Praising God When You Feel Overwhelmed
We all go through moments in life when we feel overwhelmed. We can feel overwhelmed by our financial troubles, our health, our relationships, our jobs. The list goes on. Life is hard sometimes.
This week has been a low one for me. I’ve felt overwhelmed by guilt and shame. I felt guilty for struggling because Jesus is so wonderful and has done and is doing so much for me even though I don’t deserve it and I felt ashamed for allowing and entertaining old thoughts that God set me free from to enter back into my mind.
But over the past few days God has been reminding me that our relationship and journey with Him isn’t going to be all mountain top experiences. There are valleys and there are lows. But His promise is that even as we walk through the valleys, He is with us, protecting us (Psalm 23:4.)
We are going to struggle and we are going to feel overwhelmed. That is nothing to be ashamed of.
In fact, if you read the bible, you will see that even the strongest people in the faith struggled and felt overwhelmed. Moses, Jeremiah, Elijah, Paul- all incredible men of God that were overwhelmed on more than one occasion. The list would go on and on. Even Jesus became overwhelmed while on earth (Matthew 26:36-39.)
One of my favourite people in the bible and one of the most well known people in the bible became overwhelmed countless times in His life- David.
If you read through the Psalms, you see how many times David was totally overwhelmed by situations in His life. But what stands out to me the most is that yes, David starts out writing about how much He is struggling and how much trouble He is in, but before the Psalm finishes, He is praising God!
He could start out saying, ‘God where are you? I am in despair and in pain.’ But He always turns around saying, ‘God you are good and I praise your name.’
So how could David go from being so overwhelmed by His circumstances, to rejoicing and praising God? Easy. He took his eyes off his circumstance and put them on God. He praised and worshiped God even through the darkest and most helpless times of His life.
I know from experience that when we feel overwhelmed, praising God is the last thing you feel like doing. It’s so easy to stay in your ‘woe is me’ attitude, but where does that get you? No where. Trust me, I’ve been there so many times. The only thing that has brought me through those times was praising Him.
Praise Him even when you don’t feel like it. He is worthy of our praise. He never falls off His thrown, so never stop praising Him.
There’s something so powerful and beautiful about lifting up His name and shouting His praise when you feel like it’s the last thing you want to do.
The praise you give Him when it’s difficult means more to Him than the praise you give when it’s easy to give it.
He always loves the praise you give Him, but giving it when it’s hard to give, shows your devotion to Him and He is so in love with that. He can do so much with that.
Eyes off circumstances. Eyes on Christ.
