Ripe for Harvest

S ESSION 1: S EEING THE B IG P ICTURE • 35

You were created, designed, engineered for praise to God – don’t waste yourself!

Luigi Tarisio was found dead one morning with scarce a comfort in his home, but with 246 exquisite violins, which he had been collecting all his life, crammed into an attic. In his devotion to the violin, he robbed the world of much wonderful music all the time he treasured his instruments such that he kept them safe in his attic. He had collected some violins that others before him had “kept safe” in storage as he did. Therefore, the greatest violin in his collection, a Stradivarius, had remained silent for 147 years. Can you imagine? Instruments designed for beautiful music had purposefully been kept silent. ~ From C. Neil Strait in Sunshine Magazine , August, 1973.

C. Reason Three: Praise affirms the truth of God’s person.

Ps. 95.1-7a – O Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God, And a great King above all gods, In whose hand are the depths of the earth; The peaks of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for it was He who made it; And His hands formed the dry land. Come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand.

D. Reason Four: Praise decentralizes self

David – Psalm 27

Ps. 115.1-3 (NKJV) – Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, But to Your name give glory, Because of Your mercy, Because of Your truth. Why should the Gentiles say, “So where is their God?” But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases.

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