Freedom in praise and worship comes when you stop treating worship as a segment of the Sunday service and start treating it as an expression of love to your heavenly Father. In this message, Pastor Paul Hohman, a worship leader at NTC Ministries, shows from Scripture that when you draw near to God in praise, He draws near to you, His presence becomes tangible, and the worries, fears and burdens you carried in begin to lift.
Below you will find the full video, a structured summary of the sermon, the Scripture behind each point (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a table of what Psalm 150 teaches about praise, a timestamped outline, and practical steps you can take this week.
Sermon at a Glance
This message was preached at NTC Ministries in March 2024, as the church was heading into Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, and it runs about 66 minutes. Pastor Paul Hohman says he had studied for weeks to narrow down what the Lord wanted him to share, and he promises to continue the theme the following week.
He speaks openly to people who grew up singing from a hymnal for a few minutes before a short sermon and now find themselves in a Spirit-filled church where people clap, dance and lift their hands. There is nothing wrong with hymns, he says, but the Bible has a lot to say about praise, and he sets out to show verse by verse what worship is supposed to look like. It is fine to feel uncomfortable, he adds, because stepping out of your comfort zone is where faith begins.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Speaker | Pastor Paul Hohman |
| Series | Standalone message on praise and worship (continued the next week) |
| Main text | James 4:8–10, Zephaniah 3:14–17 and Psalm 150 |
| Key theme | Drawing near to God in praise opens us to His tangible presence |
| Length | About 66 minutes, ending in prayer |
Why We Praise: An Expression of Love
Pastor Hohman starts with a simple definition: we praise and worship God because it is an expression of our love to our heavenly Father.
He then takes on a question he met in his own study: why would an all-powerful God need His creation to praise Him? Is that not shallow? His answer is that God is love (1 John 4:7–8), and love has to express itself. We are the object of His affection, and the greatest of His creation are His sons and daughters. Worship does not earn His love; it opens us up to receive it in a greater capacity.
He compares it to the different ways people show love in marriage: words of affirmation, affectionate touch, or helping with the dishes and the garbage. When you express love, others want to express their love back. God has created ways for us to show Him how much we love Him, and it is a relationship, not religion and not simply coming to a building.
That is why worship cannot stay in a Sunday box. Believers are to present their bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Romans 12:1), throughout the day. Pointing to the senior pastor’s recent series on who God is, he asks why we would not open up to all of Him: Jehovah Sabaoth who leads, Jehovah Jireh who supplies all our need (Philippians 4:19), and Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals.
Draw Near to God and He Will Draw Near to You
The first main text is James 4:8–10: draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Pastor Hohman calls this the way God set things up. We work and receive a paycheck; we put time into a relationship and it grows. If you put time into drawing near to God, he says, “look out because blessings are going to abound in my life.”
Verse 10 adds humility: humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. He admits that praise takes a little humility. People worry about what others will think when they clap or sing too loudly. But Scripture says clap your hands, all you peoples (Psalm 47:1), not just certain groups of people.
He uses a wedding as the picture. People dance freely at weddings because it is a celebration of two people madly in love. God, he says, is madly in love with you. So it is fine to dance before the Lord, to wave flags, to bow down and kneel. When that humility comes and you stop caring what anyone else thinks, he says, nothing is more pure, and God shows up.
Pastor Hohman explains that he is not up front to entertain anybody. God is his “audience of one,” and the only reason he opens his eyes is to lead the people. He also draws a clear line between God’s omnipresence and His tangible presence. God is everywhere at all times, but when we offer Him our praise, He reveals Himself in a way you can feel. That is why so many people leave a church service lighter than they came: the cares and anxieties went away because they drew near.
Praise, he says, brings us to God in humility, and that humility opens a vulnerability where God can give strength, joy, peace and kindness, even to someone who has been bullied or teased. As heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, believers have a Father who wants to go abundantly above all we could ask or think.
God Is Enthroned in Our Praises
Pastor Hohman shares that worship is one of the first things he does every morning in his devotions, sometimes with music on, because he knows what praise does. He has weaknesses and makes mistakes, he says, but when he praises and pursues God, “God’s got my back.”
He then reads Psalm 22:3–4: “But You are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in You; they trusted, and You delivered them.” The King James Version says God inhabits the praises of His people. He pictures it as God coming all around us like a blanket, filling in everywhere. And the second verse shows that this is not new: for thousands of years God’s people have trusted Him in praise, and He delivered them.
Life still brings hard things. Jesus said that in the world we will have trouble, but to be of good cheer because He has overcome the world (John 16:33). Sometimes God allows us to go through things to strengthen us for the road ahead, the way a parent lets a child fall while learning to walk or lets go of the bike while the child keeps pedaling. As we grow confident in who He is, the things around us matter less.
He also challenges the habit of waiting for a crisis before pressing into God. Some people come for prayer, receive a miracle and then disappear, going back to the same old life. Instead, he says, press into God all the time, so that when trouble comes in a fallen world you already know Him as your source of peace, strength and hope. Cast your cares on Him, for He cares for you (1 Peter 5:7), and in His presence is fullness of joy (Psalm 16:11).
The God Who Dances Over You
We are made in God’s image, Pastor Hohman says, so if we want to know how to praise, we should look at how God Himself rejoices. He turns to Zephaniah 3:14–17: sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all your heart. Then verse 16: “Let not your hands be weak.” Do not give in to the feeling that says you cannot do it today.
Verse 17 is the heart of the passage. The Lord your God in your midst, the Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing. Pastor Hohman teaches that the word rejoice here describes demonstrative praise, dancing and singing. God is showing us what He wants us to be like in His presence: happy like children, celebrating like guests at a wedding, not caring who is watching.
He notes that praise is not always loud. There are quiet moments when you do not know what to do, and he says that is usually when God is drawing near to you. In the stillness He strengthens you and strips away worries and fears.
He adds Psalm 68:4–6, which says to extol Him who rides on the clouds by His name Yah. Reading from Strong’s, he explains that Yah is a shorter form of the Lord’s holy name, found 50 times in the Old Testament, 44 of them in the Psalms, often in the word hallelujah, meaning praise the Lord. He describes that praise as clamorous and even foolish to onlookers. Our God, he says, is energetic, upbeat, strong and passionate about you, and He waits each Sunday morning, eager for His people to come and worship.
He shares a testimony from people who came to him after a service. One told him they could not lift a hand above the shoulder because of the pain, but lifted it in worship anyway because they knew they needed to worship, and the pain was gone. He also warns that the enemy prowls like a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8) and targets passionate worshippers, but the more we praise, the less room he has, because the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19).
Psalm 150: Where, Why and How to Praise
If God is that enthusiastic about His love for us, Pastor Hohman asks, should we not be enthusiastic about our love for Him? He turns to Psalm 150 and walks through it line by line. The table below follows his reading.
| Question | Psalm 150 | What Pastor Hohman draws from it |
|---|---|---|
| Where? | Verse 1: in His sanctuary and in His firmament | Inside and outside, which covers everywhere: at church, at the gas station, at work |
| Why? | Verse 2: for His mighty acts and excellent greatness | Past, present and future, including the risen Savior we celebrate at Easter |
| How? | Verses 3–5: trumpet, lute, harp, timbrel, dance, strings, flutes, cymbals | Every kind of instrument and creative expression, including dance, flags and percussion |
| Who? | Verse 6: everything that has breath | No one is left out, whether or not they can sing |
Praise is not only for the sanctuary. He models thanking Jesus at the gas station for the money to fill the tank and at work for the job itself. When the church gathers, he says, people should come with expectation, and that enthusiasm should rub off on others. As we lift up the name of Jesus, He draws all people to Himself (John 12:32). The point is never “look at me” but “look at Him.”
He admits that churches with only an organ or no instruments at all are foreign to him, since he grew up in this kind of church. Psalm 150, written thousands of years ago, names brass, strings, woodwinds and percussion, and he expects heaven to have sounds we have never heard.
He quotes a saying whose author he could not find: “life’s not about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” So why wait for Satan to stop bombarding you before you worship, he asks, when God has already given you a weapon called praise?
The Weapon of Praise and the Garment of Praise
Pastor Hohman says Psalm 8 tells us our praise “stills the enemy and the avenger,” and he explains that stills means stops. Satan has no power over the King of kings. When we praise, God’s tangible presence comes around us and the enemy has to stop. God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7), so when wrong thoughts come, cast them down or start praising.
He is honest about emotions. People say they are too angry, too hurt or too frustrated to worship. Emotions are real, he says, and Jesus Himself was in anguish in the garden, asking His disciples whether they could not pray with Him one hour. That is exactly why God has given us the weapon of praise, and there is freedom and liberty in it.
He reads Isaiah 61:1–3 with the congregation, which promises beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. You are no accident, he tells them; God put you here with purpose. Then he shares his own story. At 14 he had never thought about playing an instrument, and singing felt uncool among his friends. Someone simply asked if he would like to play the guitar, he submitted to it, and it led him to where he stands now.
When we begin to praise, it becomes all about Him and not about us. Our emotions heal, he says, when we release them, not when we figure them all out, and Jesus invites the weary and heavy laden to come to Him for rest (Matthew 11:28). Praise changes circumstances because it changes our attitude. People who praise God often do not carry excess burdens; they hand the weight to Him.
He warns against taking ownership of the enemy’s lies by calling them “my anxiety” and “my pains.” James 1:6–8 says the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea and is double-minded. Instead he declares John 8:36: if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4). Praise takes faith, he says, but it also takes action, and sometimes that action becomes desperate.
He closes with the woman with the issue of blood in Mark 5:25–34. After twelve years and everything she had spent, she pressed through the crowd to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment and was healed. That, he says, is what praise does: we come into His presence and touch Him. She did not care what anyone thought, and Jesus told her that her faith had made her well.
Living Out Freedom in Praise and Worship
Pastor Hohman ends by inviting everyone, in the room, online or on the radio, to stand, lift their hands and cast their cares on the Lord. Here are practical steps drawn from his message:
- Start the day in worship. Like him, make praise part of your morning devotions, with music if it helps, before the day’s demands arrive.
- Draw near on purpose. Treat James 4:8 as a promise: put time into the relationship, and expect God to draw near in return.
- Let go of what people think. Clap, sing, kneel or lift your hands for an audience of one, the way guests celebrate freely at a wedding.
- Praise everywhere. Thank Jesus at the gas station, at work and at home, not only in the sanctuary.
- Use praise as a weapon. When anger, fear or frustration rise, choose a song of worship instead of an excuse, and watch your attitude change.
- Press in like the woman in Mark 5. Come to His presence with hunger and desperation, not waiting for a crisis before you seek Him.
Timestamped Outline
- 0:00 Introduction: praise and worship is vitally important
- 1:39 Coming from a traditional church background
- 3:20 Opening prayer and why we praise God
- 5:18 Why would God need our praise? God is love
- 7:11 Different ways to show love
- 9:50 James 4:8: draw near to God
- 11:52 Clap your hands, all you peoples
- 14:17 God’s tangible presence
- 18:34 Psalm 22: enthroned in the praises of Israel
- 20:44 Growing up like a child learning to walk
- 22:55 Do not wait for a crisis to press in
- 25:54 Zephaniah 3: God rejoices over you
- 29:18 Loud praise and quiet stillness
- 30:15 Psalm 68 and the name Yah
- 33:49 A testimony of lifted hands
- 37:04 Psalm 150: where and why to praise
- 42:42 Instruments and creative worship
- 46:13 Psalm 8: the weapon of praise
- 49:30 Isaiah 61: the garment of praise
- 51:34 Learning the guitar at 14
- 53:34 Praise changes our attitude
- 55:47 John 8:36: free indeed
- 58:03 Mark 5: the woman who pressed in
- 1:04:00 Closing prayer
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to be a good singer to worship God?
No. Pastor Hohman directly addresses people who say they cannot hit a tune and calls it an excuse that keeps them from God’s presence. Psalm 150 ends with everything that has breath praising the Lord, and he lists many ways to do it: speaking, shouting, clapping, dancing, lifting hands, kneeling and even worshipping with flags. What matters, he says, is that your heart is given over to God in whatever you are doing.
Is it wrong to sing hymns or worship quietly?
Not at all. He says there is nothing wrong with hymns and that the church still sings them on occasion. He also describes quiet moments in worship when you do not know what to say and simply tell God you love Him. Those still moments, he teaches, are often when God is drawing near to you, strengthening you and taking worries and fears away.
What should I do when I am too upset to praise?
Those feelings are real, he says, but they should not decide whether you worship. God tells us to praise regardless of how we feel. He suggests finding a worship song and turning your focus to the goodness of God. As you release your emotions to Him rather than trying to solve them first, your attitude changes, and the circumstances often follow.
Scripture References
All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:
- James 4:8–10 — draw near to God, and He will draw near to you
- Psalm 22:3–4 — enthroned in the praises of Israel
- Zephaniah 3:14–17 — He will rejoice over you with singing
- Psalm 68:4–6 — extol Him by His name Yah
- Psalm 150 — let everything that has breath praise the Lord
- Psalm 8:2 — praise that stills the enemy and the avenger
- Isaiah 61:1–3 — the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness
- John 8:36 — free indeed
- Mark 5:25–34 — the woman who touched His garment
How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.
Watch More Messages
If this message stirred you to worship, there are hundreds more teachings from NTC Ministries waiting for you. Browse the full sermon archive and keep drawing near to the God who draws near to you.
