Blessed Be Your Name: When I'm Found In The Desert Place Series

THE POINT: When God gives and when God takes away, our only right response is praise!

ME

Last week we took some time and we practiced praise. Let me hear you again today… Give me a sample of what praise sounds like!

Now, as we saw last week. Praise is more than just making noise, even if it is noise for Jesus. We also spent some time in the practice of praising him for some very specific things in our lives. He is worthy of praise, of worship, of thanks…

I hope that his week you’ve been practicing praise… I hope you’ve been looking for reasons to praise him (you shouldn’t have to look too hard) and that you’ve been finding or creating opportunities to praise him out loud to people.

WE

Last week we looked at praising him in the land that is plentiful. Too often, when the blessing fall on us we take the blessing and. We don’t stop to offer him the praise that he deserves! We fail to give him his due.

This week, we’re looking at our other tendency. The tendency we have to NOT PRAISE him in the desert place.

Open your Bibles to the book of Job, chapter 1.

If you don’t have a Bible, raise your hand and our ushers will make sure you have one so you can follow along.

[ushers hand out bibles to those who need them]

Here’s a fact that you probably are already aware of, but in case you aren’t let me enlighten you…

LIFE IS PAIN! ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE IS SELLING SOMETHING!

It’s a fact that you are going to face major pain and tragedy at some point in life. If you haven’t already you will.

I’m not being negative, I’m just being honest. Life is wrought with pain and we will all experience it at some point. The question isn’t “will I have pain?” The question is “when the pain comes, will I still praise Jesus?”

Will you be able to say…

Blessed be Your name when I’m found in the desert place

Though I walk through the wilderness, blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out I’ll turn back to praise

When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say

Here’s the point… the ONE THING… it’s the same as last week’s.

When God gives and when God takes away, our only right response is praise!

GOD

Look at the book of Job with me…

Job is a righteous guy. Of all the people on the earth, he seems to be one that God is especially pleased withy.

One day Satan approaches God and says…”Hey God, the people of earth are kind of worthless. None of them even love you.”

And God says…”Check out Job. He’s righteous and he loves and obeys me.”

To which Satan replies, “That’s only because you bless him. If his blessings were taken from him, he would curse you.”

So …poor Job… God says to Satan, “Give it your best shot. Take it all and watch what Job does.”

And so, in a quick succession of tragedies Job loses everything.

… his wealth

… his reputation

… his children

And this is Job’s response.

At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;

May the name of the Lord be praised.”

Job 1:20-21(NIV)

Job got it. He realized that EVERY THING HE HAD EVER RECEIVED HAD COME FROM GOD…

His wealth

His reputation

His health

His family

His VERY LIFE

All he had was given to him by God. All were gifts. All belonged to God in the first place. God had given and God had taken away and the only right response was to praise God because it was all from him in the first place. Job understood that when God gives and when God takes away, our only right response is praise!

He is ALWAYS GOOD – even if it doesn’t feel like it – and so regardless of whether he is giving or is taking away our only right response is to praise him.

Why do we have trouble PRAISING JESUS when life is difficult?

We struggle with this because we tend to get caught up in believing that WE have earned what we have. We get caught up in believing that we DESERVE what we have and we forget that it has all come from God, it all belongs to God and it is His to do with as he pleases.

1. We think what we have is OURS.

We are possessive… Words like “Me” “My” and “Mine” give us away.