Week of Prayer & Fasting - Day 6 | Praise & Thanksgiving Pastor Matt Mason "About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them." - Acts 16:25 Today as we continue through our series in believing God for ________, we are talking about praise and thanksgiving. We are talking about worshiping while we wait. We know that we’re supposed to worship God in every circumstance. We know that our praise isn’t supposed to be determined by our emotions or what we’re going through because God is always worthy of our praise, but just because we know something to be true doesn’t make it always easy. It’s a lot easier to worship God and thank Him for what He has done in the past or what He is doing currently right now as we witness God’s goodness, but am I really expected to worship God when things aren’t going well? Before The Gathering, I was a worship leader for many years going back to leading worship in my youth group as a high schooler, leading worship at my parents’ church as a young adult and becoming a worship pastor throughout college and into adulthood. I’m guessing you can imagine that through high school, college, and young adulthood you can have quite the range of emotions. Highs and lows and everything in between. There are times when life is great and it’s a joy to get to worship and lead people into a time of worship. But not every week is a great week. Sometimes you have a week when you get in a car accident and you have to figure out your finances. Sometimes you deal with drama among friends. Sometimes you go through breakups or not loving working at Taco Bell (hard to believe, I know). And yet, every week, Sunday comes around and you have to be ready to get up there and lead people in worship and you’re struggling on the inside. It can cause you to feel fake. Why am I up here when my life feels off right now? How can I encourage people to sing and lift their hands when I feel discouraged? Talk about imposter syndrome, right? Thank goodness I never feel that way now when I preach (please read that sentence with the sarcasm it is intended to have). It took me a while to realize that when I worship, whether I’m off or on the stage, I’m not attempting to hide everything that is happening in my life or pretending like I have everything together and therefore I can worship God and lead others. Instead, I am choosing to worship God and trust Him despite the fact that life isn’t perfect. I can acknowledge I’m not in the best place or situation in my life and choose to worship anyway. This isn’t being fake. It’s choosing to have faith and worship anyway and believe that God is going to turn things around and that my life as it stands now is not a permanent situation. I’m worshipping because I choose to continue to believe God is going to move despite my current feelings or problems. When I think of people who didn’t have a reason to sing, I think about Paul and Silas in Acts 16. It’s a very casual story of two men heading to a prayer service and along the way they run into a girl who is demon-possessed and follows them around everywhere crying out that they are servants of the Most High God. This girl continues to yell for days following them around until Paul gets annoyed (you would be too) and casts the demon out of her. The owners of the servant girl get angry because they were making money on this situation and now the girl is no longer lucrative because Paul took her fortune telling abilities away. So, these men grab Paul and Silas and take them to city hall to accuse them of disturbing the peace of the city. So, Paul and Silas go from heading to a prayer service to getting beaten with many blows by rods, thrown in prison, and hung up in the stocks. What would you do in this situation? You did nothing wrong. You were headed to a prayer service for crying out loud! You were going to go pray to God, and you’re beaten up and thrown in prison? No way would I want to shout, “I raise a hallelujah!” or sing “Your goodness is running after...it’s running after me!” But what did Paul and Silas do? Acts 16:25 - About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them Paul and Silas weren’t ignoring the reality of the situation. They couldn’t hide the fact that things weren’t going well, but yet they praise anyway and the prisoners listened to their continued devotion to God. When we worship in difficult times and worship when we’re still waiting and believing God for something, it’s one of the great sacrifices that we can make and worship is a sacrifice. Think about a demonstration of your love to someone, you are willing to make sacrifices for someone that you love. Are you willing to sacrifice your time, energy, and passion to worship God when things are difficult? That’s what Paul and Silas did, and God honored their sacrifice because the next verse tells us that suddenly there was a great earthquake that caused the foundations of the prison to shake, and all doors were opened and all chains were broken. I want to challenge you today as you are believing God for ________ to take the time now to worship Him in the middle of the waiting, the hurt, and disappointment. I thought I would give you a song suggestion to listen to that talks about what happens when we wait on God and believe in Him. Hope this helps you wait and believe that He will renew your strength.Listen Here!