“Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable…”
(Psalm 145:2-3 ESV)
When It’s Hard to Praise God
I got off the phone with my aunt who, despite abounding trials, praises the Lord in everything. I mean everything.
She is simultaneously the most joyful and tearful woman I know. The word wonderful comes out of her mouth in every conversation, and she praises the Lord at all times.
“Isn’t God so good?” She said, even as I expressed over the phone the toughest of my sorrows.
“Sort of…” I honestly thought. But how badly I wanted to genuinely believe, as she did, that God is good! She had learned to praise the Lord in everything, sincerely.
Fast forward to me sitting alone in my car. Tight chested and angry, dark thoughts clouded the horizon of my mind.
Why? Not again! Really, Lord? And thoughts of similar hues continued.
Then I realized as never before that I had a choice.
I knew that my thoughts toward the Lord were wrong. I could choose to keep believing them or choose to shut them down.
Learning to Praise God
Have you ever been in this place?
Praise is often hard not because it’s impossible but because we don’t want to do it. It takes strength to praise God in the darkness—sincerely. It takes thought and effort. But praise is the key to spiritual war. When we begin to forfeit our mental sphere to evil thoughts about the Lord, we hand over our rationality to the enemy, and we start thinking like God’s enemy.
But we can choose to say, I know my King! He is good! And despite my heart, the enemy, and the world creating a fog of lies by their whispers, I will fight for the truth!
It seems that when we suffer, we become disoriented. Our minds flood with wrong thoughts. We live in a sort of disequilibrium, questioning if what we believe is really true. As God gently leads us into truth as he promised—he grows our faith.
The more we go through trials, it seems the process changes a bit. When suffering comes, the choice will no longer be to decide what is true, but to believe what we know to be true. The fruit of belief will be praise.
Praise Is One Way to Suffer Well
Psalm 145:2-3 says, “Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable” (ESV). Every day God is worthy of praise. That’s true whether I believe it or not.
If we were to have a window into our eternity, we would see thousands upon thousands of people and angels falling around God’s throne saying, “Amen! Blessing [“praise” in the NIV] and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen” (Revelation 7:12 ESV). No more questioning. No more doubt. We will taste and see that the Lord is good.
And if proof of his goodness is guaranteed, why wouldn’t I start believing it now? The Bible tells me the truth. Life is hard. Suffering will come. But God is good.
If I’m going to praise God one day for everything, celebrating his wisdom and power and glory, why would I question his power and glory and wisdom now?
I am far from where I would like to be, but the first step to change is to see your need. Through my aunt, I have begun to see that one key to enduring suffering is heartfelt worship—choosing to celebrate the wonderful aspects of the Lord whether we can see what he’s up to or not.
I would like to grow in this, how about you?
Song Link: What I Really Need https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O7ELWBP2HY