Love Him … in the in-Between Time When You Feel the Pressure Coming. Job 19:25-27.

Posted bySteven WalesPosted inPraise, Worship While Suffering!, You Praise God Best When Life is at its WorstTags:, , ,

The title is a line from an excellent song from 1974: “All Day Song (Love Him in the Morning)”
from the album Still Life, by John Fischer (a credited founder of “Jesus Music”). The image is Mr. Fischer in more recent years. https://johnfischer.bandcamp.com/track/all-day-song-love-him-in-the-morning

Have you ever prayed or spent time praising God or worshipping Him, yet doubted your own motives?

Do you ever hear the voice of the skeptic in your head saying something like what the devil said about Job: It’s easy to worship God right now—everything in your life is going so well! (see Job 1:9-11).

I have had such thoughts. I ignore them easily enough—but when I suffer, I remember them, and I know that praising God while suffering is the best praise of all—because I do not have mixed motives. I am not praising God because my life is great, or because I think God will instantly fix things if only I praise him. Instead, I am praising God even though I am deeply upset by one situation or another. Worshipping while suffering has been some of the sweetest, most special times of worship I have had.

Job worshipped while suffering also. After losing his health, wealth, and his ten children, Job praised God. Oh, he complained too, bitterly and deeply. But then he stopped and forced himself to praise God, in what is surely one of the greatest statements of praise (not to mention mature faith) in the Bible:

“I know that my redeemer lives! And that in the end, he will stand upon the earth. And, after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see him with my own eyes—I and not another. How my heart yearns within me” Job 19:25-27.

Give us the faith of Job, to see your truth and talk about it and praise you for it, no matter how difficult our circumstances. Teach us to praise you in all things and to rejoice always, 1 Thessalonians 5:16.

Published by Steven Wales

Dad's Daily Devotional began as text messages to my family. I wanted my teenagers to know their father was reading the Bible. But they were at school by then. Initially, I sent them a favorite verse or an insight based on what I read each day. That grew into drafting a devotional readng which I would send them via text. I work as an attorney and an adjunct professor, and recently wrote a book called HOW TO MAKE A'S.

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