Raise Your Praise

Maybe it's because I've raised a family of poker enthusiasts that references to the game have come up a lot in my conversations with God of late. While not a gambler in any sense of the word, I'm willing to bet it hasn't happened by chance.

On a recent morning I was driving to town, and spread before me was a scene of magnificent beauty in the skies. The dark clouds on the horizon were pierced with shafts of light that spilled sunshine through the gray curtain that still hid the sun from view. A huge fan of sunbeams, I delighted in the sight, and knew that God was waiting in the wings of His stage in the heavenlies to see if I noticed the gift He had placed in my way.

I wonder if my response surprised Him as much as it did me. I said, “I see You, God, and I raise You five.” Then I lifted my left hand off the steering wheel, raised my hand high in praise and waved my five fingers before Him in worship.

What?! We both laughed. It was simply a wonderful way to start the day. Since then it's become a catch phrase between us, a way to tell God that I have seen and received a particular grace or gift from His hand, a personalized way to simply say thanks.

Saying “I'll see you and raise you” in response to a poker hand means that you accept the bet that is on the table and are raising it a stated amount. Outside of the game, the phrase is used when attempting to one-up a statement made by someone with a response of one's own.

Surely there is no way to match what God lays on the table before us each day, let alone improve on it in any way. All we can do is respond to what we see around us by calling it out specifically before Him and responding with praise and thanksgiving for the offering. Of course, it's easy to see God's hand in moments of beauty as described above; much more difficult when the goodness of God is hidden by difficulty or trouble of some kind.

In sending a card to a friend recently, I wrote that our hopes for the early Spring now seemed buried in a succession of February snowstorms, as surely as the crocuses she said were blooming in her backyard were now covered in a blanket of winter white. And likewise sometimes our hopes for seeing God come through in the serious life situations we are dealing with get buried in a barrage of in circumstances beyond our control. Hope, faith and belief in the goodness of God are lost to sight in the snowdrifts of doubt the devil loves to dump on us. We spend all our time trying to dig our way out, when our hearts should be looking for the Son to rise in their midst and simply melt them all away.

The answers we need come easy to an almighty God. It's the believing Him for them that is hard. Holding on to our faith in the goodness of God when there is no physical evidence in of the same in the circumstances surrounding us is immensely difficult. How awesome it would be for God to see me raise my hand in praise on a day when I didn't see the sky lit up with shafts of lights...when the dark clouds around me were instead just gray and heavy and menacing. What if I picked the moment when trouble is pressing in to say, “I'm raising my praise and my level in faith in You, because I know my troubles are no match for Your power”? Faith like that shoots light through the darkness and causes God to see and raise His hand in action, blessing us beyond our wildest imaginings. ..to the point that we don't even care about the situation at hand anymore, so taken are with by the new level of relationship we've found through it with Him.

As I slipped the card I was writing in the envelope, my eye caught sight of the the word “Spring” in the embossed DaySpring logo likewise just barely visible in the surrounding white paper. May the springtime my heart is longing for likewise be ever visible to the eyes of my spirit, despite the white of the current snow, causing my lips to say, “I see You, God, and I raise my praise.”

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

(Hebrews 11:1 KJV)