I Want To Praise You Like I Should

Just around 7 years ago, I was having one of the worst years of my life.

10 months previous, things were going fine. I'd been married just over a year, Rachel was beginning graduate school, and I was working for my alma mater.

Now I was out of work, we were barely paying the rent let alone keeping Rachel in grad school, and it was starting to look like my marriage might be falling apart before it even really got started.

People have certainly found themselves in worse circumstances, but my hopelessness and depression were overwhelming me. On top of that (because of that?) I was feeling as far from God as I possibly ever had. I looked around and couldn't see anything to be thankful for.

Willie Nelson has a song called "Too Sick To Pray", and, that year, his sentiments were my own.

Then one day changed everything. My circumstances didn't change, but everything else did. I woke up, spent the morning applying for jobs, came back to the apartment for lunch, and fell on the couch in a funk.

But that day the Holy Spirit started working on me. It started as a sort of Job-like tirade, I stood up in the middle of my living room and began to challenge God, to question Him, and then to shout at Him. I don't know if I literally shook my fist, but that would certainly have captured the essence of the experience.

And then, in the midst of it, I began to realize just who it was I was shouting at. Someone much bigger and better than I could ever be. I began to realize that a posture of penitence might be more appropriate than one of defiance.

Almost against my will, my legs began to give out and I was face down on the floor. And it was there that I started to speak these words:

Oh God, you are my God
And I will ever praise you
Oh God, you are my God
And I will ever praise you
I will seek you in the morning
And I will learn to walk in your ways
And step by step you'll lead me
And I will follow you all of my days

I kept repeating this chorus. What began as an angry and defiant shout turned into singing and then into sobbing.

And I learned something that day. That praise and thanksgiving are not the same. They are certainly connected, but not the same. Thanksgiving is what it sounds like, giving thanks for the things in your life that you are thankful for.

Praise is different. It is an acknowledgment of God in spite of circumstance. That God is God and God is good. That I will praise God even when I can't think of anything to thank Him for. That the time that I most need to praise is when I'm too sick to pray.

That day was a turnaround for me, not just for that day or that year, but for my life as a whole. I began to place my life in His hands in an entirely different way. I began to make a regular practice of adopting the posture of praise regardless of circumstance. Because, regardless of the circumstances, God is God and God is good.