New Years Resolution

I don’t know about you but I can tell you in the time that I’m writing this devotional, at the beginning of a new calendar year, I am STRESSED OUT. Whether you are someone who follows New Years’ Resolutions or are like me and try to just make a renewed effort to put your best foot forward again, I think the beginning of the year can feel like so much pressure to set out to accomplish something ‘impressive’ for the year to come. If you are someone reading this now and thinking to yourself ‘I gave up ____’ or ‘I started working out and now I work out every day’ I am so incredibly happy for you and I promise there will still be something here for you if you continue to read on!

All of that to say, in the stress of life, we can settle and develop routines to make sure we don’t forget anything, meet our recurring deadlines, make it to God’s house every week to check back in, and roll out our trashcans every Tuesday morning so we don’t have to figure out where the trash bags will go when the garbage can is overflowing because you forgot. Routines can be an amazing thing that help us, and I am by no means criticizing them! I myself, am a creature of habit. I would like you to think for a moment on your Sunday mornings. Can you picture it? I roll out of bed, put on clothes, wash up, and make sure to leave the house by 9:00am so I can be in my seat when worship starts at 9:30am. Let me be fully transparent (since I’m speaking with my sisters here) and say that I probably stayed up waaaaay too late last night and am depending on my coffee and/or a good message to keep me engaged and awake. I’m also probably already thinking about any errands that have to be run, things that need to be completed, and a toilet that needs to be cleaned when I get home, before I even get in the building. Have you ever found yourself in a situation similar to this or realize you get into church and are singing along in worship but you’re kind of just going through the motions? You’ve got the melody, you don’t need the words, and you’re going ‘Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders, let me walk upon the waters…’ *wow I just realized I left a load of laundry in the washer the last few days.. That’s probably going to smell HORRID when I open it again. Wait I’m in worship, focus!* ‘Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders, let me walk upon the waters…’ *Oh shoot, I definitely forgot to text them back. Wait! I can’t get out my phone now! Okay okay, remember, remember, I’ll do it when I get home* and next thing you know the song is over and your brain is still rambling on? Or you just struggle sometimes to put aside what your heart and your mind cry out over and worship the God that holds tomorrow?

Well if any of these are the case or if any of them aren’t but you can think of a time this was similar, then I want to say to you sweet sister, I hear you. Our minds can be a difficult place to be. Especially living in the world that we do! I want to talk to you today about the praise and the glory we owe to God both in these moments where you are overwhelmed and could list off 80 other things you could be doing or focusing on in that moment, and when He has just made a way in your life and you are the loudest in the room.

I’d like you to think of someone (male, female, fur baby) that you LOVE. Someone that you actually cannot fathom that you love as much as you do and sometimes it even makes you cry. You could not possibly love someone any more than you already do. You got someone in mind? When I think about this my mind immediately goes to my rescue dog that I adopted 4 years ago. He is my whole heart and I treasure the way he whips his tail in a helicopter blade fashion, snuggles into me when he knows I have to get up, and the way he CHOWS DOWN on food even when he knows I’m about to take him out to go to the bathroom for the evening… Okay so you get the point right? That feeling you get in your heart right there, that love, is a human emotion that can be as fickle as we humans can be. That feeling of love comes no where close to the love that God feels for YOU. Isn’t that mind boggling? We could multiply that feeling a few times and it STILL wouldn’t come close to His love for us.

In 1 Corinthians 2:12 Paul says ‘What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us’. Paul writes that as Christians we have not received the spirit of the world. In other words, we have not been given an attitude that only accepts those things and works out with human wisdom. When we came to faith in Christ, the worldly spirit was replaced with the Spirit of God. Through Him, we gain the ability to understand what can only be understood spiritually. This is the God that we owe praise to. He deserves all that we have to give, even when there isn’t much left. And while I fervently believe that God is happy to receive what we give, God ALWAYS deserves more and this can apply to our worship in those moments like what we mentioned above. There is a song that was recently released by Elevation Worship entitled ‘Owe You Praise’ and it just lists out all of the ways/reasons that God is owed our loudest praise and hallelujah. “For the ways that You have made, for the price that You have paid, for your mercies every day, that’s why I owe You praise”. To me when I think of all of the things that the Lord has done and all of the thank you’s that we could say that still wouldn’t be enough, it really challenges me to worship and praise with all of my heart, voice, and body. On this note I’d like to challenge you as sisters in Christ to try a new worship or prayer practice. Maybe you can pray holding out your hands in surrender or reflecting a spirit of receiving, maybe you can close your eyes during worship and change some lyrics around to make it more personal like using ‘I/Me’ in place of ‘we’ or ‘You’ in place of ‘God’. Instead of singing ‘I trust in God’ I will find myself singing instead ‘I trust in You’, etc. Maybe you could try lifting your hands in worship, or even just ceasing singing for a moment to hear God’s people and His spirit in the room. I grew up in a style or format of church where a lot of these things weren’t practiced and I never thought that I could do it. Then when branching out I found myself lifting my hands in worship, changing words around, and praying out loud to God during worship time.

In conclusion, God loves me (you) more than could EVER be imagined or comprehended by the human mind. To me, that is worth every bit of energy on a day that I’m tired or not up to it and He owns every breath He put in my lungs. The key is to be kind to yourself, sometimes you won’t always get it right and maybe your worship feels like it ‘slacks’ one day but every time you commune with God is another opportunity to try again. And we don’t have to only meet with Him in a building on Sunday surrounded by siblings in faith. We can convene with God in the car on the way to work, and can praise Him just as hard outside of a physical church building. Our God is simply too big to be put in a small box of socially allowed things to do in order to share our praise and testimony of how good He has been and will continue to be. THAT’S why we Owe Him Praise.