always

"I just got this new job and a new kitten and three pairs of shoes and a haircut! Praise God!"

Okay, so this might be a bit of an exaggeration, but way too often I see a Facebook status or a tweet about how something is going so great in a person's life and thus- they must praise God. Now, it is not even close to being unbiblical to praise God for blessings, but basing your praise for God solely on these things can quickly become a slippery slope. Our relationship with God slowly turns into a relationship of self-entitlement in which we only love God when we see material blessing placed in our laps. This then results in seasons of life in which we resent God for not being a vending machine of blessings and spitting out precisely the ones we want. Rather: our love, our hope, our VERY BEING, in fact, should be based on Christ and Christ alone.

Those seasons of resentment should turn into seasons of praise because no longer are we waiting for the thing that we want to show up because we now realize that the thing our souls truly desire has been there all along.

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice." Philippians 4:4 

We can rejoice ALWAYS because we are not rejoicing in fleeting, perishable things of this world, but rather in the permanent, infinite creator behind it all. A creator, who even though we deserve death, has given us life. 



"God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." - C.S. Lewis