Hebrews 13:15NIV
Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name.”
Romans 12:1
“Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship.”
Back when I was a teenager, I went to a weeklong youth camp. At this camp they had a lot of things to do, one of them was something called the blob the blob was like a blown up air mattress where you would jump on it, land on your butt, slide to the edge, and wait for someone else to land on it, and launch you in to the water. Sounds fun right? Well, it would have been, except for one small problem, I landed directly on my ankle, not my butt, and slide off the side of the blob. Now picture this, I’m under this cold, very cold water, and my foot is in major pain. I somehow made it to the shore and found out that by God’s grace, I did not break the foot.
Fast forward to the evening worship service, and I remember sitting there, in massive pain, and God speaking to me, for me to get up, and praise him. I did, and by the end of the week, my foot was completely healed.
That’s great, but what does that have to do with a sacrifice of praise?
Good question, before I answer let me draw your attention to another story, one that happened just today.
This past week, I had surgery on my knee, and have been slowly healing Yesterday, I was on the worship team, my knee was propped up in a chair. When worship started, while I wanted to be there, my knee was still in a good deal of pain. I had people asking me if I was ok, and I said yes, I’m all right, just sore I’d taken what pain medicine I could, so I knew that this would have to be one of them trust God moments.
As we worked our way through the worship set, I distinctly noticed about halfway through, that my knee, was reduced in pain. Yes, I felt it, but it was like someone had flipped a switch and for that moment in time, I hardly registered that my knee was hurting, even though I knew it was. This allowed me to focus on singing and leading the church in worship to God.
Once we were done, the switch flipped off again, and the pain I’d felt was back up again, but I knew why God had done it, he gave me enough grace to get through and accomplishes what he wanted from me.
In both cases, God wanted something from me, he wanted a sacrifice of praise, even though I was in a great deal of pain each time.
What about you? Is there something in your life, that God may be asking you to praise him in spite of? A trial, a loss, something?
I will not say that to do so is easy, but when you do offer him that praise, it is well worth it in the end.
I hope that this is useful to someone, God will meet you where you are at, and he will walk with you through it.
In Christ, Teresa Blaes.
