Tuesday; November 10

The other day, as I was preparing for a Bible Class I came across an interesting verse. In describing his commitment to God, King David writes, “I will give You thanks with all my heart; I will sing Your praises before the gods.” (Psalm 138:1). Now, if you are at all familiar with David and the Psalms, this statement should not surprise you; but what stood out to me was his willingness to praise God to the gods. They (the false and non-existent gods of the heathen nations) could neither understand nor appreciate David’s praise, so why bother? I mean, come on, even if they had the capacity to see David glorify God, they wouldn’t get it, so why waste the effort? Then it dawned on me – David’s point is that he was going to praise God wherever he went, whether people listened to him or not. David’s concern wasn’t whether he convinced others to change their ways (even though he hoped they would – see Psalm 138:4), but no matter what, he was going to do what he was supposed to do?
Do we spend too much time evaluating the success of our praise? Are we too sensitive about whether people are responding to our teaching and our evangelistic outreach? Folks, our job is not to impress people, our responsibility is to go into the world and let them know who we serve. Sure, it is nice when we assist in making disciples of God, but the only thing we can control is what we are doing – and that should be proclaiming the blessings we have received from God! Others will have to stand in judgment of their acceptance; so our responsibility is to plant the seed as we go.
Does the world know what we believe and who we serve? If so, how they respond is up to them.

Think About It!

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