I was watching church this morning online and the worship team began to sing Great Are You Lord by Casting Crowns and it got me to thinking on the words…
“Cause it’s Your breath, in our lungs.
So, we pour out our praise, we pour out our praise.
It’s Your breath, in our lungs.
So, we pour out our praise to you only. Great are You Lord.”
The very own breath that we breathe isn’t ours. The bodies we live in belong to God. Our earthly lives are just a temporary layover until it’s our time to go home and live with God as He intended us to. Genesis 2:7 tells about the moment during the sixth day of creation when God created Adam from the dirt on the ground and He breathed life into Adam’s body. Life…ours to live because our creator couldn’t picture the world without us in it. Life…because His perfect creation wasn’t perfect without you and me. From the beginning, our very existence has been dependent upon God and His overwhelming love. How can we not use this borrowed breath to praise Him?
The book of Job is one of constant spiritual stretching. Over and over again the Lord pushed Job to trust Him and over and over again Job faced heartache and suffering. Job lost his home, his livelihood, and his family yet, he continued to praise God. Now I know life doesn’t always hand us a “praiseworthy” hand. Quite frankly, life happens, and it doesn’t always happen to be good. In Job 2:10 he says to his wife, “…Should we only accept the good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” Job chose to trust God and continued to praise Him through his grief and pain.
Job knew that God longs for a transparent relationship with us. He wants us to place the life that He gave us back into his capable hands. This has to be our choice and is never something that He will demand from us. Making the choice to surrender our lives to God and to trust Him is something only we can do. Another powerful song by Casting Crowns is called Love Moved First. In this song there is a line that says, “Your cross is the proof. Love made the first move.” God has placed himself as close to us as He possibly can but the final step that allows us to grasp His hand is ours to take. He will wait there…always within our reach…forever ready to be our shelter and our safe place.
When life happens with its varying highs and lows, God desires for us to choose to praise and trust Him. When you get a promotion at work that you’ve be busting your tail for…praise Him. And when your world is crumbling at your feet…praise Him. Through the tears and clenched fists and repeated “why’s” praise Him…trust Him. In those moments of heart stopping pain, when it feels like you can’t breathe, remember where your breath comes from. Your Abba, who loves you beyond measure breathed His life into you. He had His fair share of suffering and He knows that ache that comes with a shattered heart.
His breathe is in our lungs giving us life. Trust in Him and His amazing goodness and choose to praise Him. When life is good and when life is bad…praise Him. The more we step out in faith and give all we have back to Him, the more blessings we will find. Because even in our darkest moments when we can’t see our hands in front of our faces, He sees the blessings that awaits us in the light. He is the blessing and the light waiting to shine through us. He made that first move. It’s up to us to lift our hands to heaven and step into His love and praise Him. Great are You Lord…Great are You Lord!
“You give life. You are love. You bring light to the darkness.
You give hope. You restore. Every heart that is broken. Great are You Lord.”
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