Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. (Psalm 63:3, ESV)
Some days thankfulness is harder to declare than others. You wake up to a flooded kitchen; the kids are sick and the bills unpaid. Where is your deliverer? Where is the peace that passes all understanding? The shelter from the storm?
Giving your life to Christ and learning to walk with Him does not mean that life is going to go smoothly; in fact the opposite is true! Often when we surrender our hearts to God, the enemy doubles up his efforts to bring you down to join him in the pit. So how do we rise out and up? What is our lifeline?
Our lives need to be watered in the Word and grounded through prayer. This discipline isn’t a have to, it’s a get to. Love relationships are exciting! Think how many books and movies are written about a lonely person falling in love and the completion they find? Or the classic, love conquers all themes? We are suckers for sappy, feel good plots.
And yet, in our own reality we have the greatest lover of all time reaching out to us, calling us to come and sit with Him, to have our very being caressed by him and we cringe and pull away, choosing rather to focus our affections and attentions elsewhere. Anything else, any other relationship that pulls us away from our creator is false. They are counterfeits that offer empty promises of fulfillment.
His lovingkindness is better than life...better than life! Philippians says to live is Christ to die is gain. These two verses give light to the question on how to praise Him through the storms; it’s not how or why we should but rather how can we not? Life on this side of eternity disappoints and will someday come to an end. His love however does not fail and is eternal. We need to run and embrace the lover of our souls and cling to Him daily, hourly... He will flood our souls with gladness, heal all our hearts’ diseases and our mouths shall praise the One who has paid our ransom!
