Praising God With a Pure Heart

Merlin Carothers has written many books on the power of praise to God. Praise God for every good and bad thing that happens in your life. This may seem nuts to praise God for the bad things that happen in your life, but the secret is that it works very effectively to bring good into your life.

Carothers once saw a vision:

On a summer day the air was filled with light, and he had a sense of everything being very beautiful. Up above was a heavy, solid black cloud beyond which nothing could be seen. A ladder extended from the ground up into the black cloud. At the base of the ladder were hundreds of people trying to get a chance at climbing the ladder. They had heard that above the blackness was something more beautiful than anything a human eye had seen with unbelievable joy to those who reached it. As person after person tried to ascend, they quickly climbed to the lower edge of the clouds. The crowd watched.
In a short while the person would come wildly sliding down the ladder and fall into the crowd scattering people in all directions. They reported that once they got into the blackness, they lost all sense of direction.

Finally Carothers’ time came and as he made his way up the ladder into the blackness it grew so intense that he could feel its power nearly forcing me to give up and slide back. Step by step he continued upward until suddenly his eyes beheld the most intense brightness. It was a brilliant whiteness too glorious to describe. He found he could walk on top of the dark cloud. As long as he looked at the brightness he was able to walk without difficulty. However, when he looked down to examine the nature of the cloud, he immediately began to sink. Only by looking at the light could he stay on top.

The scene changed and he was looking at all three level. What does this mean? He asked, and the answer came:

"The brightest sunshine below the cloud is the light that many Christians live in and accept as normal. The ladder is the ladder of praising Me. Many try to climb and learn to praise Me in all things. At first they are very eager, but when they get into things that they don’t understand, they become confused and cannot hold on. They lose faith and go sliding back. As they fall, they injure other people who have been hoping to find a way to live in continual joy and praise.

Those who make it through those difficult times reach a new world and realize that the life they once thought of as normal cannot be compared to the life I have prepared for those who praise Me and believe that I carefully watch over them. He who reaches the light of the heavenly kingdom can walk on top of difficulties no matter how dark they may seem as long as he keeps his eyes off the problem and on My victory in Christ. No matter how difficult it may seem to trust Me to work in every detail of your life, keep climbing to the ladder of praise and move upwards!"

Carothers said he found his vision described in slightly different words by Paul in Ephesians, Chapters 1 and 2. Carothers goes on to say, "Praising God with a pure heart means we must let God cleanse our hearts from impure motives and hidden designs. We have to experience the dying to self so that we can live again in Christ in newness of mind and spirit. Dying to self is a progressive journey, and I have come to believe it is traveled only through praise."