Praise is the Key!

Are you experiencing some trials or great difficulties in your life – in your marriage, on your job, with your children, in paying your bills, your health? Are you discouraged? Of course, all of us are experiencing some kind of trouble, for there are only three classes of people:

Those in trouble
Those just out of trouble
and those about to get in trouble

Still, if you are truly a child of God, you ought to praise the Lord for:

Experience of the New Birth
Expectation of Heaven

And you can even thank God for your troubles, for He has sent them or permitted them because you need them in order to become what God redeemed you to be. Then you can say with Job, “But God knows the steps I take; when He has tested me I shall come forth like gold (Job 23:10). And take comfort in the fact that God will limit your troubles. If you will cooperate with him, your trials will not be long. If you rebel, He may keep you in the furnace for a long time. “ But may] the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you” (1 Peter 5:10).
“When God permits His children to go through the furnace, He keeps His eye on the clock and His hand on the thermostat. If we rebel He may have to reset the clock; but if we submit He will not permit us to suffer one minute too long. The important thing is that we learn the lesson He wants to teach us and that we bring glory to Him alone.”

David, the man after God’s own heart, expressed the attitude every child of God should have in dark and difficult days. He wrote, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for YOU are with me…Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the House of the Lord (the home of God) forever.” (Psalm 23:4,6).

When HA Ironside was pastor of the Moody Memorial Church in Chicago, one of his members, a frightened little lady, came to him saying, “Pastor, wherever I go two men follow me. When I get on the streetcar, open the door of my apartment, etc. these two men follow.” Brother Ironside replied, “Why haven’t you called the police?” To which she replied, “I have and they won’t do anything.” By this time the pastor saw that the lady was mentally unbalanced and said to her, “Dear, don’t you realize these are “Goodness and Mercy.” She replied, “You mean to tell me that those two guys are ‘Goodness and Mercy?’” He said, “Have you not read in Psalm 23 these words, “Surely Goodness and Mercy shall follow me all the days of my life?” The dear lady began to shout and praise the Lord, saying, “If these two me who are following me, I will never fear any thing again but spend the rest of my life just praising the Lord.” Amen and Amen.