Biblical Boundaries Part 6: Praise for Him and for You
You have been through a great deal of soul searching in the last six weeks. It is very difficult to become aware that you are not perfect. Life hinges on being the best at everything. You strive to be the best you can but you are designed to be the best God wants you to be not what you or others want you to be. Discovering or becoming aware of what needs to change is part of learning the perfection God has created you to be. His willingness to teach you how to be the perfect person He created is why you will praise Him this week. You will praise yourselves this week as well for the awareness you have developed. It will be painful but very important toward getting into the will of God, your main goal.
Once you become aware of your sin you worked hard to find out what exactly sets you off, why you do what you do. This information is praise worthy because once you know this you can avoid it or at least learn how to avoid it. The one thing you need to know is the devil will use this constantly to get you to do his bidding instead of the Lords. If you know this you can fight it better. Praise God for revealing this to you and praise yourself every time you recognize it to fight it.
To fight what sets you off is called intervention. Jesus intervenes by using His Word to make you strong. He created the Bible to use as an intervention against Satan. I call the Bible the “Life Skills Encyclopedia” and you would do well to use it as such. You will never know God is speaking until you begin reading and memorizing Scripture. This is how He intervenes and it is the strength of your intervention. Strength comes from the Lord to do what the Lord wants done. No one can do His will without His strength because what He wants done is beyond what we can do on our own. Praise Him for stretching all of us.
When you recognize His will is beyond your own strength you gain wisdom from listening to Him. He leads you through mazes because He wants you to see, smell, taste, touch and hear Him. This can only happen at dead ends and twists because the rest of the way you are moving too fast. Praise Him for the dead ends and the twists because they make you who you are today. Praise Him for the twists because they have put you in the direction you are in today. Praise yourself for the banished bruises, the concealed cuts and the healed heart because you have endured until the end and will endure until the next end because He is faithful to complete His work in you (Philippians 1:6; Ephesians 2:10).
Praise week is about recognizing what God has done in your life and praising Him for it. It is also about giving yourself credit for enduring. Your heart is broken but that is part of the plan. You can and will endure. You have no friends but that too is part of the plan. Yet you still endure with Jesus. You can and will endure. You have lost your spouse, your house, your money, your family, your car, your dignity, your happiness, etc. Yet you still endure with Jesus. You can and will endure. You only have two people to thank for your endurance – Jesus and yourself. The One who knows you is the One who will sustain you during every day you make the choice to do His bidding. You can and will endure. Through all the pain, through all the heart ache, through all the joy, through all the character development, through all the work, through all the success and failures He will be with you. You can and will endure. He is why we live. He is why we breath. He is why we exist. He is worthy of all our praise. The choice you make to continue to endure also is worthy of your praise. Look at yourself in the mirror today and give God the glory because you look just like Him. Praise You Jesus!
You were created in the image of God to go through the maze of life with Him so you can be the perfect you when you come out the other side. If you need any help at all with The White Picket Fence Instruction join the Facebook group and see how others are coping with the learning.
