Ever Felt Like You Can’t “Afford To Worship” ?

Have you ever felt like you can’t “afford to worship”? That you have given all you’ve got and anything that was left has been taken from you? Do you feel like all of your energy, joy, happiness, comfort, trust and hope have been swiped from under you? All the answers seem to point in the same direction – into a blank hole? How do you sing, “You are my all in all”? How do you sing, “There is joy in serving Jesus?” How in the world can you stand and lift you hands and proclaim, “There is none like You?” Have you every felt like when you sing, “Draw me close to you” that you do more damage to yourself than good, because it hurts too much, because the last time you sang that, and really poured your heart out, “nothing” happened and you just don’t want to be hurt again, to be left alone again to comfort your own broken heart?

One of my favorite hymns begins with the phrase, “My hope is in the Lord…” Every day lived needs to be lived with the hope and trust in God who has reveled Himself through Scripture, nature and experience and has promised that all that He claims about Himself through Scripture and through Jesus Christ is true and can be trusted.

Other than that, (and that “that” is HUGE) there is nothing else to hold on to. Except this; I have learned and am still learning that worship is one of the tools that God has given to us to empower us to live in victorious freedom, to see Him as He is.

Russ Taff in the late seventies sang a song entitled “Praise The Lord” that puts it well:

“When you're up against a struggle that shatters all your dreams,
And your hopes have been crushed By Satan's manifested schemes,
And you feel the urge within you to submit to earthly fears,
Don't let the faith you're standing' in Seem to disappear.
Praise the Lord, He can work through those who praise Him.
Praise the Lord, for our God inhabits praise.
Praise the Lord, for the chains that seem to bind you,
Serve only to remind you, that they drop powerless behind you
When you praise Him.”

So today, when you feel like giving up or you feel like living “under the circumstances”, pause and praise the Lord for something and watch what happens!

“By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.”
Psalm 42:8

May He help you hear His song in the night that leads you to a brighter day!

Pastor MJ