Hi, and welcome to the Five Word Prayers Daily, a five-day-a-week daily devotional where we share the

word, prayers, and our heart. I'm Lisa Whittle, and I welcome you to just five minutes with me,

which I trust and pray will be five minutes well spent. While we open this week thanking God,

and we're going to close this week, praising God, really just for who he is and the fact he's kept us

breathing this week, right?

Goodness, I'm thankful for that. It's Friday, and I want us to consider this a praise party to

take us into the weekend because I am sure Jesus gave us weekends as a gift. I know he gave us Sundays

as a gift, and I like the idea of going into this weekend, praising

him as a collective group of five-word prayer listeners. You game to join me?

I've always liked this verse in Psalm 22, but you are holy, you who inhabit the praises of your people.

It's a Psalm of David, and of course he's talking about Israel here, but we're his people as well,

if we've given our heart to him. And so to think of God, setting up residence in the praise I offer

him to camp there and dwell there and live there lets me know these prayers of praise

must be among the sweetest to him and also bring me the closest to him, which is something I crave.

If we want to be close to the heart of God, we need to praise him. This is where he's going to hang out.

I hope you listened to Monday's show where we talked about what happens when we just thank God for him. This is where he's going to hang out. I hope you listened to Monday's show

where we talked about what happens when we just thank God for him. Such a powerful exercise in

our family and something I've thought about a lot lately in this tough time in the world where

I think we are tempted to ask God for many things, just in our stress and in our angst about

what's going on, instead of remembering

to praise him for who he is, because here's the reality about praising God. First of all,

it changes who we are. Praise changes our heart. I talked about on here before how I used to be

...