Some days I just don’t feel like praising God…

When I woke up yesterday morning I said “I just want to go back to bed.” I just did not feel like going to work. I was tired, my body hurt, and mentally I just was shot. However, I got up got ready and left the house to go to work. In the car I thought to myself, “I really don’t want to listen to my devotional this morning. I just don’t feel like it.” So I turned the radio on and the song “Hard Fought Hallelujah” by Brandon Lake came on. Now if you haven’t heard this song I encourage you to go listen to it. The songs talks about how sometime we don’t feel like praising God and it has to be “hard fought.” One of my favorite lyrics in the song is “I will keep on singing, until my soul catches up with my song.” This slapped me in the face and I had to stop the music and ask God to forgive me. He reminded me that he had called me to my job so that others could see Him in me. He reminded me that, that’s how I am giving him a “hard fought hallelujah” by doing what he has called me to do.

I’d be willing to bet that there are times when you don’t feel like praising God. When you just don’t have the mental or physical strength. We can get “religious” all we want and say “I never don’t want to praise God” or we can get honest with ourselves and God and admit that there are times when we just don’t feel like it. I’ll never forget what a pastor said one time. He said “our feelings are not fact, but God is.” All God wants is our hallelujah, whatever that may look like. Even if it is just simply whispering “thank you God.” It is choosing to give God the praise even when we don’t feel like. It’s choosing to give him a “hard fought hallelujah.”

“Lord, open my lips, So that my mouth may declare Your praise.”

Psalm 51:15