I Never Lost My Praise

20 Then Job arose, tore his robe, and shaved his head; and he fell to the ground and worshipped.

21 And he said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed (or Praise) be the name of the Lord.”

22 In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong.

INTRODUCTION

Praise is the highest work carried out by God’s children, God gives us so much and praise is the one thing that we can give Him. We need to realize that God’s throne is the highest point in the entire universe, and so the praises that we lift to Him actually reaches up to the highest point possible—the throne of God. How important is praise? Just ask King David, in the Psalms he says that he prayed to God three times a day, but also in the Psalms he said that he praised God seven times a day. He praised God twiced as much as he prayed to God, then he decided seven times a day was not enough, so he declared:“I will praise the Lord for as long as I live. I will sing praises to my God as long as breath fills my lungs and blood flows through my veins, I may have lost a lot of things, but I never lost my praise. Did you know that there is only one qualification to be a Praiser (if that's a word)? And that is that you have breath. The Bible say's,....“Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord."

We should not only pray to God but also all the more learn to praise God, and one thing for sure—we need to learn how to praise Him when life has becomes a struggle, when we are afflicted by one thing after the other, that's called "praising Him in the pit" because a pit is something that you can't get out of, you're going to need some help. And if you're like me, I know that all my help come's from the Lord. Here’s a fact that you probably are already aware of, but in case you aren’t let me give you a personal newsbreak… life is painful! You can easily go from the palace to the pit in a moment's notice. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something to you that you really cannot afford to buy! Life is a struggle, not just a struggle but let me add it is a daily struggle. I've gotten to the point that I have to cut off my TV set because of so much horrible news reports one after the other. Countries being invaded, politicians spreading mess, and racist activities ending with unnecessary deaths primarily of people of color. It seems like we're losing instead of winning sometimes.

I believe that all of us, especially those of us that have reached the age of adulthood have lost some things. Some of us (especially nowadays) have lost homes, cars, money & relationships. We’ve not only lost some things, we’ve lost some people through death, divorce, division, distance, decision to discontinue, or desertion we’ve lost some people too haven’t we? We’ve lost some serious love connections like our fathers, our mothers, a wife or a husband, a child, a sister or a brother—a very close relative or friend, through the years we’ve lost them one by one. If we were to take a moment this morning and conduct a brief inventory of our lives I know that we would come to the conclusion that we have experienced possibly some great lost in our lives.

The lost of anything can be painful, overwhelming, and overbearing. Losing something or someone has caused many people to go into what is known as clinical depression. Losing something or someone has even caused some of us to question God. It has made us wonder, does He really care? There’s somebody here this morning that has lost something, maybe a job that you’ve worked on for many years—you’ve gotten so used to that big paycheck every other Friday. And now you have to settle for that measly unemployment check from the state. We’ve lost some things, we lost some people, some possessions, some positions, and some of us have lost our pride. Used to be a time when the only thing you downsized was soda and an order fries.

But now you have downsize everything the car, the house or apartment you live, the clothes you wear, the food you eat almost everything has to be down-sized because you lost some things. It’s not because you’ve anything wrong, it’s just that life can throw a curve at us sometimes. But you ought be able this morning while you’re sitting here in God’s house to say that I may have lost some people, some possessions, a position, or a privilege, but through it all—I never lost my praise! Some of the things just in the last year, other people going through the same thing has lost their mind and some even tried to take their own lives—but you’re here this morning with less than what you used to have, but you still have your praise!