Daily Devotional for Saturday April 8, 2000

Giving God Praise

(Psalms 67:3) How often do we take time out of our busy lives to simply stop and praise God for all He does for us each day? Like the children of Israel, we come to expect God's blessings in our life and actually take them for granted. The whole focus of today's devotional is to get you to focus on how wonderful God is, how worthy of our praise He is, and to never take for granted His blessings in our lives. As I mentioned a few days ago, we are often in "crisis prayer" much of the time, seeking God only in those times of crisis and turmoil, ignoring Him much of the time until we "need" something. Then calling upon God like He is our own personal concierge. "Oh God, can you do this for me"?" "Oh God, I need to you to take care of this problem today." "Oh God, can you hurry up, I have things to do and you are taking too long with that last request." Of course I am exaggerating, but unfortunately, it is pretty close to how we often treat our relationship with God. I realize that many of you have great needs in your life today. I am not saying that we should not seek God for those needs in our life. He tells us to call upon Him. He asks us in His Word to pray. What I am saying. like everything else, we need to have balance in our prayer life. We need to bring our petitions before God. We also need to spend time each day acknowledging God for who He is, giving Him the praise, the honor, the respect He deserves. We need to make part of our prayer time each day a time of praising God for all the wonderful things He does in our life each day. He loves us. Focus in for a second on how great that love must be for Him to sacrifice His only Son so that we might have a way to be reunited with Him for eternity. That act alone is worthy of our praise and adoration. I love you so much. I care about you. I try each day to challenge you and encourage you in your daily walk with Christ. I try to give you some direction to help you become all the Lord has called you to be in this life. Part of that process has got to be our acknowledgment of God and taking some time each day to simply thank Him for loving us so much. I pray today that you will keep this aspect in mind during your time of prayer each day. I pray that you will never lose sight of how much God does for you each day. I pray that you will take time each day to simply give Him the praise He is due. The Bible says, "let everything that hath breath praise the Lord".