How do you praise God when life is terrible? When it feels like you have lost all that matters whether this means relationships, career, health or possessions. How do you keep praising God when the average person would settle into self pity or seethe with anger against God?
Job provides the ancient example of a man who keeps on praising God, even after losing everything that he holds dear in one traumatic day. The final messenger of doom (there were four) brings the last and most devastating report: his ten children have all died in a horrible natural (?) disaster.
Job falls to the ground in worship and says:
It is the KJV that uses the phrase "Blessed be the name of the Lord"; the phrase Matt Redman uses in his powerful worship song based on this verse in Job. We can praise God in all circumstances when we recognize that all things we enjoy come from the hand of God and that He can at any time take them away. We know, having much more revelation than Job, that God is our loving Father who watches over his children even in their painful loss. He does not leave us alone and His eternal plan for us is best, even when the present moments are tragic and painful.
I want always to stand - or more accurately bow - with Job in the worst moments of life and with Him praise the One who knows and loves us. I may not understand why, but far more important, I know Who is in control. His plan is best.
Job provides the ancient example of a man who keeps on praising God, even after losing everything that he holds dear in one traumatic day. The final messenger of doom (there were four) brings the last and most devastating report: his ten children have all died in a horrible natural (?) disaster.
Job falls to the ground in worship and says:
"I came naked from my mother’s womb, and I will be naked when I leave.The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away. Praise the name of theLord!” Job 1:21, NLT
It is the KJV that uses the phrase "Blessed be the name of the Lord"; the phrase Matt Redman uses in his powerful worship song based on this verse in Job. We can praise God in all circumstances when we recognize that all things we enjoy come from the hand of God and that He can at any time take them away. We know, having much more revelation than Job, that God is our loving Father who watches over his children even in their painful loss. He does not leave us alone and His eternal plan for us is best, even when the present moments are tragic and painful.
I want always to stand - or more accurately bow - with Job in the worst moments of life and with Him praise the One who knows and loves us. I may not understand why, but far more important, I know Who is in control. His plan is best.
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