Every generation needs a new song. Every situation needs a new song.
It is not the song itself, but it is the heart behind the singer. Praise stems from the heart.
Whatever the situation – “May the praise of God be in our mouths.” Psalm 149:6.
When the sun rises, creation sings. But David says it the other way round.
Psalm 57: 7-8 “I will sing and make music. I will awaken the dawn.”
God always does something in you before He does something outside of you. The internal is more important than the external.
The new song is the song that is sung before dawn, in the night, where there is darkness, fear, terror, loneliness, isolation, God says sing!
A couple of weeks ago, in the far north of Kenya, a group of us witnessed a church with no building, which gathered under a tree, that had little food and water, only one set of clothes that they were wearing, no prospects for change and yet … they joyfully sang, they enthusiastically danced and they clapped their hands with praise to God. They are ready for God to move upon them. Not because they have plans for a borehole and for the ability to plant crops to feed their children, but because praise is on their lips to their God who is for them.
The story we have been reading about Jacob’s first wife, Leah, reminds us that the sooner we can turn our problems into praise, the better it will be for us.
“When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. 32 Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben,for she said, “It is because the Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.” (Genesis 29 v 31-32)
How easy to move from the problem to the plan. The plan is always to get out of the problem or to change the situation to make things better. But God’s prescription is different. God’s prescription is to move from the problem to praise when He can then come and change you and then the situation. Leah would eventually realise this over the next few years.
How do Christians in our world live under incredible problems? They have learnt the key to praising God, and God inhabits them, changing their attitude toward their problems.
What needs changing is not your problem, but you, and when we are changed, the problem can be changed.
“When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless.” (Genesis 29:31-32)
God opened her womb, and she started having children. Her plan was that if she could have children, Jacob might love her. That’s what was wrong.
You may be an unloved woman – God knows that. He will do things in and through you that the most loved woman cannot do. Many are just women of men, but God will turn you into a woman of God.
Our plans can seem so godly, so close to what God wants, but close is not good enough; it needs to be God’s will.
But Leah’s plan was running too far ahead of God. She thought this would lead to Jacob loving her; she had not yet let go of her problem, and it was still important to her.
God sees you in your misery. God responds to your pain. But the question is: will you move from problem to plan, or from problem to praise?
When you move to praise, God changes you. And when you change, the problem can change.
Missions Paul 