MATTHEW ASHIMOLOWO TURNS PRAISE & WORSHIP INTO MYSTICAL WEAPONS

By Akin Ojumu

Praise and worship occupy a central place in the Christian life because they are fundamentally about God Himself—who He is, what He has done, and the glory, honor, reverence, and obedience He deserves.

They are not spiritual techniques for manipulating God. They are not mystical levers for forcing breakthroughs. They are not incantations for activating divine power. And they are certainly not weapons believers deploy to make God attack their enemies.

At its most basic level, praise declares the greatness of God, while worship is the whole-person response of reverence, love, gratitude, submission, and obedience to Him.

Scripture gives us several clear purposes for praise and worship.

1. PRAISE AND WORSHIP GLORIFY GOD

God is worthy of praise simply because He is God.

Psalm 145:3

“Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised.”

Revelation 4:11

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power.”

The starting point of biblical worship is not human need. It is divine worthiness. God does not become worthy because He gives us something. He is worthy because of who He eternally is.

2. PRAISE REMINDS US OF GOD’S CHARACTER AND WORKS

Praise turns our attention away from ourselves and fixes it upon God—His holiness, faithfulness, mercy, sovereignty, goodness, and mighty saving acts.

Psalm 103:1–2

“Bless the LORD, O my soul… forget not all his benefits.”

Praise is therefore an act of remembrance. We rehearse what is true about God. We remind ourselves of what He has done. We proclaim His character in the midst of circumstances that might otherwise tempt us to fear, doubt, or despair.

3. WORSHIP IS THE PROPER RESPONSE TO SALVATION

Christians do not worship in order to earn God’s favor. We worship because God has already shown us mercy in Christ.

Paul writes:

Romans 12:1

“Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

The Gospel does not merely produce converts. It produces worshipers.

When sinners understand the mercy of God revealed in Christ, the proper response is gratitude, submission, reverence, and praise.

4. WORSHIP CENTERS THE BELIEVER ON GOD RATHER THAN SELF

Biblical worship says, in effect, “You are God. I am not.”

That confession alone destroys much of the narcissism that passes for spirituality today.

True worship cultivates humility, dependence, gratitude, and reverence.

Psalm 95:6

“Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!”

Worship reminds us that God is not our servant. He does not exist to fulfill our ambitions. He is not a divine vending machine into which we insert praise songs and receive miracles in return.

He owns us. We belong to Him.

5. CORPORATE PRAISE TEACHES AND STRENGTHENS THE CHURCH

Congregational singing is not merely an exercise in emotional expression. It is also a means by which believers teach and admonish one another.

Colossians 3:16

“Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly… singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”

Notice the connection.

The Word dwelling richly. The Church singing faithfully.

Theology and doxology belong together. Right theology produces right worship. A distorted doctrine of God will inevitably distort the worship offered to Him. You cannot cultivate warped thinking about God and then expect to worship Him rightly.

If your theology presents God as a cosmic errand boy who must be activated by noise, dancing, chanting, or repetitive songs, your worship will eventually reflect that theological deformity.

6. PRAISE IS AN EXPRESSION OF JOY AND THANKSGIVING

Christians have profound reasons to rejoice. We have been forgiven. We have been reconciled to God. We have been adopted into His family. We possess the hope of resurrection and eternal life.

Hebrews 13:15

“The sacrifice of praise to God… the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.”

Christian praise flows from gratitude. It is the language of people who know they have received mercy they could never earn.

7. WORSHIP ORIENTS THE HEART TOWARD HEARING AND OBEYING GOD’S WORD

Genuine worship is not merely the singing session that takes place before the sermon. Worship involves approaching God with reverence and responding obediently to His revelation.

Jesus said:

John 4:24

“Those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Truth matters. Worship divorced from truth easily degenerates into emotionalism, theatrics, manipulation, and religious frenzy. 

Biblical worship is never hostile to doctrine. It depends upon doctrine.

8. WORSHIP EXTENDS FAR BEYOND MUSIC

Singing is worship. But worship cannot be reduced to the thirty minutes before preaching.

Obedience is worship. Generosity is worship. Prayer is worship. Service is worship. Holy living is worship. Loving your neighbor is worship. The whole Christian life is to be offered to God.

Paul writes:

Romans 12:1–2

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

And this brings us directly to Matthew Ashimolowo and his warped understanding of praise and worship.

Preaching recently at his KICC religious empire, Ashimolowo declared:

“Did you know that worship and praise is a weapon… a weapon? 2 Chronicles 20:22.”

And there it was.

A perfectly good biblical narrative was once again dragged into the theological workshop of modern Pentecostalism, dismantled, reassembled, and converted into another spiritual technique.

In typical prooftexting fashion, Ashimolowo conscripted 2 Chronicles 20:22 against its will and forced the text into the service of a doctrine the passage simply does not teach.

No careful reader of 2 Chronicles 20 would come away believing that praise and worship are spiritual weapons. The chapter does not teach that Jehoshaphat defeated the Moabites, Ammonites, and their allies because music possessed some mysterious spiritual power.

It does not teach that singing activated heaven. It does not teach that praise became an invisible ballistic missile aimed at Judah’s enemies. And it certainly does not establish a universal Christian doctrine that singing praise songs functions as spiritual warfare.

The exact opposite becomes obvious when the chapter is read in sequence.

A great multitude of Judah’s enemies—the Moabites, Ammonites, and Meunites—assembled against King Jehoshaphat.

Jehoshaphat was terrified. He understood the military reality. Judah was outnumbered. They had no realistic hope of defeating the invading coalition by their own strength.

So, what did Jehoshaphat do?

He sought the LORD.

2 Chronicles 20:3–4

“Then Jehoshaphat was afraid and set his face to seek the LORD, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. And Judah assembled to seek help from the LORD; from all the cities of Judah they came to seek the LORD.”

The people did not organize a praise offensive. They sought God for help. And God answered.

Speaking through Jahaziel, the Spirit of the LORD declared:

2 Chronicles 20:15

“Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat: Thus says the LORD to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s.’”

And again:

2 Chronicles 20:17

“Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the LORD.”

That destroys the “praise is a weapon” doctrine before the singers even clear their throats.

Before anyone sang, God had already promised victory. The promise came first. The praise came afterward.

God did not say: “Sing loudly enough and perhaps I will intervene.”

He did not say: “Activate My power through worship.”

He did not say: “Turn praise into a weapon and defeat your enemies.”

God sovereignly declared that He Himself would fight the battle. Only after that divine promise had been given did Jehoshaphat appoint singers.

2 Chronicles 20:21

“And when he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the LORD and praise him in holy attire, as they went before the army, and say, ‘Give thanks to the LORD, for his steadfast love endures forever.’”

Their singing was therefore not the mechanism that secured God’s intervention. It was the response of faith to an intervention God had already promised.

They praised because God had spoken. They worshiped because they trusted His promise. They gave thanks because they believed His covenant faithfulness even before they saw the outcome.

That distinction is everything.

Judah did not lift a sword against the invading armies. God sovereignly caused the enemy forces to turn upon one another.

God won the battle.

Not the choir. Not the melody. Not the volume. Not the worship leader. Not the singers’ “anointing.”

God.

Praise was not the weapon. The LORD was the Deliverer.

This is precisely what the chapter itself emphasizes:

“The battle is not yours but God’s.”

Yet modern charismatic theology has managed to take a passage specifically designed to remove confidence from human strength and use it to manufacture another human spiritual technique.

That is quite an accomplishment.

Praise is therefore not a spiritual weapon in the sense that singing mechanically causes God to defeat enemies, release miracles, open doors, create breakthroughs, destroy demons, or rearrange circumstances.

Judah’s worship did not manipulate God. It openly confessed confidence in God. Their praise placed the character of God above their fear and publicly expressed reliance upon His power rather than their own.

Scripture nowhere gives Christians a formula that says:

Praise enough → God must act.

There is no praise button in heaven that believers press until miracles fall out. There is no biblical doctrine teaching that a certain volume of singing places God under obligation to perform. And there is no promise that if Christians send singers to the front of every crisis, God must reproduce the events of 2 Chronicles 20.

That is not biblical interpretation. That is religious superstition dressed in Christian vocabulary.

To turn Jehoshaphat’s singers into a universal spiritual warfare technique is to rip a unique historical event out of its context and convert narrative description into normative doctrine.

Judah was delivered because God sovereignly promised to deliver them. Their singing was an expression of faith in God’s revealed promise. It was not a magical mechanism that compelled God to intervene.

The biblical order is:

God reveals Himself. God speaks. God acts in grace. His people believe. His people respond in praise and worship.

The order is never:

People praise. Praise activates God. God is compelled to perform.

The first is Christianity. The second is pagan manipulation wearing Church clothes.

The ultimate importance of praise and worship, therefore, is not what worship gets for us. It is that worship acknowledges what God deserves from us.

Praise is not valuable because it gets us breakthroughs. Worship is not important because it wins battles. God Himself is the reason Christians worship.

As the Westminster Shorter Catechism famously puts it:

“Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.”

That is the heart of Christian worship.

Not manipulating God. Not activating power. Not manufacturing breakthroughs. Not weaponizing praise.

But glorifying the God who is eternally worthy of praise whether He changes our circumstances or not.