“Exponential: Guarded Praise”
Remember growing up, closing your eyes and being anything you wanted to be? Your imagination ran wild! You could go anywhere you wanted any time and it all started when you left your current place! Following Jesus is a lot like that! Sometimes we have dreams and set out for one destination but end up in another…what we do when we get there makes all of the difference!
- PRAY
- This story starts out often as we do in our walk with Christ! It starts out with the best of intentions…but somewhere along the way the expectation of what we thought we would get to do gets derailed. For Paul & Silas it got so derailed that they ended up being stripped naked, beaten, flogged, thrown into the pit of the prison with raw sewage naked and left for sure for dead! They had everything possible thrown at them to not continue to preach the Gospel to all who would hear…but in the midst of their circumstance they started by praying! They could have given up, drown in their circumstance and lived out the “Why God?” but instead just started praying!
- Often this is where I call the big Timeout! I would be fighting God saying “You’ve called me to reach those for You…and I can’t possibly do it in here!” The problem has never been with God…it’s that I stopped listening! Yet, that’s where faith comes in! Even when they couldn’t see it they believed they were doing what God called them to…no prison, embarrassment or punishment would stop that! I’ve heard it explained that worry is practical Atheism…to declare God with your mouth but follow a different pattern in your thought! What A Gut Buster of Truth that is…my worry is preventing me from growing in my faith & having a deeper Relationship with my Creator!
- PRAISE
- Paul and Silas don’t just stop with Prayer…they continue with praise! And as their praise rang loud an earthquake shook the prison and set the captives free (sound familiar?). When that happened all but the jailer could praise and at his darkest moment he was about to end it all when the hope of the Gospel was shared & his entire household met Jesus and were eternally changed! The prophets of the Old Testament always sent the Praise Team in first!
- It’s in the midst of times I don’t want to praise that I should praise the MOST! Those around me stuck in prisons of life are waiting for something, a glimmer, a pinpoint of light to shine through to show them that there is hope found in Christ alone! I’ve heard it said “Praise is just giving God His breath back”…and what better way to spend time with the Father than to praise Him for all He’s done & ever will do!
Today is your day! It’s time to leave the old things behind in the prison & step into all that God made you to be! God has been calling you out of your circumstance for a long time…and maybe it’s as simple as seeing who God’s put around you to show them who He is! Will you trust Him enough to pray & praise that all you do today will make His name famous to the ends of the earth? Can you hear those chains falling? Trust in Jesus & watch Him do something immeasurably more than you can ask imagine in you & through you!
Take Away
What prisons are you currently stuck in right now in your life?
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Tyler West 