I will sacrifice praise, thanksgiving, and joy.

For the past couple years, I have thought about, and been extremely skeptical, of the following worship song from my childhood:

We bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord
We bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord
And we offer up to You, the sacrifices of thanksgiving
And we offer up to You, the sacrifices of joy

I have been skeptical because I don't see praise, joy, and thanksgiving as things needing to be sacrificed and thought it seemed like a pretty lame thing for us to say we offer as sacrifices. A sacrifice, after all, is something that hurts us in some way to give.

But then I read a chapter in a book that talked about this, and now I get it!

When life is hard and we are inclined to grumble, gripe, complain, pout, get angry, etc., that is when these become sacrifices.

When I am in the midst of a struggle, it is then that I must offer these sacrifices. Look at the situation I am in and tell God, "I am thankful for..." and "I am joyful because..." and "I praise you for..."

For example, I recently was feeling grumpy during a time of praise and worship singing because several people behind me were talking loudly and it was distracting. In that moment, my sacrifice should have been to thank God that these people had come and would get to hear about Him, to be joyful because of the opportunity I had to be there to sing praises, and to praise Him for providing good worship music.

That seems like a minor thing in comparison to many things that plague us in life, but I use it as a simple example. In some of our darkest experiences, we can thank God that our faith will be tested and strengthened by what we are going through and praise Him because even if the worst things happen to us - we fail, we lose our jobs, we lose our health, we lose everything - we can praise Him that we know He loves us and that all things work together for our good because we love Him.

I plan to put this into practice more. That when I feel tempted to grumble, gripe, complain, sulk, etc., that instead I will think of the positives that I can then bring before God as a sacrifice of praise, a sacrifice of joy, and a sacrifice of thanksgiving. God is good and He loves us. We are more important than the sparrows whom He always provides for.