Power in worship

For the past week Charlie has slept through every single night. It has been great. Unfortunately, Georgie has not. She has been suffering from a viral bug, and last night she was up often. It takes a good hour to settle her once she is awake, as she gets quite upset. So this morning I was feeling a bit crap.

The crapness continued after I had gotten up for the fourth time with Georgie at 5am, to go back to bed at 6am, after saying goodbye to Shane, who went to work early, for a tiny bit more sleep before Charlie woke up. I had just gotten back to sleep only to wake up to the sound of a dog vomiting. It seemed that Chloe had snuck into our room at some point in the night to sleep on our bed. She's not allowed to, but occasionally she does it, and this morning she did it, and then vomited all over my quilt.

I was not amused, and took her outside. I cleaned up the bed and soaked the quilt (surprisingly both kids slept through it all) and then when I let her back in, she immediately jumped on the couch, and vomited again. I thought (and said) all manner of bad words, and took the couch cover out to soak too and then locked Chloe on the tiled floor.

The day didn't get much better. The kids woke up, and the whole morning was just hard. Charlie was a bit unhappy and had a pain in his belly, and Georgie was sick and didn't know what she wanted, but it was whatever she didn't have. The Wiggles helped us through. I had a solid parenting moment when I was bathing Charlie, and Georgie came up next to me to watch with half a weet-bix in her mouth. I wasn't thrilled, but thought, 'Oh well she must have just gotten into the pantry.' However, when we finished bathing Charlie and I went out into the kitchen, I saw that the pantry door was shut and the childproof hook was locked, which begged the question... where did she get that weet-bix from? Parenting at it's finest, I know.

By lunchtime we were all tired and sick of each other and my temper was fraying badly. I was in shouty mode and it was not good. I put Georgie in her chair with some lunch, then sat down next to her to feed Charlie and promptly burst into tears. I got angry at God and was asking him why things had to be so hard. After a good cry I settled and then I started singing. I just sang regular praise and worship songs that we sing in church. And it helped.

I was just reminded of how much power there is in praise. How powerful it is when we bring a praise offering to Him, especially when we don't feel like it. It's easy to sing praises when things are good and when you feel like it, it's much harder when you don't feel like it. But I think there is so much power in honoring God when it doesn't come easily.

And I think it is so important too, to remember to honour God, not for anything he has done, or is going to do... but for who he is. I think we Christians sometime have a habit of talking about how great God is because he did this, or he has done that. But we need to remember to talk about how good God is simply because he is God, and he is holy and righteous and perfect. We need to honour him, for being him.

I'd like to say that the day was wonderful after that. But it wasn't. It was still hard work. Georgie was still sick, and life was still life. But it was easier. I was easier. It made a difference. There is great power in worship.

*This post was originally started on  Friday, but has taken me a few days to finish.

Linking up with Jess for IBOT.