Entering the Gates
“Enter into His gate with thanksgiving, and
into His courts with praise: be thankful unto Him, and bless His name.” Ps. 100:4
The psalmist
gives us instruction: “Enter into His
gate with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: be thankful unto Him,
and bless His name.” We see the
combination of thanksgiving and praise, associated with entering into the gates
and courts of the presence of God.
We
are told to enter His gates with thanksgiving.
A modern day analogy might be coming to the prison entrance, where the
front gate is located. Prayer warriors
can be interceding and declaring the correctional facility is place where the
gates are the entrance points for God’s power and authority! The word
thanksgiving is “todah” (#8426 Strong’s) and incorporates into its meaning the
following wonderful elements as defined below.
Thanksgiving
is the giving of worship by extending one’s hand in adoration or
agreement. It is frequently associated with
the offering of a sacrifice (such as sacrifice of praise or thankfulness). As we confess thankfulness to God for what we
have and what we do not yet have, but believe God for, we extend our right hand
up to Father, who throughout the Bible has extended His right hand to us. We come into agreement with God and with His
Word. Beloved, this unleashes
supernatural power! We agree, we confess,
we believe! We pray with a heart of
thankfulness to God and we offer it to Him as a spiritual sacrifice. He hears us.
He sees us. He delights is
us. He meets us. HE MEETS US.
Our right hands meet in covenant agreement.
At
this point, we have now passed the prison gates. As thankfulness overtakes us, Psalm 100
guides us to next “enter His courts with
praise.” A court is a courtyard or
enclosure. In the Tabernacle of Moses,
there was the pattern given by God to Moses for the habitation for Yahweh,
including the gate and the courts (outer and inner courts).
If
we apply this to a correctional facility, we have now entered the gates with
thanksgiving and come into the “yard,” or sanctuary, with praise. Praise, or tehillah (#8416 Strong’s), is
defined as a hymn, laudation, song of praise or exaltation. It is also used to define God’s glory and
praiseworthiness. In Hebrew the Book of
Psalms is the Tehillim. The root word
for praise in Hebrew is halal (#1984 Strong’s) and is the basis for the word
hallelujah, which is giving glory to God.
Halal means to be bright, to shine, to boast, to celebrate, and to glorify. Its very essence is the concept of
radiance.
We
have arrived at the prison, passed through the open gates, entered into its
sanctuary, and praise God. We move from
thankfulness to praise: we celebrate,
rejoice, boast about the Lord and what He has done, and we glorify His name
which is above all names. We exalt the
name of Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior – so that as His name is lifted up, men
and women will be drawn to Him. We will
be drawn to someone bigger than ourselves, greater than our problems, stronger
than our weaknesses. We lift up His name
and He lifts up our heads to gently feed us His word. It
is a love from everlasting to everlasting.
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