|
  
Praise
Importance of Praise
Perhaps once in a hundred years a person may be ruined by excessive praise, but surely once every minute someone dies inside for lack of it.
Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. Ephesians 4:29
God’s Little Instruction Book for Men, (Honor Books, Tulsa, OK; 1996), p. 23
Abraham Lincoln
Imagine what a heavy schedule of appointments President Abraham Lincoln had to keep day after day. Yet when an elderly woman with no official business in mind asked to see him, he graciously consented.
As she entered Lincoln’s office, he rose to greet her and asked how he might be of service. She replied that she had not come to ask a favor. She had heard that the President liked a certain kind of cookie, so she had baked some for him and brought them to his office.
With tears in his eyes, Lincoln responded, “You are the very first person who has ever come into my office asking not, expecting not, but rather bringing me a gift. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Our Daily Bread, June 4, 1997
Grace and Providence
Almighty King! whose wondrous hand
Supports the weight of sea and land;
Whose grace is such a boundless store,
No heart shall break that sighs for more;
Thy providence supplies my food,
And ‘tis Thy blessing makes it good;
My soul is nourish’d by Thy Word,
Let soul and body praise the Lord!
My streams of outward comfort came
From Him who built this earthly frame;
Whate’er I want His bounty gives,
By whom my soul for ever lives.
Either His hand preserves from pain,
Or, if I feel it, heals again;
From Satan’s malice shields my breast,
Or overrules it for the best.
Forgive the song that falls so low
Beneath the gratitude I owe!
It means Thy praise, however poor,
An angel’s song can do no more.
Olney Hymns, William Cowper, from Cowper’s Poems, Sheldon & Company, New York
I Will Praise The Lord at All Times
Winter has a joy for me,
While the Saviour’s charms I read,
Lowly, meek, from blemish free,
In the snowdrop’s pensive head.
Spring returns, and brings along
Life-invigorating suns:
Hark! the turtle’s plaintive song
Seems to speak His dying groans!
Summer has a thousand charms,
All expressive of His worth;
‘Tis His sun that lights and warms,
His the air that cools the earth.
What! has autumn left to say
Nothing of a Saviour’s grace?
Yes, the beams of milder day
Tell me of His smiling face.
Light appears with early dawn,
While the sun makes haste to rise;
See His bleeding beauties drawn
On the blushes of the skies.
Evening with a silent pace,
Slowly moving in the west,
Shows an emblem of His grace,
Points to an eternal rest.
Olney Hymns, William Cowper, from Cowper’s Poems, Sheldon & Company, New York
Duke of Wellington
The Duke of Wellington, the British military leader who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, was not an easy man to serve under. He was brilliant, demanding, and not one to shower his subordinates with compliments. Yet even Wellington realized that his methods left something to be desired. In his old age a young lady asked him what, if anything, he would do differently if he had his life to live over again. Wellington thought for a moment, then replied. “I’d give more praise,” he said.
Bits & Pieces, March 31, 1994, p. 24
Let’s Play Darts!
Everyone needs recognition for his accomplishments, but few people make the need known quite as clearly as the little boy who said to his father: “Let’s play darts. I’ll throw and you say ‘Wonderful!’”
Bits & Pieces, December 9, 1993, p. 24
We Praise What We Enjoy
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.
C. S. Lewis
A Great Motivator
A compliment can be a great motivator, particularly if you put a little thought into the why, when, and how of delivering it. Be sure to comment whenever someone on your staff keeps working in the face of rejection, handles a difficult situation well, catches an error, given another employee a helping hand, sells a particular product for the first time, or gives you a lead that proves fruitful. Most of the time, a compliment should be given in public, either at a meeting or on the company bulletin board. If the situation is delicate, convey your praise through a personal note that the employee can share with his family. As with all rewards, praise should be given immediately after good performance to provide the greatest reinforcement.
Bits & Pieces, May 27, 1993, p. 12
John Wesley
John Wesley was about 21 years of age when he went to Oxford University. He came from a Christian home, and he was gifted with a keen mind and good looks. Yet in those days he was a bit snobbish and sarcastic. One night, however, something happened that set in motion a change in Wesley’s heart. While speaking with a porter, he discovered that the poor fellow had only one coat and lived in such impoverished conditions that he didn’t even have a bed. Yet he was an unusually happy person, filled with gratitude to God. Wesley, being immature, thoughtlessly joked about the man’s misfortunes. “And what else do you thank God for?” he said with a touch of sarcasm. The porter smiled, and in the spirit of meekness replied with joy, “I thank Him that He has given me my life and being, a heart to love Him, and above all a constant desire to serve Him!” Deeply moved, Wesley recognized that this man knew the meaning of true thankfulness.
Many years later, in 1791, John Wesley lay on his deathbed at the age of 88. Those who gathered around him realized how well he had learned the lesson of praising God in every circumstance. Despite Wesley’s extreme weakness, he began singing the hymn, “I’ll Praise My Maker While I’ve Breath.”
Our Daily Bread, December 12
When Leaders Don’t Pray
That’s precisely what happens to a church when its leaders don’t pray—its ministry becomes powerless and ineffective. E. M. Bounds emphasized the need for a ministry of prayer within the church when he wrote, “It may be laid down as an axiom, that God needs, first of all, leaders in the church, who will be first in prayer, men with whom prayer is habitual and characteristic, men who know the primacy of prayer. But even more than a habit of prayer, and more than prayer being characteristic of them, church leaders are to be men whose lives are made and molded by prayer, whose heart and life are made up of prayer. These are the men—the only men—God can use in the furtherance of his kingdom and the implanting of His message in the hearts of men.
Our Daily Bread, December 12
Balloons
A conference at a Presbyterian church in Omaha. People were given helium-filled balloons and told to release them at some point in the service when they felt like expressing the joy in their hearts. Since they were Presbyterians, they weren’t free to say “Hallelujah, Praise the Lord.” All through the service balloons ascended, but when it was over 1/3 of the balloons were unreleased. Let your balloon go.
Bruce Larson, Luke, p. 43
A Heart for Praise
Louis Albert Banks tells of an elderly Christian man, a fine singer, who learned that he had cancer of the tongue and that surgery was required. In the hospital after everything was ready for the operation, the man said to the doctor, “Are you sure I will never sing again?” The surgeon found it difficult to answer his question. He simply shook his head no. The patient then asked if he could sit up for a moment. “I’ve had many good times singing the praises of God,” he said. “And now you tell me I can never sing again. I have one song that will be my last. It will be of gratitude and praise to God.” There in the doctor’s presence the man sang softly the words of Isaac Watts’ hymn,
I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve Breath,
And when my voice is lost in death,
Praise shall employ my nobler power;
My days of praise shall ne’er be past,
While life, and thought, and being last,
Or immortality endures.”
Our Daily Bread, January 15
Joy is a Discipline
I have never forgotten that Daystar began his Great Insurrection by frowning and skipping his morning Alleluias. It must have seemed minor at the time, but hell grows out of paradise gone sour. Joy is a discipline, and fallen angels were always those who grew negligent with their praise.
Calvin Miller, The Valiant Papers, p. 18
The Kiss
Andor Foldes is now seventy-two, but he recalls how praise made all the difference for him early in his career. His first recollection of an affirming word was at age seven when his father kissed him and thanked him for helping in the garden. He remembers it over six decades later, as though it were yesterday.
But the account of another kiss that changed his life says a great deal about our inner need for purpose. At age sixteen, living in Budapest, Foldes was already a skilled pianist. But he was at his personal all-time low because of a conflict with his piano teacher. In the midst of that very troubled year, however, one of the most renowned pianists of the day came to the city to perform. Emil von Sauer was not only famous because of his abilities at the piano, but he could also claim the notoriety of being the last surviving pupil of Franz Liszt. Sauer requested that young Foldes play for him. Foldes obliged the master with some of the most difficult works of Bach, Beethoven, and Schumann. When he finished, Sauer walked over to him and kissed him on the forehead.
“My son,” he said, “when I was your age I became a student of Liszt. He kissed me on the forehead after my first lesson, saying, ‘Take good care of this kiss—it comes from Beethoven, who gave it me after hearing me play.’ I have waited for years to pass on this sacred heritage, but now I feel you deserve it.”
Little House on the Freeway, Tim Kimmel, pp. 41-42
Charlton Heston
Academy Award-winning actor Charlton Heston has not always had rave reviews. He says he learned “The most valuable single truth about criticism” from Laurence Olivier: We’d done a blank-verse play on Broadway…and the blank verse was not Shakespeare. The critics slaughtered us—before the opening-night party we were doomed. Forty minutes later I found myself alone in a restaurant with Olivier and a bottle of brandy. I was young, green and striving for mature detachment. “Well,” I said philosophically, I suppose you learn how to forget the bad notices.”
Olivier gripped my elbow.. “Laddie!” he said. “What’s much harder, and far more important…you have to learn to forget the good ones.” He was right.
American Film, quoted in Reader’s Digest, January 1992
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The brilliant physician and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., and his brother John represent two radically different views on the subject of flattery. Dr. Holmes loved to collect compliments, and when he was older he indulged his pastime by saying to someone who had just praised his work, “I am a trifle deaf, you know. Do you mind repeating that a little louder?”
John, however, was unassuming and content to be in his older brother’s shadow. He once said that the only compliment he ever received came when he was six. The maid was brushing his hair when she observed to his mother that little John wasn’t all that cross-eyed! I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. If it were possible for a created soul fully to ‘appreciate,’ that is, to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme blessedness.
To praise God fully we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God, drowned in, dissolved by that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression. Our joy is no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds.
C. S. Lewis, source unknown
Quote
- He who praises everybody praises nobody. - Samuel Johnson
Source unknown
Austria Under Attack
The citizens of Feldkirch, Austria, didn’t know what to do. Napoleon’s massive army was preparing to attack. Soldiers had been spotted on the heights above the little town, which was situated on the Austrian border. A council of citizens was hastily summoned to decide whether they should try to defend themselves or display the white flag of surrender. It happened to be Easter Sunday, and the people had gathered in the local church. The pastor rose and said, “Friends, we have been counting on our own strength, and apparently that has failed. As this is the day of our Lord’s resurrection, let us just ring the bells, have our services as usual, and leave the matter in His hands. We know only our weakness, and not the power of God to defend us.”
The council accepted his plan and the church bells rang. The enemy, hearing the sudden peal, concluded that the Austrian army had arrived during the night to defend the town. Before the service ended, the enemy broke camp and left.
Source unknown
Practical Tips for Praising One Another
1. Be specific. Describe, don’t evaluate.
2. Be sincere, avoid exaggeration.
3. Don’t overlook written praise.
4. Give a gift for no reason at all.
5. Plan a special person’s party.
6. Praise often.
- Dave and Claudia Arp
Source Unknown
Less Competition
My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there.
Indira Gandhi, quoted in Bits and Pieces, April 1990, p. 11.
|
