“The Lord is great and worthy of our praise…” – Psalm 145:3.
God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Numbers 23:19.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; Proverbs 3:5.
“Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise” –Psalm 100:4.
Give Him Praise with Every Breath
My entire world is in turmoil.
And I can barely cope.
Believing that you will show up, God
Is all that anchors me to hope.
My body rocks without comfort
And I feel like I cannot breathe.
All my thoughts are scattered
Because my mind is under siege.
Then in a flash of memory
The solution is conveyed.
If I want to feel your comfort, Lord
I must sing out to you in praise.
Jesus my Lord, and Savior,
I’m thankful that I’m yours.
I’m humbled by your glory
As I kneel and call you Lord.
You are the name above all names.
Every knee will bend to you.
Your sheep will recognize your voice
To know what is and isn’t true.
Then Satan comes to block my praise
To convince me I can’t get through.
He tells me you will hate me, God
If I dare to tell the truth.
But now I recognize his deceit
As my brain shakes off the haze,
As my focus becomes clearer,
With every word of praise.
So, I kneel to you in gratitude,
As I humbly give you my confession.
Knowing, even in my unworthiness
You will forgive me of transgressions.
Jesus, I’m not worthy of your love
For, I’ve committed many sins.
Now the enemy seeks to steal my faith
For he hates that I’m a Christian.
He commands the evil forces
Seeking only to derail.
But the final battle has been fought
And Lord, he knows that you prevailed.
Satan does not give up easily
He is an unwavering accuser
He knows he fooled me once before
And he is not a gracious loser.
So, he still tries to pull me under,
Still insists all hope is lost.
But this time I tell him, without doubt
My hope comes from the cross.
At the holy name of Jesus
All darkness turns to light.
All Angles stop to harken
And all demons shake with fright.
Let’s all kneel in worship to the Lord;
Celebrate the day He conquered death.
Sing out to Him in our devotion
Give Him praise with every breath.
©Linda Troxell 09/08/2019
In the last few weeks, I have been trying to grasp an idea hovering just outside of my full awareness. I don’t know if that makes sense to you but it’s like when I’m trying to remember a word or a name and it is on the tip of my tongue but I just can’t bring it to mind. The more I try, the more it alludes me. But instead of a word I’ve been trying to understand, why it is important for us to praise God in difficult seasons or when something tragic has happened and we just aren’t feeling grateful to Him?
I’ve read many things and heard many people talk about how to praise God when we don’t feel like it. But somehow I just can’t find much about why it’s important to do so. I don’t need to know how to praise God when I don’t feel like it. I fully understand that we cannot let our feelings determine what we should or should not do. So, if I knew why it’s important that we praise God in the hard times, I could figure out how. But I don’t fully understand why it’s so important.
So, as I said, I’ve had this idea I can’t quite grasp lurking just outside of my awareness. I’ve been feeling as if I’m on the verge of a really big aha moment. That if I could just bring it into my consciousness it would be profound knowledge.
However, yesterday I realized what the answer is and it wasn’t a big aha moment. That’s because it isn’t really profound knowledge as I had supposed. Perhaps it should have even been self-evident all along. Because it turns out it is just a simple truth that shouldn’t have been so difficult to figure out.
As embarrassing as it is, however, it was not self-evident to me. What I finally came to realize is the reason we should praise God in the “bad” times is essentially the same reason that we should praise God in the “good” times. And the short answer to why we should praise God at all times is simply because He is worthy of it. “The Lord is great and worthy of our praise…” – Psalm 145:3.
Moreover, God deserves to be praised because as the sovereign ruler of the universe, who commands the wind and parts the seas, He chose to sacrifice His only son in order to be reconciled with mankind. We owe Him praise because in His love for us He sent His only son to die on the cross, allowing His blood to be shed for the forgiveness of our sins, thus making our relationship, with God possible.
But are those things only true in the good times? Of course not. Everything true about God is always true. God does not change from day to day. He doesn’t love us more on one day than he does on another. We know this because the Bible tells us so. God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Numbers 23:19.
This tells us that God is not capricious. He doesn’t get irritated and send us pain or difficulty on a whim or because He’s in a bad mood.
But Satan’s is always waiting for a chance to convince us that God does send us pain and difficulty on a mere whim. And if we don’t stop him immediately, he can lead us down a path that doesn’t end until he steals our faith. It happens all too often. How many times have you, when you are in a difficult season, begun to wonder, “Why is God doing this to me?”
Well, that’s all it takes for Satan to pounce. Once he has caused us to question one thing about God, he has a foothold to begin telling us his lies. He’s already in our head and he makes us believe these are our own thoughts. Of course, if we knew it was the enemy we wouldn’t fall for it. But when we are in pain, or when we are overwhelmed we aren’t thinking straight.
That’s why it’s so important that we take the Bible seriously when it tells us not to lean on our own understanding. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; Proverbs 3:5. We don’t have the kind of understanding that’s trustworthy to lean on. When our thinking tells us something is bad, most often we’re convinced that it is without a second thought.
But we know so little about this world, let alone what’s beyond it, that we can’t really make a determination about what is ultimately good or bad. In addition to unreliable thoughts, we have unreliable feelings to which we give too much credence. We want to follow our hearts but our hearts are deceitful.
How many of us have been terrified, convinced when something “bad” happens that our life as we know it is over. And many times, in the end, we are right, life as we knew it is over, and we are so thankful it is.
I have a friend, for example, whose 16-year-old unmarried daughter became pregnant. The woman was beside herself. She thought, felt, and totally believed it was a disaster. She predicted that it would ruin her daughter’s life and that she herself would die of shame.
Of course, she did not die from shame. Today, she is a doting grandma who cannot imagine her life without her beloved grandchild. She will tell anyone who will listen what a blessing God gave her in the child she thought would bring disaster.
Her daughter, now a high powered attorney, is happily married with two more children. Now my friend realizes that having the power to act on what she thought was true all those years ago, is what would have brought disaster.
We try to understand God’s mysterious, timeless, and infinite mind with our carnal, temporal and finite mind. It cannot be done. Because we cannot even see what will happen tomorrow, but God knows what will happen until the end of time. We cannot know God’s mind. And God tells us that plainly in His Word. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” –Isaiah 58:8-9. How then, do we protect ourselves?
I’m glad you asked. This is where we begin to praise God. The first time a question about God’s goodness or a negative feeling about Him pops up in our mind, we must remember that we can’t trust our own thinking or our own feelings.
Instead, we must take it as our cue to begin, right then, praising God. We praise Him because our praise brings us into His presences and banishes the enemy from ours. “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise” –Psalm 100:4.
Of course, it can be difficult to go straight from fear and doubt to praise. So we can begin by reading God’s word which we know we can trust. We believe what it says and we use what we read to break out in songs of praise.
We praise Him as loudly and as strongly as we would if we had just won the lottery. Because in a sense we have. Once we begin to praise God, our faith is reactivated, our thinking is restored and our salvation is safe. That, I know, is a solid win.
I would venture to say, that one of the biggest controversies in the Christian world is, “Does God give us, and or allow us, to have pain and difficulty in our lives. And it is debated as an important and simple question. But it certainly is not a simple question for many reasons. Chiefly among them is our reason for asking.
Why do we want to know where our pain and difficulty comes from? What will be different in our spiritual life if we have the answer to that question? Jesus told us we would have trouble in the world. “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”-John 16:33. So we know we can expect difficulties in our lives. So, what?
Will knowing where the troubles come from change anything about how we contend with them? Will it change anything about who we are, about who God is, or who the enemy is? What could knowing possible change? It can only change our thoughts and feelings. And we know that our thoughts are unreliable and we cannot allow ourselves to be led by our feelings.
Look closely at that verse. It says Jesus told us those things so we would have peace. Will ruminating about who or what “gave” us the troubles bring us peace? Of course it won’t. So, the why and the where is not information that will benefit us. It will only trouble us further.
In that same scripture, Jesus told us that we need not worry because He has overcome this world. And if we live in Him, so have we. So why does it matter where the trouble comes from. Isn’t the better question how do we best survive the trouble in the present world? And the answer, of course, is through our faith in Jesus Christ our savior which is activated, fortified and strengthened by our praise.
When we praise God amidst the pain and the hard times, we aren’t, as so many seem to think, thanking him for the pain or trouble. No, we are praising God for who He is. Because that is something that never changes. He is the same sovereign God as He was last month or last year and since before the dawn of time. So, good times or bad, we are praising everything He has done for us in those weeks, months, and years.
I don’t presume to know about your relationship with God, but I imagine it isn’t that different from mine. And when I look at what God has done for me over the years, if He never did another thing for me, I would have reason to praise Him for the rest of my life. Keeping that in mind, I can clearly see why I should praise God every day no matter what that day holds in store.
When we don’t like what’s going on in our lives it isn’t because God is unhappy with us, or punishing us. Just because we, with our finite minds and tendency to give too much credence to our feelings, think the situation is bad doesn’t mean that it is. Remember my friend who thought the conception of her grandson was a bad thing? His Word tells us: We live by faith, not by sight. –2 Corinthians 5:7
We think that if we are on the right path if we are following Jesus in the “right” way we will not experience “bad” things. We want to believe that we have a measure of control; that there are things we can do to mitigate the pain of this life. We hope that certain behaviors and thoughts will give us immunity from challenges and difficulty. But that is not the case. We lost the chance to be pain-free in this world when Adam and Eve threw in with the serpent.
And now that same enemy is trying to finish the job. His goal is to separate us from God by convincing us that God doesn’t really love us. He tells us if God loved us He wouldn’t punish us for doing “wrong.” So when we have a bad day or are in a difficult season, the enemy tells us that God is punishing us. But Our God is not a punisher but a forgiver. The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made. Psalm 145:8-9
However, we now live in a fallen world. A world where sin abounds and the enemy, the father of lies, appeals to our fleshly desires and sinful nature to draw us into sin. Then he uses our shame to convince us that God will not forgive us. And so, we turn away from God and wonder why He is forsaking us.
Jesus knows the devil is dedicated to causing trouble and chaos in this world. He told us that in this life there will be trouble. That shouldn’t be a surprise. But He has also told us we can have peace because he has overcome this world, and there is another world where there is no pain, no illness, and no troubles. He told us, too, that when we confess and repent our Father in heaven will always forgive us.If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. John 1:19
However, when we are facing difficulty we tend to think that God is punishing us or trying to teach us a lesson and we begin to feel hurt and angry with Him. Or, we think that we deserve what is happening because we have been sinful and then we feel shame. In either case, we tend to turn away from God at the very time we need to be in His presence. And praise can take us there.
I hope I have illustrated to you that It is to our benefit to believe that God is worthy of praise at all times, and praising Him is good for us at all times. If I haven’t convinced you, at least I hope I have given you food for thought that will stimulate your curiosity and nudge you to look at the question for yourself.
When it comes to getting our way, most of us have not progressed all that much beyond childhood. Our earthly fathers knew and God knows even better, it would be dangerous to give us everything we want. However, I hope you have not given into the enemies lies that God punishes us and inflicts pain. Because the truth is that our God is love. He cares for us and protects us. He lavishes us with the good things and tries to keep us away from the bad. That is why we can trust Him as our Abba.
Let’s Pray
God, we don’t need to figure out where our pain and difficulty comes from. It doesn’t matter where it comes from, it matters only how we can survive it in this world. We survive it only through your love and grace, God. We know you are not in the business of inflicting pain or causing trouble. You are our Jehovah Rapha, the God that heals. You are our Heavenly Father, our Abba, whom we trust to keep us free from the evil of Satan. Lord, we give you the praise for which you are worthy, exalting you above all else. We praise you for your sovereignty, we praise you because you are our strength and our song, and we praise you for our salvation. We praise you Lord for there is no one who comes close to your majesty, your power, or your holiness. No one can give the compassion and love that you give to those who love you. We are thankful that you, the only one who can forgive us of our sin, have shown us so much grace. For we know, Lord, we are unworthy of all you have given us. We thank you, God, for your son Jesus Christ who died to be our Savior and for your Holy Spirit who guides us and comforts us. We praise your glory God, now and forever. You are our King eternal, immortal, immutable, and invisible, the one and only true God. We will honor you and give you praise forever and ever. Amen.
Points for Pondering or Prayer
Or Perhaps
For Putting Pen to Paper
- Do you have a difficult time praising God in the middle of hard times or difficult seasons?
- If you do, is it because you blame God for what’s happening at that time?
- Have you ever tried to praise God when you weren’t feeling particularly warm toward Him? If yes, what was the outcome? If no, are you willing to try?
- Is praise a regular part of your prayers. If it isn’t, is there a reason for that?
- Do you believe that God gives us difficulties to teach us or pain to punish us? If you don’t believe He gives us difficulties or pain, do you believe He allows the enemy to give us those things?
- IF you do believe that God gives us pain or difficulties do you know of any New Testament scriptures that support that idea?
Humbly Seeking the Lord 