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“Your unfailing love is better to me than life itself; how I praise You!” Psalm 63:3

There are few things in life that are more irritating than a spoiled brat. We hate hearing that whining tone from our kids. So, why do we use the same tone with God? He gives us so much. How grateful are we? Every time something comes along that we don’t particularly care for, we murmur and complain. “Why me?” we ask. We develop negative attitudes and wonder why we haven’t heard from God lately.

We should be grateful for anything we get. We were the ones who broke the contract. We are the ones who daily give Him grief. We are the bad apples, the renegades, the prodigals. If we receive anything from Him, it’s a mercy. But we accept all the good things as a matter of course and then squeal when anything the least bit difficult comes our way.

Read through the Psalms, a book entirely devoted to prayer. Count out the number of verses in its chapters. Then as you’re reading, keep track of how many are devoted to requests and how many are dedicated to praise or gratitude. You will find that it is almost equal. How large a share does praise have in your personal devotions? How much time do you spend simply worshipping Him? Spending time on your knees in prayer is not necessarily time spent in worship if it is spent asking, asking and asking. Worship involves meditation on His attributes, His character and characteristics. It involves submitting yourself to His will and acknowledging that His ways are best.

Spend some time in prayer with a hymnbook in front of you. Pray through the ones that are filled with praise and adoration. Read poetry to God. Look through a coffee table book devoted to nature and share your impressions and gratitude for creation with Him. Devote yourself to thankfulness, for ingratitude is the death of prayer.

If you are given difficult circumstances, don’t try to get out of them or wonder what you did wrong. Instead, stop and consider that maybe God thinks you’re strong enough to handle it. It’s actually a compliment. Maybe He thinks you’re ready to step up to a higher difficulty level.

Think of life as a video game. One of the characteristics of a good video game is that it gradually becomes more difficult as your skills improve. Whenever you get to that next level of difficulty, don’t whine and complain and cry “Why me?”. Try to rise to the challenge and glory in the idea that you were considered mature enough to get to this level. Periodically, just as in the video games, you get these big mean “bosses” that are so much harder and you sometimes despair of beating them. But you can rest assured that there is always a solution. How do I know that? Because that’s the nature of the game and the Programmer designed it that way.

"'Christ in You...'" from Dale Krebbs

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