GOD INHABITS OUR PRAISES

In Psalm 22:3, the Bible says, “God inhabits the praises of Israel.”  The word “inhabit” means “to sit down.”  Let me illustrate this:

When you and I go to God and we say, “Lord, I can’t be the type of preacher you want me to be,” or, “I can’t be the type of husband that I ought to be,” or “I can’t be the type of father or grandfather I need to be,” so “LORD, I need you.”  When we begin to recognize and praise God, He comes and “sits down” with us.

I think about Paul and Silas in Acts 16:25, with their hands and feet shackled in a cold, miserable Roman jail cell, yet the Bible says “About the midnight hour,”  Paul and Silas began praying and singing praises to God.

I imagine their prayer went something like this:  “Lord, we have done everything you have asked us to do.  We have been faithful to what you have called us.  Lord, although we don’t understand everything that’s happening to us, we do know ‘that all things work together for the good of them that love God, to them that are the called according to Your purpose.’  And Father, though there is sorrow in this prison cell tonight, we know that “Joy cometh in the morning.”

Maybe Silas began singing a line of “I’d rather be an ole time Christian than anything I know.”  Or Paul could have kicked in with singing “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.  I once was lost, but now I’m found.  Was blind, but now I see.”

And as they prayed and began praising God, the earth began to quake, the walls began to shake, and the chains that bound them fell to the ground and the prison doors swung open.  The Roman guard woke up startled and thought all the prisoners had fled, so he was ready to take his own life.  What he didn’t realize is that the prisoners weren’t trying to break out, God was trying to break-in!  Paul yelled out to let him know they were all there.  That left that Roman soldier with only one question to ask, “What must I do to be saved?”

I pray today, that no matter what you are going through, that somehow you will find the grace and strength to pray and praise God.  I promise when you do, God will “sit down” with you!