A few years ago, I was driving with my littlest one. It was just me and her, and when you're with Dad, you sometimes get to do stuff that Mom wouldn’t like, so she asks me, "Would you get me French fries and a vanilla shake at McDonald's?"
“Sure,” I said. “It's just once.” We get the fries, and she is sitting in the back, and that smell is intoxicating, so I said, “Hey, can I have a few of those fries?”
“Absolutely not.”
I said, “Just give me a fry. Just one.”
Nothing. Finally, I pulled the car over. "Do you know why you have those fries? Let me help you. I get up every morning at 5:00 a.m. to pray and get a word from God so I can show up at church, preach my heart out, then counsel people throughout the week. When Friday comes, they give me a paycheck. With that paycheck, I make sure you have Cheerios so that you don't starve. I make sure I pay the electric bill so you're not sitting here in the dark. I pay the heating bills so you don't freeze.”
I said, “Then with the money left over, I go into the drive-through so you can get a vanilla shake and fries. I just want one fry.” Sometimes we forget all that God has done, and we won't even give him praise. We sit there with our shake and fries while we’re singing our heart out, thinking, “I bought this.”
We didn't buy anything. God gave it to us. We sometimes need to recognize that God is working for us and how he deserves praise. Like Paul wrote, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:16-17, ESV).
There is always something to praise God about. There is always something to lift up when you raise your hands in worship. All God wants you to do is to say thank you. This is the position we should assume all through life, saying, “God, thank you for what you're doing. Thank you.”
After pastoring an inner-city congregation in Detroit for thirty years, Pastor Tim served at Brooklyn Tabernacle in NYC for five years and pastored in Lafayette, Louisiana, for five years. He became Senior Pastor of Times Square Church in May of 2020.