 |
| "Though you slay me, I will praise You" -Job http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Bonnat02.jpg |
We complain on earth because we only have partial knowledge - we don’t understand the fullness of the things that we are saying, so we complain.
We say, ‘It sucks that I can’t go on vacation this month,’ as if vacation is the ultimate goal of a month. We don’t understand the fullness! It could be better that we are not going on vacation this month. The Lord may use us in an extraordinary way here that He couldn’t do on vacation.
We should learn to practice a ‘sacrifice of praise’: we praise Him for His glory and plan even though we’re still feeling sad that we can’t go on vacation.
We don’t have full knowledge - we don’t know exactly WHY someone becomes sick (when it developed, why it got so bad, etc.)
When we don’t have full knowledge, we feel hurt. We feel like we didn’t deserve a situation.
But what do we deserve!? Everything is a gift. We don’t deserve a better situation - it’s only mercy that we get to continue living after we sin. Any situation is better than what we actually deserve.
When we fix our eyes on eternity, it becomes easier to praise because our losses on earth become so small. It doesn’t matter that we’ll never be able to afford a new computer - we’ve got an eternity in heaven to have everything we’ve ever wanted.
When we go back and look at bad events in our life we ask ‘Why did that hurt so much?’
We just remember crying for days over that thing. We go back and think about why we even cried at all. Was it really that bad??
We cried because we were narrow minded at that moment. All we knew was how much it hurt at that one moment. We didn’t have eternity on our minds.
I personally feel like i’m getting the short end of the stick right now (May 2014) - but i have just become pessimistic and narrow-minded. I need to nurture the habit of praising the Lord, even in bad things - a sacrifice of praise.
Plus, there are so many good things that happen to me, too. I need to meditate on those things again and fill my mind with the good things so that I can more clearly see how the bad things have played into these good things.
May I please learn to praise when I’m hurt and when I don’t get it and when I don’t want to.
