PRAISING GOD (PART 8)

Can I pray for you in any way? Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com.

In Christ, Mark

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

** Follow The Christian Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk

** Like posts and send friend requests to the author of The Christian Walk, Mark Cummings on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mark.cummings.733?ref=tn_tnmn

** Become a Follower of The Christian Walk at http://the-christian-walk.blogspot.com

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

“But they did not obey You or follow Your law; they did not do what You commanded them to do. So You brought all this disaster on them. See how the siege ramps are built up to take the city. Because of the sword, famine and plague, the city will be given into the hands of the Babylonians who are attacking it.”

Jeremiah 32:23b-24a

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

Today is the next to last devotion in a nine part series entitled “Praising God”, devotions which have drawn from the words of the prophet Jeremiah. So far we have seen the following reasons to give the Lord our praise:

1. He has displayed His amazing power through creation and showed us that nothing is beyond the work of His almighty plans.

2. He is a God of great love and compassion.

3. He is a great God who has no equal, a God who is our great Protector and Refuge.

4. His purposes are great, His deeds are mighty, everything and everyone is in His sight, and He will react, respond, and dole out either favor or penalty as it is merited by our behavior.

5. He has performed many amazing miracles that have contributed to His great renown.

6. He has shown over and over and over again that He is our Great Deliverer.

7. He is our Great Provider, meeting our needs in accordance with His will.

Note that all these grounds for praise are all centered on things people would consider positives for their lives. We like to focus on the good so that shouldn’t be a surprise but consider this question:

Shouldn’t we also praise God for things He does that we may not necessarily see as pleasant to experience, things like His correction and judgment?

Think back to when you were a child growing up.

You loved it when your parents did things for you that you saw as beneficial. You loved it when they praised you and boasted about you to others. You loved it when they went out of their way to spoil you and make special occasions, like birthdays and Christmas mornings, memorable. You really enjoyed family outings where you got to leave home and go somewhere to have fun.   

And then there were those other times when you had to experience discipline.

We all made mistakes when we were growing up and usually those mistakes led to consequences being doled out by our parents. Maybe were sent to our rooms. Maybe we lost a privilege, something we really enjoyed doing. Maybe we found ourselves grounded and restricted to our house instead of being allowed to go out and play with our friends.

Those times were less than fun but in the end translation, they were critical to us becoming the people our parents wanted us to be and children, after becoming adults, have more often than not praised their parents for the upbringing they received, even the times when they had to be penalized.

It’s this idea of praising, even in the midst of punishment, that is at the forefront of our scripture verse today. Look again at the words of the prophet here:

“But they did not obey You or follow Your law; they did not do what You commanded them to do. So You brought all this disaster on them.”  Jeremiah 32:23b

Jeremiah was talking about the Israelites who had been ushered into the Promised Land of Canaan by God, the Israelites who were the predecessors of the Israelites who were facing attack by the Babylonians and an extended exile of seventy years. You see, we may be discussing two separate generations of Israelites but there is a prevailing theme that stands out, a theme common to both groups.

Both sinned openly and blatantly before God, refusing to obey what He commanded, and subsequently paid the price for doing so. God brought disaster upon them.

So should we praise God for His judgment?

It almost seems counterintuitive because we’re not conditioned to praise when someone does bad things to us. Rather, we typically rage against our assailants and wish them bad instead of considering that what was happening to us was happening for a reason.

Our parents disciplined us because they wanted us to learn the proper way to live and conduct ourselves so we wouldn’t fail and fall as adults, making the same mistakes we made as children.

God, our Heavenly Father, is the Supreme Parent who wants us to mature into the people He wants us to be. When we stray from those expectations, He is always there to rein us in.

Yes, discipline is never fun but we should praise God all the same because in the depths of our consequences, we find God’s love present, a love that doesn’t wish for us to live in wickedness but rather in righteousness, basking in the glow of His favor.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com