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Tuesday, March 22, 2011
How does your average prayer begin? With complaints, concerns, or requests? The Scriptures remind us that every prayer should begin with heartfelt praise to our heavenly Father (Matthew 6:9), and yet too often we find it easier to just give the Lord a list of things we want Him to do for us instead. We take His blessings for granted, despite the fact that we’ve already been given more than we could ever deserve.
“Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.”
-Psalm 100:4
As my photo illustrates, we serve a God Who is actively preserving all Creation. Nothing that was, is, or ever will be, could exist without His sustaining power and provision! Even the angels of heaven, who have never experienced redeeming grace like us, still find reason to eternally praise Him simply because of Who He is as God (Revelation 4:8). How is it, then, that our praise is usually dependent on whether or not we get everything on our spiritual “wish-list”, and then battle thoughts of doubt and discouragement when something doesn’t go our way? Truthfully, praising the Lord only when we get what we want is no praise at all; it’s selfishness.
Just like Job, I believe each of us must come to the realization that God is God no matter what (Job 1:21). Sometimes praising Him despite our circumstances isn’t an easy thing to do, but that’s why it’s called a sacrifice (Hebrews 13:15). Even though every situation we face may not always be praiseworthy, our God is and we must learn to worship Him in the good times and bad.
10 comments:
Very good post Dakota! I love your perspective to this! This is such an important issue!Thanks for posting!
I love it! Good thing to keep in mind.
Zachary
Great point. :)
I find when I praise God in rough situations I always feel better, it is just hard getting started. I guess it is the spiritual war going on around us that stops us from praising Him.
I usually start just by saying Jesus then words of praise start rolling off my tongue. The situation does not change but my perspective on the situation does and that makes a world of difference.
Blessings,
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My prayer usally begin with thanksgiving, but if I have a rough day, I then vent my feeling out first :)
I like how you put it though, and how you put a scripture with it as well.
Nice photo by the way :)
In HIS service,
Rebecca
That was a great encouragement! Thank you for posting! So often we drown in self-pity instead of praising the awesome God we serve. Excellent reminder!!
Hi Dakota,
Some of are friends got in a car crash yesterday, and I would like to ask you to pray for them. What happened was, a car spun out in front of them, and they hit it head on. There were 5 of there 8 children in the car along with there Mom and Dad. Everyone in the car had a serious injury, The mom had two broken ankles, the dad broke his wrist, I foregot what happen to the older daughter but some thing happened to her, one of the other children had a broken femur (she entered sergery last night), the youngest daughter had internal bleading, and the youngest child lost most of his teeth. That's about all I've heared thus far. Keep them in your prayers,
Grant Fedewa
P.S. One of there other childen ran away to another state, so also pray for him.
I just hered that the mom also has a collapse lung.
Grant
I'm glad you discovered my blog!
I am also glad to announce that I am following your blog! It's a great encouragement!
You're photography blog is awesome as well!
Keep following hard after Christ!
In Him,
Liv
God is still good, even when things don't seem to be going too good for us. Thanks for the reminder.
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