A sacrifice of praise will always cost you something. It will be a difficult thing to do. It requires trading in our pride, our anger, and most valued of all, our human logic. We will be compelled to voice our words of praise firmly and precisely, even as our logic screams that God has no idea what he’s doing. Most of the verses written about praise in God’s Word were penned by men and women who faced crushing heartaches, injustice, treachery, slander, and scores of other intolerable situations.
~Joni Eareckson Tada
Oh, that my words were recorded, that they were written on a scroll,
that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead,
or engraved in rock forever!
I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that in the end He will stand on the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see Him with my own eyes—I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!
~ Job, in chapter 19 of his epic poem (ca. 2,000 B.C.)
Oh beloved, it is true. To praise Him is a sacrifice. But a deeper truth for the believer is that to sacrifice is no longer a duty. Giving to Him is but a simple and reasonable response to His profound sacrifice for us. Oh, we used to feel like it was some sort of a bother to go to church or to give up some of our precious time to fulfill some sort of duty to the One to whom we owed a nod, or tip of the hat.
And then He changes everything.
In His awaking of our inert spirits within us, we suddenly begin to breath so much more deeply than the simple soul and body that we were before. And as His discipline begins to expand the capacity of our spiritual lungs, we begin to actually begin to breath the infinitely clean air we will breath forever. Eternity enters our nostrils, and we are never the same.
We go from simple belief, to real and experiential knowledge of the Holy.
We go from thinking we need to make time for G_d, to realizing that time is now irrelevant. We are Living, eternally now, in the Presence of our Creator.
We proceed from anxiety into a place of simple agreement with Him about Who He Is. And in coming to agreement with Him, we find only Peace.
We go from a weak pleading for help, to leaping hurrah! of celebration of the strength He is building into us.
We abandon the fear in which we foundered, for the solid foundation of His joy.
We move past the wishing for things to change, to jaw-dropping appreciation for the 10,000 things He is doing in our lives all at once.
We have come to a place where want is no longer really a word in our vocabulary, for we have Him. And in Him is only unfathomable riches.
We now use the word Hope from the perspective of blessing – as opposed to some well-founded, but faraway wish.
We have, to put it bluntly, traded our life for His Life – for He has already done the same for us. This same Jesus we used to regard as some object of our esteem (and even warm affection), has now become the Core of our being. We have laid our lives on the altar of His grace as a sacrifice to the praise of His glory.
And we would not have it any other way.
Can we see it? This is the way that the saints who have gotten through the toughest times have made the passage with success. They no longer count their lives as their own – as if they were the ones in charge of doling out some tithe of recognition to their creator. No, the true believer has come to understand that the minimum price of entry into true praise, is the abandonment of oneself to the One they are giving praise.
And it is seeing ourselves as nothing, that all – absolutely all – of our focus can be on the One who has given us this new Life in Himself. And further, it is this emptying of our own vessel that enables this same G_d to fill us with the Life we have always hoped for. For He Himself inhabits His praises and brings the fullness of all His goodness along with Him in the adventure.
Tonight is the night beloved. Pour it all out. Pour yourselves out. It is the only thing left to do.
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
~ Colossians 3:1-3
