LIVING PRAISE

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

For the grave cannot praise You, death cannot sing Your praise; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your faithfulness. The living, the living—they praise You, as I am doing today; parents tell their children about Your faithfulness. The Lord will save me, and we will sing with stringed instruments all the days of our lives in the temple of the Lord.

Isaiah had said, “Prepare a poultice of figs and apply it to the boil, and he will recover.”

Hezekiah had asked, “What will be the sign that I will go up to the temple of the Lord?”

Isaiah 38:18-22

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

If you’re reading this right now, you are obviously living, alive by the grace and mercy of the Lord God Almighty.

Does that excite you? Or have you allowed yourself to be some comfortable in life that you simply take it for granted?

If you are in the latter category, then I pray this devotion will speak to your heart for those who truly get excited from experiencing God’s amazing grace each and every day are already showing the symptoms of praise, a spirit of thanksgiving to God that proclaims each day:

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24 (NRSV)

It’s in this spirit that we find today’s verses from Isaiah, Chapter 38, coming to life to dwell in our hearts and minds. Look again at these words from Hezekiah, the king of Judah in Isaiah’s time:

For the grave cannot praise You, death cannot sing Your praise; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your faithfulness. The living, the living—they praise You, as I am doing today; parents tell their children about Your faithfulness. The Lord will save me, and we will sing with stringed instruments all the days of our lives in the temple of the Lord. vv: 18-20

If you’re not feeling the urge to praise the Lord, maybe it’s because you are spiritually dead. It happens you know when people choose to abandon the word of God, refrain from attending any form of worship service or bible study, and/or decide that prayer is unnecessary for themselves or anyone else for that matter. Detach yourself from the Lord and you are detaching yourself from the true vine, the one who brings real life to anyone attached to it (John 15). We simply cannot survive spiritually without being connected to Christ, now or ever.

You see, God’s word is truth and the word of God today assures us that the dead cannot sing praise to the Lord. For those who die without accepting Christ, it is over. There is nothing else. Nothing. But for those who have placed their full hope in Jesus as Savior - those who have received the salvation promise from God through Him that says death is not the end but only the beginning of a glorious, everlasting experience with both God and Christ – life is filled with joy and hope, in good times and bad. They are the ones who are truly alive, the living who praise the Lord, giving Him their fullest thanks and never hesitating to tell others about His goodness, His righteousness, and His faithfulness. They are the ones who will boldly testify that God, through Jesus, has saved them and made the way so they can spend all the days of their lives, before and after death, in the glory of His presence.

Friends, Jesus didn’t die and pay the price for our sins and then ascend to sit at the Father’s right hand, paving the way for us to follow, just for us to sit around and treat every day we have been granted as it’s like Groundhog Day, like some mundane repeat of a daily exercise of waking, working, and sleeping only to arise and do it all over again. No, we are expected to live in a way that allows others to always see the hope that we hold within us, a hope that springs eternal through Jesus, a hope that should ever take us to the place of living praise.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

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