We look in the wrong direction. At the earth. Horizontal.

We notice people God has filled with His Spirit and His blessings, and make them our “inspiration” — because they do set us great examples, and through them we can see what God can do in a life.

Then, too often, we go from horizontal to down — feeling incapable of lives so filled.

Yet all real inspiration comes ultimately from God, and begins with Who He is…

We look at gifts He gives us, and work to build gratitude.

Which is good and right, but difficult in flesh alone.

Again, we need to lift our eyes and heart: to the source from which all those good gifts come — and not just thank Him for the gifts, but praise Him for all He, the Source, is. In and of Himself. Period.

 

That’s when grace and glory and gladness stir inside, and rise and grow, and soon burst forth–

an exuberant lifted-high sacrifice of praise.

It began with a song. This song.

She sang it at the church. She sang it in her head and heart. And she sang it back home later.

The song had a seed. This seed: “Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find…” (…to bless, to praise, to worship the Lord).

And the seed words received a skeptical response, in this case from a little brother:

“No one can know ten thousand reasons,” he said.

I give you her inner response (in green):

That got me thinking.

I bet there are ten thousand reasons.

I bet there are ten thousand times ten thousand reasons.

I don’t know if it’s possible for me to know them all, but if it is, I want to.

I want to find ten thousand reasons. Ten thousand reasons to bless the Lord. Ten thousand reasons to just worship God.

I wanted to go deeper than that, though.

I’ve been learning a lot lately about how God-centric the Gospel is, how He does everything for His glory.

As of last night, I’ve counted 7239 gifts, 7239 reasons to worship God. And that is a good, and wonderful, and God-honoring thing,

But…

This time I want to count reasons to worship God for who He is — For the amazing things that He has done that I am completely incapable of. For His love and His justice. For parted waters and a sun that stood still in the sky.

I don’t want to stop giving thanks for the beautiful, everyday miracles, for the endless, abundant graces.

But I do want to dig even deeper,

To count something different,

To know Him even better.

So began her own self-challenge, to count “God-centric” reasons to praise and worship Him — ten each day of Lent, adding up to 400 by Easter. They had to be verifiable by scripture, not just something she “made up” from her head.

I read about this on her blog. (And you can, too, here.) And I thought, “What a great challenge!” and decided to take it up for myself. Mine got started way later, so my numbers are way behind hers, but I found, in any counting session, I could seldom stop at ten! Once reasons got rolling, they wanted to snowball, and was that ever glorious!

My intent: to keep going beyond Lent, and see if I can eventually count 10,000 reasons

Do you think there are that many? Want to help gather the praises together?

She added a link-up, so you can connect your counting posts. I didn’t see it right away. But I’ve been counting — not just gifts but reasons. And tomorrow I’ll be linking at Mary’s.

I hope you’ll join me, counting REASONS (you decide how many) to worship Him for all He is, with scripture references to verify. Wouldn’t it be great to see this get snowballing…!!

Link up for bloggers here.

{For readers who don’t blog, send Mary a comment listing your reasons and scripture refs.}

Let’s “make His praise glorious!”

[10,000 REASONS LINK-UP SPOT]

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8 thoughts on “Challenge 10,000! An Invite to Join in a Great Sacrifice of Praise

  1. Thank you so, so much for sharing this, Sylvia! I really am so blessed and humbled that my sharing of how this is changing my life is starting to spread. I hope God uses this 10,000 reasons challenge that He used to change me to change so many others, draw them closer to Him, all for His glory. It really is all Him. My small, imperfect words in my quiet corner of the Internet would never spread like this on their own. All His abundant grace, for His glory, His name’s sake, and I hope it really is His name that gets lifted high for this, not mine, because it’s definitely not me who’s doing this. God bless you! Keep counting!

  2. My pleasure, Mary. I would love to see this become a great and growing chorus of praise. I’ll be looking for a fresh link-up tomorrow, and will revise this post accordingly. If you don’t have time to write a Wednesday post, you could just post the linky with a sentence telling what it is.
    God bless it! And you!

  3. My friend Nancy B always says, “Praise be!” That seems fitting here. It is a glorious day in Pennsylvania!
    I am also stuck that the word praise is a homonym for prays. It sends my mind spinning, does it not, Word-Lover Sylvia?

    Off to serve, but first…worship and the Word with my DH, then we head for the vet. Shelly needs at least one tooth pulled.
    Love you,
    Dawn

  4. Thanks, “Shortybear” Denise. Hope you can join us in counting praise. And may your day be blessed.

  5. Hi Dawn. Funny that I never considered how “praise” and “prays” are homonyms. Yet praise does elevate the state in which one prays! Thanks for the cheerful tidbit, and may God specially bless your day. (I think today is your encouragement tea. Special prayers for that.)

  6. Hi Sylvia – an awesome challenge and one I will hop over and go check out. And yes, I believe there are 10000 reasons and more to thank, praise and bless the Lord! Thanks for linking this linky up here. So glad you did.
    God bless
    Tracy

  7. Hi Tracy,
    So glad that challenge stirs you. Hope it blesses you as much as it’s blessing me! Thanks much for stopping by and commenting.

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