Read the transcript from today's video devotional.
For 2000 years now, Christians have been praising God. We get together every Sunday and we sing songs to God and to one another that praise God. And we do that no matter what. No matter what is going on in our life, we always have joy. We always praise God. At least we're supposed to.
Paul told the Philippians that they were to rejoice always, and then he repeated himself again. "I will say rejoice." And the question I have is how? How in this world, and all the trouble and all the difficulty and all the suffering, how can I have joy and praise God no matter what?
The Answer: Confident Hearts in God
And there's an answer right here in our verse. The psalmist says, "My heart is confident in you, O God. My heart is confident. Therefore, no wonder I can sing your praises." So here's the idea. If your confidence—and let me use another word—if your trust, if your faith, if your security, if your confidence is in God, then you can praise God no matter what. If at the core of who you are is this trust and reliance on God, then it's no wonder I can sing the praises of God.
Trusting God Through The Fire
I thought of this tree that I read a story about a few years back in California. There's a massive sequoia that falls down and they cut the tree in half, and they're looking at all the rings of the tree, and it's amazing what they can see. They figured that this tree was about 2000 years old, and then they could look and tell that it had survived about 70 forest fires. And yet the core of that tree was unchanged, despite every disaster.
Friends, we can withstand any storm and any fire if our trust is in God.
Where Is Your Trust?
So is your trust in God or is it in something else? Is it in your appearance or your accomplishments? The success of your life, your skills, your abilities? Maybe it's your education. No. Your eternal standing before God, your daily standing before God. The basis of it is not who you are or what you've done or not done. The basis is who Jesus is and what He has done.
And so, at a very basic level, to be a Christian, to be a Christian is to put confidence in God, to put confidence in Christ and in Christ alone. Then and only then are we equipped to praise God no matter what.
