Sacrifice of Praise

This post is dedicated to a dear friend, whose praise to God will be uttered through deep pain tonight. May you cling to Jesus, and in His abundant grace and mercy, find the healing for which your soul aches.

Throughout my life, whenever I faced a trial, my mom would quote Hebrews 13:15 to me. It reads, “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise....” While she lavished her love and compassion on me, identifying with my pain, she would not allow me to wallow in self-pity for too long. Though I always expected it, I did not always enjoy hearing her gentle rebuke from Scripture. But she was always right, and those words renewed life in my weary soul. Real, genuine praise always requires a sacrifice. Praise is God’s antidote to the pain.

As the years have passed, I have learned detrimental mechanisms to cope with any painful situations that arise. These usually involve society’s distractions. When I need to drown out my own sorrow, I turn to noise. If praise is God’s antidote to pain, then noise is society’s tranquilizer. Give me an injection with the serum of comedy or drama on television, music on an iPod, products in the shopping mall, mindless surfing on the Internet, the newest application on Facebook, worlds of escape in a book, excessive exercise regiments at the gym, superficial conversations over dinner with friends, work that “must get done” before tomorrow…and the list continues. Give me anything. Anything but Jesus.

We turn to noise because it is temporarily effective at drowning out our sorrow. But then the sedative wears off and we the feel the pain once again in full force. Not knowing where to turn, we repeat this vicious cycle, desperately longing for healing and release the second time around. But once again we are left feeling empty and alone, grasping for anything that offers us a glimmer of hope.

In His beautiful, divine, mysterious plan, God has designed everything in this life other than Himself to cause our hearts to ache for something Deeper and Higher and Greater than anything this world has to offer. We can eat of the world, but we cannot savor its flavor for very long. It is distasteful and dissatisfying. The more we eat of it, the more our hunger grows because it was never intended to nourish our spirits or nurture our souls.

There is only One who can satisfy, and His name is Jesus Christ. Right when our souls cry, “Give me anything but Jesus,” we need to run all the more quickly to Him. We must continually offer praise to Him, and it is precisely the sacrifice that makes our praise so pleasing to His ears and penetrating to our inner beings.

Larnelle Harris penned the following song lyrics,

When praise demands a sacrifice

I’ll worship even then

Surrendering the dearest things in life

And if devotion costs me all

He’ll find me faithful to His call

When praise demands a sacrifice

Through God’s enabling power, we must make a conscious decision to be faithful to His call, surrendering all in life that we hold dear, because we clearly perceive that Christ is supremely more beautiful and infinitely more worthy than anything that this life has to offer. We must not be afraid to dwell in the midst of our pain, stare it in the face, and at the top of our lungs scream that God is good at all times regardless of our circumstances! It is only here—in the place of paradox, dwelling in our pain while clinging to the goodness of God—that our hearts will find the rest, contentment, hope, assurance, and peace that Christ has intended for us.