Tuesday Tidbit: Praise and Thanksgiving

Write your memoir to carry out these verses: 

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!

His faithful love endures forever.

Who can list all the great things He has done?

Who can ever praise Him half enough?

Psalm 106:1-2

Your stories: An act of worship

Have you read 1 Chronicles 16 lately? If not, take a few minutes to read it below—you’ll be glad you did!

Notice how you can almost hear trumpets sounding and bells ringing and angels singing.

In this chapter, David gave Asaph and his fellow Levites a song of thanksgiving to God. He said:

Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name;

make known…what he has done.

Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts….

Remember the wonders he has done….

Declare his glory...his marvelous deeds….

For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise….

Splendor and majesty are before him;

strength and joy in his dwelling place.

Ascribe to the Lord...the glory due his name.

Bring an offering before him;

worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness....

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;

his love endures forever.

                                                                          

And when David finished, “Then all the people shouted ‘Amen’ and ‘Praise the Lord.’” What a worship service! I wish I could have stood among that congregation.

And as if that’s not enough—what’s even more exciting

is that we are doing the same things in our memoirs! 

In our stories,

we are telling others the wonders God has done

and his marvelous deeds on our behalf.

In our memoir stories, we are declaring his glory.

In the process, we are “singing” praise to him,

“Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise!”

One sentence grabbed hold of my heart: “Bring an offering before him; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.”

I encourage you to lift up to God (1) your process of writing and (2) your finished stories—lift them up to God as your offering to him.

And hand your stories to your readers as an offering to the Lord, too. Do it as an act of worshiping him in the splendor of his holiness. What a privilege we have to honor God in this way.

And we, the writers, together with our readers, 

shout, Amen! And Praise the Lord!

Beauty from your ashes

All this pain

I wonder if I’ll even find my way

I wonder if my life could really change at all

All this earth

Could all that is lost ever be found.…

(from the song “Beautiful Things” by Gungor)

You know the feeling. You’ve been there.

Betrayal. Natural disaster. Abuse. Unwelcome surprises. Ruin caused by your sin. Devastation caused by someone else’s sin. Tragedies. Heartaches.

You cry out, “God, can anything good come out of this? Will I even survive this?”

The next day, nothing is left,

...as far as the eye can see, mile after mile after mile,

...only ashes and soot remain.

But that’s not the end of the story.

Dear old Isaiah, the prophet, tells us that God transforms His people’s ashes—the ruin that remains after destruction—to beauty. He replaces their mourning with gladness. He converts their despair to praise. Isaiah says God will rebuild ruins and restore devastation (Isaiah 61:1-4).

I hope you know that feeling, too. Know it because you’ve been there. Know it because you are there.

“God deals with impossibilities. It is never too late for Him to do so, when the impossible is brought to Him, in full faith.…

“If in our own life there have been rebellion, unbelief, sin, and disaster, it is never too late for God to deal triumphantly with these tragic facts, if brought to Him in full surrender and trust.…

“God can ‘restore … the years the locusts have eaten’ (Joel 2:25); and He will do this when we put the whole situation and ourselves unreservedly and believingly into His hands. Not because of what we are but because of what He is. God forgives and heals and restores. He is ‘the God of all grace.’” (Sunday School Times, quoted in Streams in the Desert by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman, November 22 selection; emphasis mine)

God offers to pick us up, dust off ashes and soot, and bring us healing—even new life, even beauty. Look at these two photos. Do you see what I see?

Do you see it? Look closely.



In the words of Gungor’s song, “Hope is springing up from this old ground.”

What is your story? How did God accomplish the seemingly impossible in your life? How did he turn your ashes into beauty?

People need to know your story, so write it!

Your story will help readers think about their own lives. It can prepare them for sorrows that will inevitably arise in their lives.

Or, if they’re in the midst of a tragedy, you can assure them they’re not alone. They need to know that others before them experienced calamities, too, and that God did not forsake them. You can inspire them to hang on in faith until God brings them through on the other side, rebuilt and restored.

Writing your story is what 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 is all about:

“ … the God of all comfort … comforts us in all our troubles,

so that we can comfort those in any trouble

with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”

God can use your story to help transform someone’s ashes to beauty, their mourning to gladness, their despair to praise (Isaiah 61:3).

Because life is hard, write your story.

Below are more excerpts from “Beautiful Things” by Gungor (you can listen to this song at this link:  http://www.newreleasetuesday.com/article.php?article_id=384)

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of the dust

You make beautiful things out of us

All around

Hope is springing up from this old ground

Out of chaos life is being found in You.…

You make me new, You are making me new

You make me new, You are making me new

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of the dust

You make beautiful things out of us

Your stories: an act of worship

.

Have you read 1 Chronicles 16 lately?

I can almost hear trumpets sounding and bells ringing and angels singing.

In this chapter, David gave Asaph and his fellow Levites a song of thanksgiving to God. He said,

“Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name;

make known among the nations what he has done.

Sing to him, sing praise to him;

tell of all his wonderful acts.

Glory in his holy name;

let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.

Look to the Lord and his strength;

seek his face always.

Remember the wonders he has done ….

Sing to the Lord, all the earth;

proclaim his salvation day after day.

Declare his glory among the nations,

his marvelous deeds among all peoples.

For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise….

Splendor and majesty are before him;

strength and joy in his dwelling place.

Ascribe to the Lord … the glory due his name.

Bring an offering before him;

worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness….

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;

his love endures forever.”

And when David finished, “Then all the people shouted ‘Amen’ and ‘Praise the Lord.’”

What a worship service! I wish I could have stood among that congregation.

And as if that’s not enough—what’s even more exciting—is that we are doing those same things in our memoirs!

In our stories, we are telling others the wonders God has done and his marvelous deeds among us. We are declaring his glory. In the process, we are “singing” praise to him, “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise!”

This sentence grabbed hold of my heart: “Bring an offering before him; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.” I encourage you to lift up to God (1) your process of writing and (2) your finished stories—lift them up to God as your offering to him.

And hand your stories to your readers as an offering to the Lord, too. Do it as an act of worshiping him in the splendor of his holiness.

What a privilege we have to honor God in this way.

And we the writers, together with our readers, shout, Amen! And Praise the Lord!

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Spread the word. Invite your friends to join us. Everyone has stories to tell!

Saturday Snippet: What’s your memoir’s ultimate purpose?

The Bible records—often—God’s reason for acting on behalf of His people: so that they’d know Him—“Then you will know that I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 6:6-7, 1 Kings 20:13, Ezekiel 37:5-6, and Joel 2:19-27), and so that people would see Him and praise Him.


God does the same today: He assures us of His love and faithfulness by doing things for us, sometimes in earthshaking ways, but usually in everyday ways.


So here you and I are, writing stories of what He has done for us—writing so that our readers will see Him, know Him, and praise Him.


Let this sink in: Your memoir can stir up a response similar to accounts told in Bible times.


For instance, think of yourself as the man in Mark 5:1-10, “So the man [insert your name] went away and began to tell the Decapolis [insert your readers’ names] how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.”


You want your readers to respond the same way: You want them to be amazed at God!


The beauty of memoir is looking back, examining, and making sense of the past.


When we invest time in sifting through the past, and looking at it from a distance, we see that in even the worst of times, God was always on the scene, in our midst, working on our behalf.


The following Bible passage captures my vision—my prayer, my heart’s desire—for the memoir classes I teach and for this blog:

“Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;

his greatness no one can fathom.

One generation will commend your works to another;

they will tell of your mighty acts.

They will speak of

the glorious splendor of your majesty,

and I will meditate on your wonderful works.

They will tell of the power of your awesome works,

and I will proclaim your great deeds.

They will celebrate your abundant goodness

and joyfully sing of your righteousness.”

Psalm 145:3-7, NIV

Keep working on your WIPs (works in progress, rough drafts) and as you do, make a conscious decision: write your memoir as a celebration—a celebration of God in all His goodness, faithfulness, holiness, and splendor.

Your ultimate goal: Write celebrations of God!

Like George Herbert said in the illustration above,

consider yourself

a secretary of God’s praise.