Yes, you can praise God when life is great, blessings are streaming your way, and the situations around you make you smile. But even when the opposite is happening – when you didn’t think things could get any worse and then they did, and that thing you are praying for hasn’t happened yet and it doesn’t look like it will happen anytime soon, and when pressures from the outside cause a battle inside your heart and mind – you can choose to praise God.

How do you praise when you are not feeling it?

Here’s what I have learned:

• Put yourself in places where other people are praising God. Listening to them will help you do the same.
• Use God’s Word (the Bible) to inspire your words. Sometimes, during worship at church, I sing with my Bible in my hand. Reading about the goodness of God helps me to praise Him when I don’t feel like it. Another idea is to pray through a section of verses. For example, read Psalm 19 one verse at a time, and thank God for something in each verse.
• Choose to fill your heart and mind with praise. If your mind and heart are warring between discouragement and hope, listen to praise music and sing along to remind yourself of who God is. As I write this, I have music playing where other people are praising God – declaring His faithfulness and His goodness.
• Make it a point to be thankful. If I stop and think about what God has done for me, my family and my friends, I realize that I have a lot of reasons to praise the Lord. Getting this list out of my mind and onto paper is even more powerful.

Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Psalm 103:1 (NIV)

Life Lesson: Choose to praise the Lord.