Restore to me
the joy of Your salvation, And uphold me by Your generous
Spirit. Psalm 51:12
With my hands
lifted up and my mouth full of praise, with a heart of thanks giving I bless
thee O’Lord! When we start
the day with praise songs, worshiping the Lord God we cannot help but get off
on the right foot.
Some days just do not go the
way we plan. We get up late or we realize the list of things on our docket is
way too long for us to achieve in one day; and it overwhelms us to the point of
a headache. Just when we think we can handle things ourselves and not bother
the Lord with the little things in life we realize that all those little things
pile up and the pack on our back is way to heavy; its time to unload again in
the presence of the Lord.
Oh mighty God we love you so
much and we hate to dump all our troubles on You again but you said come unto
me all who are heavy laden, we ask that you give us that spiritual rest that
only you can give us in the midst of our work day.
We take so many things into
our hands and try to do the work we think is ours to do, but sometimes we are
holding on to things that we should be dropping, and letting go of and other
times we are grabbing back what we let go of. They are heavy hands and a heavy heart
that we walk around with instead of lifting up praises and receiving the joy of
His salvation.
Some days we do not know
what to do to receive God’s joy. We stick our hands in our pockets and continue
doing what we think needs to be done, stuffing down inside the things that are
wearing us thin when we should be lifting up our hands to our God.
Do you know how many times
we are told to lift up our hands in the Word?
A lot!
We are told to lift them up and bless the Lord.
We are told to stretch out our hands to pray; yes it actually says that!
We are told to lay our hands on people to pray
that they may be healed.
Ananias did this even though he was afraid of the
man whom he was told by God via the Holy Spirit to pray for, he did it anyway.
And
Ananias went his way and entered the house; and laying his hands on him he said, “Brother Saul, the
Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you came, has sent me that you
may receive your
sight
and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Acts 9: 17
Our
hands are given to us for training to war, for showing love, for working on so
many things and yet they are also given to us to make a joyful noise! Sometimes
the joyful noise is not heard for the overwhelming pressures of life. Shake it
off! Shake off your hands as if you are shaking off the things that confine
you! (Ephesians 4:20)
Oh, clap your hands, all you peoples! Shout to God with the voice of
triumph!
For the Lord Most High is awesome; He is a great King over all the earth. He will subdue the peoples under us, and the nations under our feet. Psalm 47:1-3
For the Lord Most High is awesome; He is a great King over all the earth. He will subdue the peoples under us, and the nations under our feet. Psalm 47:1-3
When we clap our hands, or lift them up in praise
or I prayer we will find joy filling our hearts. How do I know this? Because
when we lift our hands up to bless Him the blessing will flow down on us as
well.
When we clap our hands shouting with a voice of triumph we rejoice and get excited for the Lord; and in our doing this He takes care of the problems we are trying to deal with but know we should give them to Him. We need to lift the problems up to Him, or lay them at His feet and realize that we cannot do it all ourselves. That is why He gave us the Holy Spirit in the first place! To comfort us and encourage us and help us get things He wants us to do done and let go of the rest.
So if we are extending ourselves to everyone else
are we giving God the praise we need to be giving Him?
If we remember the message a couple weeks back
when I mentioned the drowning victim and the one trying to save him? If we do
not push the problem away to get perspective and call for help we will never be
able to do just that; ask for help from the Lord! Push it away don’t stuff it
inside. Shake off the things that bind us or hold us down in the water of life
and then gain perspective before they glom onto us again. Clap our hands,
worship the Lord and give Him praise! When we put our trust and our hope in Him
and praise Him we will find the peace, hope and strength we need! When we
worship and praise Him we find strength to move mountains, and yet we won’t
have to if we just give it up to Him.
Dear heavenly Father, take it all! Take all our
sorrow, worry, pain, strain, problems that people throw at us that have nothing
to do with our responsibilities; take it all and set us free today to worship
you, in Jesus name, amen.
Suggested Reading; Ephesians 4:1-32, Colossians
3:1-25, Romans 12:1-21 and Psalm 47:1-9