting up their hands:  and they bowed their heads and worshipped the LORD with their faces to the ground.  Psalms 134:2 – Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the LORD.   There is something about lifting up your hands, that speaks to God, that reaches Him, that draws Him.  It’s important enough to do every day.  What does it mean to lift up your hands?  First, it is Praise.  Psalms 9:1  I will praise you O LORD with my whole heart.  Praise that word 'Yadah' literally means to throw out the hands – to extend your hands.  When you lift your hands – it is a physical expression of Praise.  It is worshipping God.  And He comes to inhabit the praises of His people.  The second thing that extended hands means, Surrender.  If you lift up your hands you are surrendering to His will and His way.  You are coming under his mission, it is a physical expression of submission.  A physical demonstration of a mental recognition, that His ways are better than my ways, that His plans are better than mine, that He knows what I don’t know, and that His love for me endures forever.  The third thing that extended hands means.  It is a physical expression of a desire for intimacy.  What does a child do the first thing when Daddy comes home from work.  They run to him and lift up their hands!  What are they saying?  "Daddy Hold me!"  "Pick me up!"  "I want to be closer to you."  When you lift up your hands in praise, and surrender, and in a desire to be close to Him.  God brings himself close to you.  It’s the intimacy that positions you to hear his voice, to go with Him where He goes.  It’s the place of protection, of acceptance, and of closeness with Him – who not only loves you, He has everything you will ever need, and everything He gives is good.  Praying that you like David, will lift up your hands every day, in Praise, in Surrender, and in Closeness to your Father, so you grow in your love for Him, and learn to know more of His great love for you. 
 
Love you all,
dad