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)

WORSHIP Tips

A weekend worship summit brought my family together to watch the live broadcast at our local church on a recent Friday night. We listened to three hours of wonderful music and inspiring teaching on how to touch the heart of God through song. When the session ended for the night we headed to a local restaurant for a late-night snack.

Seated immediately, we seemed however to wait longer than usual for the arrival of our server. When she did approach the table she appeared a little flustered, apologizing for taking so long to get to us. She explained that some patrons seated near the door had just skipped out without paying their bill, and she would be expected to cover the restaurant’s loss out of her own paycheck. We sympathized with her for several minutes before she got back to business, pulling her pad out of her pocket and taking down our order.

As she disappeared into the dimly lit interior, our conversation quickly changed to other topics and our table soon echoed with the laughter and teasing that normally accompany my three sons on a Friday night. All thought of the waitress and her predicament seemed to be forgotten, until it came time to pay the bill. Apparently one of the boys had been dwelling on the girl’s dilemma during the entire meal, because he suddenly leaned over and asked me quietly if he could borrow some money. He explained that he felt sorry for the girl and wanted to add to the tip that my husband would leave, but hadn’t brought any cash along. As I dug in my wallet for some bills, his brother chucked the two dollars he’d earlier stuffed into his pocket onto the table as well. The third then spoke up, saying, “I understand what you’re doing and appreciate your desire to help this woman out of a bad situation, but have you considered that the story of the dine-and-dash customers might be just that, a story, designed perhaps to inspire a larger tip?”

We thought about this possibility for a minute. Sitting at the end of the booth as I was, I did hear the server speak her tale of woe to the customers she seated next to us, as well. I myself had wondered about the very scenario my son had brought up. But perhaps she spoke so only because the injustice of the situation was still fresh in her mind and heart. After a minute or two his brother said, “Thanks for the warning, and you might be right. But I think tonight that if I’m wrong, I’ll err on the side of generosity.” He put the extra money on the table and we left soon after.

Life has taught us to be careful, not just with our cash, but also with our hearts. Having been taken advantage of before, we wonder at times if there’s anybody left that we can trust with the things that we hold much more dear than mere dollars – our hopes, our dreams, our loves… our lives. And that uncertainty extends sometimes beyond our earthly relationships to our eternal ones. Can we truly trust God to be all that the Bible declares Him to be? Is He worthy of our all?

The way we worship reflects our answers to those questions. Some of us approach God the same way we approach life, giving just what is due and nothing more – the 15% tip, the 10% tithe, the 20 minutes of singing on a Sunday morning. Others of us find it difficult to give even that much, perhaps still reeling from wrongs done to us in the past, injuries we attribute to God or to the people who are supposed to represent Him. Yet there are others among us whose hearts have been touched by a story… the story of a Savior who loved us enough to suffer injustice on our behalf… silently… that our hurts might be healed and that Heaven could someday be our Home. These people are able to love with abandon and put all they possess on the table, spiritually speaking, willing to risk it all in a lifelong expression of gratitude for what they’ve received.

Worship is so much more than just the songs we sing on Sunday morning. It’s the way we live our lives all week, a mindset that seeks to please God in everything we do, from the thoughts we think, to the words we speak, the love we share, to the way we care for other people.

For eight hours that weekend I listened to world-renowned worship leaders speak on how to move God through music. Yet the lesson that stirred me most came from a teenager in a restaurant booth and was simply this… that when your worship extends past what comes out of your lips to even the size of the tip you leave on the table, it’s then that you’ve truly touched the heart of God and made Him smile.

“…But the time is coming – it has, in fact, come – when what you’re called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God…”
(John 4: 22-23 MSG)

Heart-WRENching Worship

My first act of worship on a recent Sunday morning was to take a cup of coffee out on my back deck and sit in the quiet and relative coolness of the early morning hour. Peace beyond measure surrounded me, and I basked in it as a nearby wren poured its heart out in song, over and over again. Its countless repetitions intrigued me to the point that I began timing its bursts of beauty, and soon realized that it was sounding at the rate of fifteen times per minute, or once every four seconds! At that rate surely it was filling its lungs only to exhale in song.

I laughed as I looked down at the design on the old t-shirt I had pulled on that morning.On a white background was a picture of a coffee cup surrounded by the words from Psalm 5:3, "Morning by morning, You hear my voice." Clearly the wren was illustrating what God desired from me that day.

In the many years that I've sat on my back deck, I've learned to identify various bird species by their characteristic birdcalls. But the wren attracts my attention like none other. While other birds may call, when the wren opens its beak there's an explosion of sound too big to possibly emanate from the little bird that releases it. The bird seems to pour out its joy of living into that one long burst of melody, and then repeats it again and again as if incessantly prompted by a heart of gratitude and love.

Oh that God would hear that from me on such a regular basis! Morning by morning, he hears my voice alright... but it's not always such a delight to listen to. Sometimes I squawk my complaints or cry over an injustice or simply call for help to arrive in a hurry. On other mornings my prayers are as silent as the quiet grunts of the nuthatch that scrambles up and down the tree trunks in search of a few seeds spilled from the feeders. And God does want us to come to Him with whatever is on our hearts each day. But how it must please Him to hear something other than a whine or a plea of some kind on occasion! What if my mornings were filled with fewer birdcalls and more bird song... if I worshipped more than I asked for a change?

Not coincidentally I happened to pull a Casting Crowns CD from the storage compartment in my car this week and smiled as the lyrics to Lifesong joined with these thoughts floating around in my head, about living life in such a way that our words and actions sing a song that pleases the Father. Although I don't get to watch much evening television, I recently caught an episode of "America's Got Talent" that featured two girls out of a family of four siblings, all of whom suffer from cystic fibrosis, an inherited chronic disease that among other things clogs the lungs with mucous and makes it hard to breathe, let alone sing. Yet that's what these two girls love to do. They know that even with recent medical advances the life expectancy for people with this disease is in the 30's , and yet they've vowed to use what time they have to inspire others to pursue their dreams despite the obstacles they face and to live life to the fullest as long as they possibly can. And so they sing. And their absolute joy in doing so combined with the simple beauty of their voices moved me to tears, the audience to its feet, and the judges to vote them on to the next round in the competition.

Coffee finished, I moved on with my morning that Sunday. I walked up the driveway to get the newspaper and heard the wren still singing away. I filled the birdfeeders accompanied by its song. I laughingly wondered to myself how that bird would have time to do all its budgie duties - catching bugs, building nests and raising its young. And suddenly I realized that singing its joy was its duty, and that it simply sang all day long as it lived out the life it's been given. Too often we think of "worship" as just the music portion of a church service. God doesn't. To Him the worship portion of our day never ends - our lives are singing something to Him as we pursue all of our daily activities.

The TV show title is right - we've all got talent of one type or another, because the Bible says that we've all been given giftings unique to our personalities, callings, and life situations. May we resolve to use them out of our love for God in such a way that makes a difference in the lives of others, moves the heart of the Judge, and sends us rejoicing into the next "Round"!

"Oh, bless our God, you peoples! And make the voice of His praise to be heard. "
(Psalm 66:8 NKJV)