The Power of Praise

I had determined to get rid of it all! This was the second yard sale I was having in an attempt to purge our household contents and I did not want to carry anything back into our house. The bargain hunters began to arrive and amongst them came one of the elderly neighbors. “Those are some really nice table legs,” he commented as he stood looking at four disjoined wooden pieces lying at my feet. “Oh, yes,” I stammered looking at the worn, peeling legs and recalling my auction blunder that had led to my acquisition of them. He stood in silence looking at them with a certain admiration that I found odd when directed at old table legs. “You know the legs are the hardest part of the table.” “Those legs would make a beautiful table!” Suddenly I remembered that these words were coming from a skilled woodworker. He went on to explain how he had all the tools to make a wonderful table from those legs if only he still did woodworking. It started to occur to me that perhaps these legs were useful for more than just some good firewood.

Praise not only has the power to surge upwards into the heavens, but it also has the power to flow downward into the heart and influence our perspective as it goes. It only takes a few friends telling us how effective a new product is to convince us to try it. This is the power of praise. It only takes one positive comment from an expert to convince us we can. This is the power of praise. Praise effectively strips away the curtain of confusion, doubt and mistrust to reveal to us the value of the praised.

 I fulfilled my commitment to haul all the leftover garage sale items to a local charity, but thanks to the praise of a certain carpenter, I still have a set of beautiful table legs sitting in the garage that are destined to make a beautiful table someday!

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What Are You Looking At?

“Make your way straight before my face.” Psalms 5:8

You fumble for your buzzing phone and realize you overslept, again! You run out the door with your cup of coffee only to realize that your windshield is iced over. You manage to break away a quarter size opening (no time!) and you turn the heat up full blast, praying it heats up sooner then the normal 10 minutes. Suddenly you realize that driving something like a car with a one-inch visibility range is not such a good idea, especially with hot coffee in hand! You don’t get far before the familiar sound of a police siren closes in behind you and soon you are walking a snow line and breathing into a plastic tube. “I’m not drunk sir!” is the feeble protest. “Well, you sure were driving like you were! “ comes the gruff reply. You point at the windshield that now has hunks of melting ice sliding down it. “I just couldn’t see where I was going.”  “Oh, I see,” comes the ironic reply, “Sorry, but you are still getting a ticket for reckless driving.”

Have you ever felt that you were weaving blindly down the road of life despite your best efforts? I know I have. As believers, we are to walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7), but this is not an easy task for us sight-reliant humans! It is extremely counterintuitive for a human to move purposely forward and yet not have a view of the road ahead. We want to know the statistics, the probabilities and the likelihoods before we ever take a step. We want a preview of the big picture first, while it feels like God is barely showing us the next step! A life led of the Spirit often seems nonsensical to our human deductions; however, it is when we are willing to pare down our vision to focus on what God really wants that we realize that somehow our paths always end up being made straight before our eyes. 

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