Greetings to you…the apple of God’s eye…in the beautiful, life-changing, powerful, and wondrous name of Jesus Christ – THE Risen Savior! Well, God did it again – He woke us up to a day that He has made and He is waiting to see if we will rejoice and be glad in it. I trust that you have had a good week with God’s ‘goodness and mercy’ following you. Today I will be praying for you, asking Father to refresh you in body, mind, and spirit…may He prepare you for the weekend – Palm Sunday…may He be the lifter of your head as He encourages you…may He quiet you and calm your anxious heart.
Today I want to share one more benefit of praising God…one that we all too often neglect. The Psalmist said: “I tried to understand all that was happening to me, but it was too difficult to figure out until I went into the sanctuary of God. – Psalm 73:16-17. In some counterintuitive way, when we are struggling with the questions of life, with the dilemmas that come along, and with challenging situations — deliberately praising God can, and often does, reveal solutions and answers that we could see or comprehend.
Now in the Psalmist’s experience, God’s presence was found in the temple…the sanctuary. In our context that might mean that we need to go to a corporate place of worship and sometimes God does speak to us through the praise and worship and fellowship of a worship service. However another aspect is that we are God’s holy temple…His presence dwells within us and if we would stop trying to work things out on our own, if we could put the questions, dilemmas, and situations aside…like stop obsessing and freely spend time worshiping God in praise – well God could get through to us.
There is a contemporary worship song that declares…”Praise is the highway that leads us to the throne of God” – and when we get there God says to us “my ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts”. It is in times of praise – acknowledging God’s ‘ways and thoughts’ that He can ‘download’ his solutions into our ‘hard drive’. Try it – you might surprise yourself.
Something to ponder…have a blessed day!