Praise as a Sacrifice

”He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me;”

Psalm 50:23

So often when I think of sacrifice I think of the negative, the giving up, the lack. This is true that in sacrifice I do give up something: I deny myself, my ego, my time, my pleasures, my money, my resources to name a few, but with sacrifice there is also a positive thing that I do in conjunction. In addition to giving up something I desire, sacrifice also calls me to love. Sometimes that means denying myself for love of God and other times it means denying myself for the love of my neighbor. Either way, if there is no love in my sacrifices, they are empty and I become like the scribes and Pharisees, who Jesus gave a strict warning to.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.”

Matthew 23:25

The Psalm today reminded me of this truth, “he that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me” (Psalm 50:23). This may sound weird for praise to be considered a sacrifice, but think of it like this, when I am in misery all I want to do is get myself back on top by puffing up my ego, or feel better again by playing the victim and complaining about my state, or I may even find myself seeking revenge, which is a way of gaining back “power” that I have seemingly lost. For me to praise God in my misery, I am indeed sacrificing all of these ways that I try to get myself back on top and feel better. In praising God in my misery, I am saying to God that I trust that He has my best interest at hand and that He is going to lift me up from my misery in His time. I am saying that no matter what I go through in this life, I know that God is my redeemer and I have hope of my eternal inheritance in heaven.

Waiting for the Lord is a lost art in our culture today. We tend to get caught up in our own self-sufficiency and we are encouraged to take matters into our own hands, especially when we are down and out. This comes from the false hope that we can create for ourselves a utopia in this world. This is not an actual promise of Jesus. He clearly reminded his apostles that they would face hardships and suffering in this life, but that this life was not the end. When I fall into this ideology that I can experience utopia here in this life, I find myself desperately looking for solutions to problems that only God can resolve. When I abandon the belief that Jesus is the one to save me, I end up spinning my wheels and living in a state of anxiety and fear. God does not want this for me. He does not want me to live in fear, because where there is fear, love cannot reign.

There are particular lies that come at us as Christians as we live the age old tradition of the People of God by waiting for the Lord. Our culture tells us we are being lazy or that we are not fighting the good fight of doing everything we can to better our situation. Sometimes we even get shamed into thinking we aren’t being responsible or that we don’t care enough to do anything more. The truth is, waiting for the Lord is not a passive thing at all. It is very active, very prayerful, and very loving. It is the best response and the one that takes the most courage, patience, and humility. This is what sacrifice is all about. It is in giving up the need to control and leaning more deeply into the heart of Jesus that we truly learn what it means to live by faith.

In prasing God in my misery, I am sacrificing my ego, my need to play the victim, my need to complain, and my need to seek revenge. In my misery, God’s mercy finds its throne. For God comes to me in my weakness and if my heart is poor, His mercy will reign there. When I praise God in my weakness, I make the ultimate sacrifice of myself by being glad of my weakness, all because God is glorified as is right and just. This is a complete denial of myself, a humbling of myself in the light of God’s goodness, power and love.

To accept my weakness in this manner, does not mean I am giving up the fight or quitting; instead I am giving myself more completely to the Lord. I am surrendering all my power, goodness, and love, which is no match for the power, goodness, and love of God who is the source of all these. Only when I recognize and accept my weakness am I then able to surrender it to God, which invites God in to be my strength. The Lord freely gives his strength to me in my weakness. He is offering this to me each and every day. My call is to humbly respond by receiving the strength He is offering me, which is always sufficient in sustaining me in my misery.

”Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.”

2 Corinthians 12:8-9

St Francis of Assisi lived a life of poverty and sacrifice. He did this for love of God, love of the Church and love of his neighbor. His life spoke the poverty of Jesus in a very profound way, during a time that the Church and the world desperately needed to be reminded of it. Because St Francis chose to live a life of poverty, he was continually aware of his need for God. This humble need for God could not escape him, but in his misery, he continued to find ways to praise God. St Francis is known for seeing God in every living creature. He not only saw God in them, but he also praised God in them and for the gift of them. In my own life, I pray to be ever aware of my poverty and to accept it as a means by which God is glorified.

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