An Attitude of Praise – Acts 16 by Ben Fronczek

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An Attitude of Praise – Acts 16

Attitude of Praise  Acts 16

(Based on a sermon by: Mark Batterson)

This week I read about a fascinating research study done by Vicki Medvec, a professor at Northwestern University. She studied Olympic medalists and she discovered that Bronze medalists were happier than Silver medalists. Here’s why. She found that Silver medalists tended to focus on how close they came to winning the gold so they weren’t satisfied with silver. Bronze medalists tended to focus on how close they came to not winning a medal at all so they were just happy to be on the medal stand at all.

I think that study reveals a fascinating facet of human nature: Your focus determines your reality. How we feel isn’t necessarily determined by circumstances. If that was the case, the Silver Medalists would be happier than Bronze medalists because they had a better result. Even though how we feel isn’t necessarily determined by our circumstances, how we feel is determined by what we are more focused on.

Here’s another way of saying it: Your internal attitudes are more important than your external circumstances.

Someone by the name of John Milton said it best: “The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a Heaven out of Hell, and a Hell out of Heaven.”

That’s so true isn’t it? All of us know people who can find something good to focus on even in the worst of circumstances. And all of us know someone who can find something bad to focus on even in the best of circumstances.

There is a universal principle I need to share with you here: We tend to see what we want to see.

Someone once said, ‘There are two basic types of people in the church: complainers and praisers. Complainers can always find something to complain about. And the praisers can always find something to praise and worship God about.’

All of us seem to make judgments about things all the time. Then we seem to look for evidence to support our judgments and many times ignore evidence to the contrary.

For example, if you decide you don’t like someone you’ll notice everything that is wrong with that person. And you’ll probably ignore anything you could potentially like about them. The flipside is true as well. If you’re head-over-heels in love with someone you tend to only notice those things you love about them.
We see what we want to see.

What does that have to do with praise and worship? A worshipper makes a decision beforehand to look for something to praise God about even in the direst of circumstances.

That’s what we are going to see in our text today.   Read  Acts 16:16-34 (Click on link to read) http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%2016:16-34&version=NIV1984

In Acts 16, Paul and Silas are in a prison cell in Philippi. Paul had cast a demon out of a fortune-teller. Her master doesn’t like it because she loses the ability to predict the future, which was  a source of income for him, so he has Paul and Silas arrested.

In the NLT version Acts 16:22 it says, “A mob quickly formed against Paul and Silas, and the city officials ordered them stripped and beaten with wooden rods.”  The text says: “They were severely beaten, and then they were thrown into prison. The jailer was ordered to make sure they didn’t escape.  So the jailer put them into the inner dungeon and clamped their feet in the stocks.”

I think as we read a story like this it’s hard to put ourselves in their shoes. I’ve had bad days before, but nothing like this.

If I was Paul or Silas I would have been emotionally, physically and spiritually spent. I’d be drained to the last drop. I’d have nothing left to give.

Their backs are bleeding from their beating. They are black and blue all over. If it was me I would not have been very happy rather I’d probably be ticked off.  And to top it off they land in the maximum security cell in stocks!

It just doesn’t get much worse than that. And that’s why this next verse is so amazing to me. Acts 16:25 says, “Around midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening.”

Today I want to show you that there is something we can do to help us get out a a spiritual or emotional slum:

#1. Zoom Out   Let me share something I’ve learned from personal experience. When I get into a spiritual or emotional slump, it’s usually because I’ve ‘zoomed in’ on a problem. I’m fixating on something that is wrong. I’m really focused on the wrong thing. Nine times out of ten, the solution is zooming out so I can get some perspective.

Sometimes you’ve got to zoom out and look at the big picture.

That’s what the following college student did in writing this letter to her mom and dad, She wrote:

Dear Mom and Dad,
I have so much to tell you. Because of the fire in my dorm set by the student riots here, I experienced temporary lung damage and had to go to the hospital. While I was there, I fell in love with an orderly, and we have moved in together. I dropped out of school when I found out I was pregnant, but he got fired because of his drinking problem, so we’re going to move to Alaska, where we might get married after the birth of our baby.
Your loving daughter

PS: None of this really happened, but
I did flunk my chemistry class and I wanted you to keep it in perspective.

Sometimes you need to zoom out and look at the big picture. You fail a chemistry exam and it feels like the end of the world. But it’s not. A piece of machinery breaks down on your farm and it seems like such a big deal, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not. Somebody wrecks your car, or you loose a tooth, or you can’t get the job you want… and it seems like the end of the world, but in all reality, it’s not.  We just need to stand back and zoom out!

So what can help us ‘zoom out?’  Let me give you a two words answer: worship and praise.

In doing so we take our eyes off of our external circumstances and focusing on God. We stop focusing on what’s wrong with us or with our circumstances. We start focus on what’s right with God and we start seeing the bigger picture.

Paul and Silas could have zoomed in and complained about their circumstances. ‘God, we cast out a demon and this is what we get? We’re on a missionary journey and we get beaten and thrown in jail? Instead of “watching our back” our backs are bleeding from a beating!‘   They could have complained till the cows came home. But they made a choice to worship God in spite of their external circumstances.

Here’s what worship and praising God does. It restores our spiritual equilibrium. It helps you regain your perspective. It enables you to find something right to praise God about even when everything seems to be going wrong.  This kind of Worship and praise is zooming out and refocusing on the big picture.

Rather than out problem, we can focus on the fact that two thousand years ago, Jesus was beat for us and died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin. It’s refocusing on the fact that God loves me when I least expect it and least deserve it. It’s refocusing on the fact that God is going to get me where God wants me to go. It’s refocusing on the fact that I have eternity with God to look forward to in a place where there is no trouble, mourning, sorrow or pain.

Worship like this helps us refocus on the fundamentals of our faith. And here is what happens:   God restores the joy of our salvation. We regain our spiritual equilibrium.  Paul and Silas were in a bad place and their bodies probably hurt real bad, but despite that, they almost seem happy. They were happy because they were focused on the Lord and worshipped Him even in this dungeon.

Is it that easy? Absolutely not! Nothing is more difficult than praising God when everything seems to be going wrong. It seems like we like to focus on our troubles, or even brag about them. But one of the purest forms of worship is praising God even when you don’t feel like it because it shows God that your worship isn’t based on your circumstances, rather our Worship and praise is based on His character and your trust in Him.

Another problem is, many of us are so out of tune with God. We hardly even think about Him all week long. So when trouble hits, He is the last one we think about turning to.    Putting on an attitude of worship and praise will manipulate our circumstances and redirects our thought process into something positive. Look at what it did for Paul and Silas.

Victor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor who wrote about his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. He wrote that every thing was taken away from the prisoners. They were stripped of their clothing, their pictures, and their personal belongings. They even took away their names and gave them numbers. Frankl was number 119,104.

He said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

I’m absolutely convinced that the most important choice you make every day is choosing your attitude. Your internal attitudes are more important than your external circumstances. The outcome of your life and state of being will be strongly determined by your outlook on life.

If you have a critical or complaining spirit you’ll complain till the day you die. Your life will get worse and worse because you’ll accumulate more and more negative experiences. But if you have a praiseful and worshipful spirit,  life will get better and better. Why? Because you accumulate positive memories.

At the end of the day, one way or the other, your focus will determine your reality! Paul and Silas were in prison. Their bodies were chained. But you can’t chain the human spirit.  That’s what Victor Frankl discovered in the concentration camp. That’s what Paul and Silas modeled two thousand years ago. Their bodies were chained and in stocks, but their spirits soared.

I would have loved to hear to hear their prayers and songs that night.  I can’t help but believe that they sang with a conviction which caused their fellow prisoners to listen as they praised God with their voices! And that choice to worship set off a chain reaction which led to conversions.

Albert Einstein said, “You can’t solve a problem on the level it was created.” I think problems created on a human plane there were solved on the supernatural plane. That’s what happens when we praise and worship God. It changes the spiritual atmosphere. It charges the spiritual atmosphere.

I don’t think Paul could have planned this miraculous jailbreak. To make a long story short, there is an earthquake. The prisoners are set free, but they don’t leave! The jailer who is about to kill himself gets saved and his entire family is baptized in the middle of the night.

You can’t script that kind of thing.. But when you worship God like this in the worst of Circumstances you never know what is going to happen. Worship and this kind of praise sets the stage for God’s intervention. This kind of praise and Worship causes spiritual earthquakes that can change the topography of your life and others. It may not change your circumstances. But it will change your life.

Napoleon Hill said, “Every negative event contains within it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”  Praise and Worship is a way we stay positive in negative circumstances. And it’s not a placebo! A Band-Aid, it’s reality!  No matter how bad things get, as a follower of Christ, I stil have eternity in heaven to look forward to! My pain may be real, but so is heaven.

The good news is that this reality is temporary. That reality will last forever!  The key is focusing on the right reality!

What I hope you learn from this Lesson: 

1. That people like Paul and Silas who sing in prison are men who cannot be imprisoned.

It was impossible to imprison Paul and Silas’ heart. Their bodies may be in jail – but they weren’t.

Later Paul would write saying, “To keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud. Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”  2 Corinthians 12:7-10

2. We can learn that men who worship and sing at midnight like this are men who see beyond their circumstances. They realize that they are citizens of a land that has no night, no pain, no trouble. The Lord is their light and they’ll always be free even in chains.

3. We can also learn that men who sing and worship when they go through difficult trials can make a huge impact on others.  No one seems to like people who whine complain all the time. Rather they are drawn to people with a happy positive attitude, like a moth to light on a dark night.