Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name.
Hebrews 13:15

There are many times that we feel distant from God. We find ourselves in situations in our life that we don’t understand. We begin to wonder if God is even there; if He was, why would He allow us to be going through these situations. When we look back through biblical scripture, we find many people that were in these same situations and yet they continued to praise God.

This verse in Hebrews talks about a sacrifice of praise. What is a sacrifice? Most of us understand the original act of sacrifice to God as being the offering up of burnt offerings. This most often meant the giving up some of one’s choicest animals in honor of God. They would have been the animals worth the most and would have provided the most return for one’s family. Given the choice, nobody really wants to give up the best of what they have, which is why it is called a sacrifice.

In Acts 16, on their journey to share the gospel, Paul and Silas were arrested in Philippi. After being beaten with wooden rods, they were thrown into prison; archaeologists today believe they have found this prison and it was a dark, windowless hole with no sanitary facilities. Their shredded backs would have been exposed to bare earth while their legs would have been spread widely apart as they were put into stocks, causing them excruciating pain. What would you do in that situation?

The bible tells us in Acts 16:25 that “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.” This was a sacrifice of praise. There doesn’t appear to be anything in those circumstances to rejoice about. They could just have easily sat there all night groaning in misery at the situation they found themselves in. Instead, they sang their praises to God.

When we offer a sacrifice of praise to God, we are bringing ourselves before Him whether we feel like it or not. Today you may be struggling with a situation that you don’t understand. Don’t let that distract you from praising God, who loves you beyond all measure. I encourage you to read the rest of the story in Acts 16 and find out what happened when Paul and Silas offered a sacrifice of praise in a time that they probably would not have felt like it.