🙌 It's the Friday Call to Worship! 🙌

I talked a lot this week about hard places I've been in. I shared what it means to honor God in the most challenging times with new wives. I leaned into a late night prayer call with women across the globe and bared the spaces of my heart where I need God's encouragement. I recounted an intimate and difficult story to a trusted community, revealing how much we are relying on God's provision.

With hindsight, I see how God was, and still is, in every bend, curve and dry place of our story. Here and now, there is still some heavy lifting to be done, and many things that just didn't go the way I hoped they would.

I can only imagine how Paul and Silas felt in the story in Acts 16. They were taken to the deepest, darkest prison chamber and crammed into stocks. They were just trying to serve God.

No one imagines themselves in that dark of a place, where every movement and even not moving causes crippling pain. But we've all been there.

Paul and Silas sang in their stocks. The Passion Translation says they were "undaunted", and they worshiped. I don't have the greatest track record of remaining "undaunted" when I feel locked in the chains of this broken world. But I do know the power or praising from your prison.

I think Paul and Silas could sing because they understood their problems were confined to the limits of life: time, space, their physical bodies. All of it is fleeting. The foundation of their prison couldn't even stand through the night.

Chained or free, running or limping, celebrating or mourning... The thing about praise is it lasts when nothing else does. It connects you to the One who gave his life for you, and that is what we all need the most.

Today's song is "The Thing About Praise" by Benjamin William Hastings.