Tomorrow is the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving. Along that note in the next “not God” post, I’d like to focus on that human beings are not designed to accept thanks and praise.

I like praise. I’ll admit it. But who doesn’t? Unfortunately, praise does not like me because I’m not designed to receive it.

Praise is kind of like donuts. Donuts taste good, but they always make me feel sick afterwards. That amount of sugar, fat and refined flour sets off both a queasy tummy and a fibro flare-up. I know this. Most of the time, that predictable discomfort is enough to keep me from eating one. But sometimes they look so good.

If I act responsibly and indulge in only a donut hole or two, particularly the plain ones, I can get a bit of the taste without paying a price.

Similarly, praise sometimes feels so wonderful. If I get a little, a donut’s hole worth and move on, I’m okay. I’m merely accepting compliments for a job well-done. But if I crave it and try to engineer more of it? It hurts on so many levels.

The Bible says this is because only God is worthy of all praise. That doesn’t mean his creations should slog through life without recognition. Jesus even gives instructions on how humans should receive such acknowledgement. In Luke 14, he talks about taking the lowly place. He tells us not to seek recognition on our own, but be humble and wait for it to come spontaneously… or not.

That’s the trick. If we have done something that truly is praiseworthy, we have to be willing to accept that praise from an audience of One—our God and Father.

Proverbs has a fair amount to say about praise. Proverbs 27:2 says, Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips. And in verse 21 of the same chapter, A crucible for silver, and a smelter for gold, and a man for the words of his praise. In other words, how we react to praise tests us.

Biblically speaking, two examples of men who received a lot of praise and didn’t handle it well were Saul and Absalom. It made Saul go mad and endure personal torment. It made Absalom believe what people said about him and put him on a power-hungry destructive path that ended in an early death.

The human frame is not designed for that level of adoration.

We are, however, designed to give out that level of adoration. In fact, if we don’t, it messes with us. We need to worship and praise something, someone, anyone because it’s part of the way we’re wired. If we don’t worship God we will either flounder around searching for meaning or pour ourselves into something that we deem a worthy substitute for God. The problem is that God has no substitute. He can’t simply because He is God and He wove into our core a need for Him and a need to thank Him regularly. A good way of summing it up comes from the oft-quoted Westminster Shorter Catechism which answers its first question, “What is the chief end of humanity?” with “their chief end is glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”

God designed us to worship. To give thanks and praise. But He also gave us the free will to give that glory to Him or to another, less worthy candidate.

Only God is worthy to receive all our thanks and praise. And only God is able to receive it. Anything else and anyone else will either not be able to accept it, or will try and eventually self-destruct.

 Therefore, tomorrow, when thousands of people give thanks, let us be among the ones who give thanks, glory, honor and praise to the One and only One who can receive it.

Psalm 150

1 Hallelujah!
Praise God in His sanctuary.
Praise Him in His mighty heavens.
2 Praise Him for His powerful acts;
praise Him for His abundant greatness.

3 Praise Him with trumpet blast;
praise Him with harp and lyre.

Thank you, Barb, for writing this guest post!

My children attended a Christian K-8 school and one of my ministries was teaching chapel every Friday. My one-month gig began when my youngest son was in fourth grade. I taught for six years—long past my initial commitment. Why did I stay on singing Bible songs and teaching Bible stories? I loved being with children and young adults praising God.

In my latest novel “Christmas at Whispering Creek,” my heroine was a second-grade teacher at a Christian school. Of course, I had to slip in some lessons since the story took place at Christmastime.

My heroine, Samantha, is a breast cancer survivor. I happen to be one, too. I had Samantha read verses in Philippians to encourage her spirit. Paul’s letters can be difficult to find in the Bible, so Samantha uses Go, Eat, Pop, Corn for the order of Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. I’ve also heard people use General, Electric, Power, Company. The apostle Paul writes Philippians while he is in prison, but the book is filled with Paul’s joy in knowing Jesus.

With Christmas upon us, I use candy canes to tell the story of Jesus. Samantha hangs candy canes on the Christmas tree so that the cane looks like a J for Jesus. The cane is also hard like a rock and Jesus is our rock (Psalm 18:2). You can tell how Jesus died on the cross (red stripe), but that He conquered death so we could be free from death and sin. The white stripe is for being clean (I John 1:9).

If you don’t hang your candy cane as a J, you can use it as a shepherd’s staff because Jesus is our Good Shepherd (John 10:11).

At Christmas, people decorate with lights, especially on a Christmas tree. You can point out how Jesus is the light of the world (John 8:12). Samantha remembers teaching this in her classroom. A tree can be drawn with three points for the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And of course, the star can be part of the story as the wise men followed the star to worship Jesus when Jesus was a toddler. (I know, several nativity scenes have them in the stable).

Most of all, I hope you know that at any time of year, Jesus is the best gift. That’s why Samantha and I wrap a box with the name of Jesus written inside. Christmas isn’t about gifts, food, or family travel. It’s about celebrating an amazing, eternal God that loved us so much that His Son stepped into time to die on a cross in our place, so we could have a relationship with Him…forever.

As they say, one needs to learn the four R’s while in school: Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic, and about a Relationship with Jesus. The last R is the most important one.

Book blurb for “Christmas at Whispering Creek.”

All Samantha Williams wants to do is to use her teaching degree to instruct a classroom of second graders. But, after a breast cancer diagnosis at the age of twenty-three and failed reconstruction surgery, Sam finds herself without a job and temporarily living with her parents. This isn’t the life Sam expected. When a family friend dies and leaves Sam a house and land in Whispering Creek, Tennessee, Sam must decide if leaving Wisconsin for Southern living is in her lesson plans.

Nashville native Cole Donoven left his family’s electrical business to write country music. When Cole’s song-writing partner and girlfriend dumps him for a country music star, Cole abandons Nashville to hole up in Whispering Creek and compose one more song. The last thing Cole expects to find in the sleepy small town is a deceased friend, estate squabbles, and a Northern beauty. Will the chaos in Whispering Creek help create a bestselling song for Cole and possibly help him find a life-long collaborator?

You can order the eBook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever books are sold.

The print edition releases on December 1st, but you can pre-order the book now.

Barbara M. Britton lives in Wisconsin and loves the snow—when it accumulates under three inches. She writes Christian Fiction from Bible Times to present day USA. Her Tribes of Israel series brings little-known Bible characters to light. Her novel “Christmas at Whispering Creek,” is a compelling, yet fun story, shining a light on breast cancer. Barbara has a nutrition degree from Baylor University but loves to dip healthy strawberries in chocolate. You can find out more about Barbara and her books on her website http://www.barbarambritton.com.

Last week’s marvelous post by Carol James (and next week’s post by Barbara Britton) provided you all a break from my “not God” obsession.

God is able. Without him, we are incapable.

I have an image of that in my head. But to get it into your heads, you need to journey back with me. It is my senior year of college. Because I started taking French in middle school and entered college with French 3, I have a limited number of courses available in the language. Therefore, I found myself in La Philosophe Française. An upper-level class, the four of us read, debated, wrote and participated completely in French.

I’m not sure if it was the intensity of trying to figure out how to convey some bizarre ideas in my second language or simply the amount of work we put into it, but to this day I remember the essay and presentation my partner and I wrote about Jacques le Fataliste very well.

Building off an argument that Jacques presented to his master, we explained how the bubbles of personhood lock each of us within spheres of our own reality. Those spheres confine us to certain actions and paths. (Fatalism, remember?) As we roll around in our existence, our paths can interact with others only by a nudge or brief contact. Sometimes, if our path within our sphere brings us to a low point at the same time as another sphere, we may actually touch someone meaningfully. But most of the time, we’re like a bunch of marbles in zero gravity—totally out of control.

Think of a hamster wheel. Now put the hamster and his wheel within another bigger wheel. How much can the little hamster change the path or the fate of the bigger wheel?

Based on that book and the philosophy behind it, we have pitifully minimal affect on the world around us. We can move our ball, but it is only through accident or happenstance, (planned by the scroll in the sky according to Jacques) that our efforts matter to others or to eternity.

So when I think of us as incapable, I see us as passengers of wheels within wheels.

Sometimes life feels like that, right? You run full tilt at some objective only to have it scoot from your grasp at the last second. You did everything right according to the experts. Yet, the thing you worked toward so diligently can become a vapor before your eyes. Or the reverse. You can reach the goal only discover that you have reached your mortal end.

From the 12th chapter of Luke: Then He spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops? ’So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

On our own, acting on our own interests and desires, we are incapable of any significant act. We might bump our hamster wheel into another or even into several and find ourselves noteworthy within our bubble of life, but in the eternal scope our efforts are totally worthless. When we run around our bubbles, we wear ourselves out physically, emotionally and spiritually. We use up all of the essence and matter that incorporates who we think of when we think of ourselves. We use it up without using it profitably.

We need Someone on the outside to guide our bubble. Or even better, we need that Someone to pop the bubble so that we can walk in the paths he has meant for us. He will lead us in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.

It is when we walk in His paths, when we work alongside Him for the kingdom to come, that we become able. It is because he enables us. He provides the light for our paths and shares his yoke so that we not only know which way to go, but accept his help in that way.

Because our God is able all the time. He is able when we are not. He is able when we think we can. He is able through all times and all seasons because he is the creator of all we know and understand.

Let’s leave the hamster wheels of life behind and walk in his way instead.