We came today to order lunch. The meal was a good one, the service was superb, the circumstances around us -- the music, the ambiance, the temperature in the room, the time that it took to deliver the meal, the sizzle of the steak, the cheese melting slowly but surely on top of the prime cut of beef -- was worthy of praise.
So, we did. We sang and we danced and we were little wind-up figurines from Toy Story.
Right? Am I right?
David, or a writer he called in for a moment, wrote, "Come let's sing out loud to the Lord! Let's raise a joyful shot to the rock of our salvation! Let's come before him with thanks! Let's shout songs of joy to him!
"The Lord is a great God,
the great king over all other gods!
"The earth's depth are in his hands; the mountain heights belong to him; the sea, which he made, is his along with the dry ground, which is own hands formed.
"Come, let's worship and bow down!
Let's kneel before the Lord, our maker!
He is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, the sheep in his hands."
We order. It comes. We sing. That's how it goes, right? Right?
What have we then done? Oh, we established a record for exclamation points with seven of those little things that I hate in just nine sentences (again, seven in nine, leaving out only the sentence about the earth's depth and the one about us being the people of his pasture, either of which could easily have had an exclamation point!)
The writer laid exclamation points like a road paver does asphalt -- hot and liquid and full of rocky road. The writer opens the asphalt thingamadoochie and lets it fly, pouring blackness over hard-pressed dirt. The writer, like the thingamadoochie, is full of, er, stuff.
The writer started slowly and within nine sentence (there is actually much more to the 95th Psalm), establishes that God is some kind of good, some kind of worthy of our praise, worthy of our thanks, worthy of all we have to give.
He's our God, for goodness sake, and the capital G is there for a reason. It is that which separates God from gods.
Thank long and hard about that, friends. He is the creator. He spoke it into being, like a wisp of wind He is the one who put it all together. He is the B-all and End-All of all, of everything that is, or was or will be in the future.
And He is worthy of all that WE can give HIM. WE. Us. Little us. He is worthy and we are not, yet we are in the unique position of giving HIM praise. H-o-w c-a-n w-e m-e-s-s t-h-i-s u-p?
So, let's not. Mess this up, I mean.
Open your own personal thingamadoochie and let her fly. Praise comes tumbling down like it has never come before. God is good, we are not, and we're ready to praise, so let her fly. Let the hot, light-ness come flying out of the all-to-ready thingamadoochie and let it pave the way to our own personal heaven.
Come, let's worship and bow down! (Don't you dare leave out that exclamation point for it is the rain that is the exclamation point on a dark, cloudy day)
Let's kneel before the Lord, our maker! His is OUR God..."
Worship.
Bow.
Kneel.
He is our God.
We've come to praise, like dogs who are dripping with saliva in anticipation of the treat to come.
Remember, praise is to God what treats are for our dogs upon entering our house after doing their, uh, duty outside. Praise is training. We performed. We expect. Praise comes pouring out for a God who has done the expected moment.
God does good. We praise. He gives. That's the way of the God who we serve, right?
Isn't that the message for trainable folk like us? God does good. Good happens. We acknowledge His big part in the good. Good covers us. We, well, we let the good happen, and then we praise. Isn't that the formula? Isn't that the plan?
We get the treat. We chew into it as if the treat was the greatest thing that we could ever receive. The treat is God's grace, and we are the beneficiaries of God's goodness. We are Paul, asking for more, always more.
My question, then, is simple?
What if the circumstances were bad? What if the meal was bad, the service was slow if nonexistent? What if the music was Prozac for the excited, the ambiance just East of stinky, the room was hot on a miserably hot day, the meal came about an hour longer than too long, the cheese was old and stale at best, the meat was cold, and had more gristle than tender flesh, and the Ribeye was as small and meaningless as the conversation at the table was interesting.
What if?
What would our reaction be? Would we still, still dial up praise? O Lord, let us come before you with praise and adoration?
Really?
Would we worship...
Kneel ....
Bow...
Acknowledge the culinary creativity of the Master Chef?
Would we? Really?
Here's where we break with training and tradition.
The answer should be, must be, yes. Yes, the praise should come pouring out like a broken dam on a flood-worthy day.
I suspect for the most part the answer would be no, this is not what we took the table and ordered the meal for. But it wasn't be. We are trained to praise when the act of goodness is bestowed on us. In other words, God is good, God brings goodness, God provides, we accept, in return (IN RETURN) we praise. On a cool Thanksgiving morning, with the cornbread dressing steaming in the oven underneath the bird on the second grill, we should begin to acknowledge all God has done even if it seems to be so small.
Here's the absolute Gospel. If we only praise when the going gets good, then we've missed the whole idea, it seems to me, a lowly praising entity. If we only praise Him when He gives us, we've lived a very poor existence. Seriously.
If we only praise when we get what we asked for, totally contrary to what the prosperity gospel preachers tell us, then God is Santa not Shepherd, God is an awesome ATM not a Hallelujah haymaker.
If God's grace isn't enough, then our praise will never be real.
Your choice.
Kneel,
Bow,
Praise in ALL circumstances.
Or ...
John Fogerty asks the pertinent question. "Who'll stop the rain?"
I suspect, nah I know, the stopper of the rain is the same one, the same creative entity who invented the rain in the first place.
It is that entity we serve, that being we praise, that person one in three that we bow before.
He is OUR GOD. He is Jehovah, He is Jesus, He is Spirit. And he is OURS.
Or as Chris Tomlin wrote, "Water you turned into wine
Opened the eyes of the blind
there's no one like you
None like you
Into the darkness You shine
Out of the ashes we rise
There's No one like you
None like you
Our God is greater, our God is stronger
God You are higher than any other ..."
See, if we only praise when things are good, then we're praising the wine not the one who turned the water into it. if we only praise the new sight, we're missing the one who opened the eyes in the first place.
He is OUR GOD. And the is none like him. Shout it from the mountain tops, friends. Praise Him. He is OUR GOD. He has come; he is coming again.
Whew, that's good.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (A New Record!!!!!!!)
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