“First we need to recognize God for who He is… God is worthy of our excitement…
Although we are “always” in the presence of God in the ultimate sense, there is a special sense that when we worship Him, in a fuller way, we “come into God’s presence.”
In the middle of this psalm of praise we have this warning… why… our worship and perspective of God can be affected by our day-to-day…
How can we express the ground level reality of our lives, with the lofty realities of the God we serve…
This is how not to respond:
There is a right way and wrong way to get our attention…
Psalm 95 is a call to worship and warning against unbelief… they refused to believe that God would take care of them… in the light of the goodness, and nature of God mentioned above; don’t allow unbelief to drive you…
This is how to respond:
There is a proper way to complain – with honesty, faith and dependence upon God… Job / Psalms / Jeremiah / Habakkuk / widows in the first century church are examples…
The idea of thankfulness and praise is not dishonesty, or ignoring our present situations… A major part of thankfulness and praise is actually acknowledging those things… but along with that, placing them in the context of who God is, and His character, and His power, and His love…
So as this year wraps up let us choose to be thankful, let us choose to be honesty”