By Daisy Vanderputt
It is soooo much easier to moan and complain rather than to praise.
This year I have been a travelling missionary for the organisation NET Ministries and the Lord has been undoing a lot of my doings in my heart. One of those is complaining and my lack of gratitude for the everyday things that are in my life. I find myself in an uncomfortable host home, i’m eating pizza again for the 8907th day in a row, someone on my team is tapping the window of the van obnoxiously or my prayer is STILL dry - come on Jesus, I’m doing work for you don’t you see... and most of the time get caught in a whirlwind of frustration that things aren’t comfortable or quite the way I’d like them to be.
One of the ways that we pray as a team is to do an hour of worship every day. At first it was incredible, it was all I wanted...finally I could get the same experience from worship that I had to wait months on end for at the next retreat coming up. As the year went on, in fact pretty quickly I realised that the Lord wanted a lot more for me and for all of us than just to ‘experience’ the high I was looking for in singing praise and worship songs. Yes, he loves to console us but worship is rather something that He is calling me to live out in every single part of my life at all times.
‘The feelings come and go, but God stays the same.’
I was told this at a worship seminar and it hit me hard. God doesn’t deserve to be praised when I feel like it but rather at all times, especially in the times where everything in me just wants to moan, complain and curse God for the things that aren’t going my way. We worship a lot of things in our daily lives, one of the big things being comfort and we as the church are being called out of that into something much much greater.
1 Corinthians 6:19 says:
‘Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,
whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.’
St Paul even tells us that we gotta do it! You are not your own, in other words - your life is not your own, so praise His name! But wait...catch this... in His infinite goodness he doesn’t just stop there, nope! He even designed our hearts in such a way that we can worship Him at all times. Our hearts were made to be poured out for others and for Christ and to be poured into by Christ.
My brothers and sisters, drop everything for even 5 minutes of your day to fix the gaze of your heart upon Him because you impact Him. You matter. Your humble offering of worship will bring an intimacy with Christ that you have never reached before and will make the difficulty in your life as sweet as honey. Bring your bible, bring your journal sit in your room and be a fool for him (1 Cor 4:10). Sing his name, praise with just the simple words that are on your heart right now. If you praise God through art (which I definitely do not…) do it! If you praise God through your ability to write beautiful poetic words like King David...DO IT! Ask yourself what gifts the Lord has given to you specifically to worship him with. I am not promising that this is going to be easy, because boy let me tell you that you are going to have to fight for this, but HE is worth it. He deserves your little but precious heart.
So to challenge and encourage you all - Look to him and be radiant. Give your whole heart to the King of Kings this Eastertide, worship the one who constantly pours Himself out for you on the cross and let your heart be transformed.
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