His Worth Demands Our Praise

God is good. God is magnificent. He hears and answers our prayer. God became flesh and lived among mankind in order to sacrifice Himself (as one of us) for our sins. How incredible is that! Add to that His beauty, His radiating glory, His greatness, and His awesomeness! Yes, He is good. He is the source of good. He is also infinitely big. Nothing is impossible for God. Nothing is too difficult for Him to accomplish. He deserves ALL of your praise and ALL of my praise. He deserves MORE praise and worship than you and I are capable of giving Him. He is good and He is truly worthy.

I will spend eternity declaring the goodness of our God. He is good! God is so good...there is truthfully never a time in which we cannot give Him praise. He is just too good for you and me to live even short periods of time in which we don't give Him praise.

If you are like me, through any given day your moods change. Yes, we all know this and experience this. My feelings can change due to my physiological state (at any given moment). For instance, I tend to be happier when I am not hungry. I get somewhat happier if I can at least anticipate a good meal in the near future. (Knowing that I truly will not starve to death.) Circumstances also tend to contribute to my feelings. If all is going well, and I'm having a Zippity Doo Dah moment, I feel good. But if life begins to challenge me through circumstances, physical feelings, or people, I tend to NOT feel as good, thus affecting my mood.

Quite honestly, the better I feel, the easier it is for me to praise and worship God. When life is good, praise and worship is easy. When life is fair it is very easy to give God all the credit. But it gets a little more difficult when life is not as easy. Some days can be more challenging than others. Some seasons are more challenging than others.

When we are challenged and life is more difficult we must always ask ourselves this question (just to keep our focus). "Has God changed?" No! He is still the Creator and Ruler of our universe. He is still (and will always be) worthy of ALL praise, worship, and glory! The writer of Hebrews says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." He never changes! He is always the same. No matter how I feel, He is still worthy of ALL the praise!

The book of Acts, Chapter 16 tells of an incredible experience with praise and worship. Paul and Silas had been thrown into the inner prison for preaching about Jesus. The inner prison was the deepest, darkest, filthiest part of the prison. It was where the waste from all the cells above flowed to. It was a very, very challenging situation to say the least. In the middle of these circumstances the Bible says, "...about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them; and suddenly there came a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison house were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened." Paul and Silas were singing praise to God in the worst of circumstances! How could they possibly do this? They were praising God according to His worth, not their circumstances. God never changed. His value never lessened due to their being in the filthiest of dungeons. He was still MOST worthy to receive ALL their praise and worship!

As they focused on God, He began to change their circumstances; and the circumstances of every other prisoner in the place! Everyone's cell doors were opened and everyone's chains fell off! What an encouraging example of giving God what is due Him no matter what our circumstances are.

God will be God in your life and mine when we give Him credit for who He is. It is when we focus on our circumstances alone that we tie the hands of our incredible God.

No matter what your circumstances are...good or bad, our God is incredible and ALWAYS worthy of ALL of our praise and worship. So praise Him, worship Him for who and what He is, not for how you feel, or what you are experiencing. God will move mightily in your life. Remember, when we praise Him for what and who He is, what and who He is will manifest in your life!