Larry Truitt: Good morning. Well, when I was preparing for this, which was last week, I thought I do a word count and it tells me how long I speak. But I never read, so I always go over. But I said Cut this down to twenty minutes. I have nineteen. That is if I read it and I I have a hard time staying on reading, but we'll see what happens. Kyle was sharing my stumbling and falling. actually I didn't fall because I was caught before I fell. All I could think of was four hours in the emergency room because of the blood thinners I'm on, they told me if I fall that I have to go immediately to the emergency room. And I I could only think of four hours and he caught me and I thought that's good. And as coming home, this is the thought that stuck with me. If you cast stumble your or stub your toe or whatever on a rock, the angels would be there to help you. Well, it happened. I don't know, Joe Joe told me, he said, Well dad, you caught me a lot of times, so I got to catch you, so I'm okay. I didn't hit my head or anything, so that was good. But today I want to talk about praise. And the reason we're gonna do this is because what, December It is basically a time that you can share what God has done for you. the bottom line it's praise. You're thanking God for what He's done for you. So that's what we're gonna do here. Sixteen minutes. Bear with me. and we'll see if we can get through this. There's several ways that we can worship the Lord. We can sing to Him, we can speak His praise, or we can stand before one another and give a testimony of what His saving grace has done for us. And when we think about this, a lot of times in the songs that we sing. We have given praise to the Lord. The song Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Look what I've done. I've praised God and thanked Him for the same thing that's saving grace. And I'm telling what the Lord has done. And that's important. It's important that we do that. Today I want to share a song with you that When I was putting this together, I got to thinking, well, if I'm going to talk about praise and we're going to have a praise service, then I probably should be leaning by example and praising God. And so I took took some time and wrote a song and we're gonna hear that a little later on here. But Looking at Hebrews it says By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually that it is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to him. I want you to notice the first two words by him. And if you look at the verses before that, he's talking about Jesus, is who he's talking about, and how he suffered to sanctify the people, and he did that with his own life. And this is where we start our praise. We praise God. For what He has done for us in our spiritual life. That's where we start. We should thank God for the salvation provided to us through Jesus Christ. Now, when we look at praising God, we should be thinking about the things He has done for us. It's pretty simple. It really is. When you stop to think, What God has done in our life. Isn't it amazing? We take a lot of things for granted, like stubbl stumbling down the sidewalk and almost falling. We we could look at that and say, well, God had nothing to do with that, which would be easy to say, but I look at it and say, He rescued me. He rescued me because I All I can think of is four hours in the emergency room for them to tell me you're okay. Maybe I'd have been okay, I don't know. I was moving pretty fast toward the concrete. but God looks out after us. And a lot of times we take we take the things that we call it luck. y they were just lucky. I don't believe in luck. I don't believe in luck. I believe God takes care of us. I believe that. The scripture talks about how God protects the elect. I like to think I'm part of the elect. You know, I I want to make certain of that because this is what God has promised to do for us, is to take care of us. If you're stumbling around, he said, I'll be there. I'll be there. I have angels that's gonna stand there and take care of you. Well, that's nice to know. I haven't met them yet. Okay. And I don't have them tapping me on the shoulder saying, Hey, be a little more careful today. But this is this is what praise is about. Sharing what God has done for us. When we're praising God, we are glorifying what He has done and who He is. And that is so important. And and I I thank the Lord for the service today because we've had a lot of praise. We've had a lot of praise. Worship is praise. It's not the preacher standing up here preaching every Sunday. Worship is when we come together and we praise God for what He has done for us. We share those experiences with others. And as we think, well, this isn't really important, it's pretty minor in my life. I don't think I'm gonna share this, but if you share, others their lives are touched and And you don't know the impact that it it's gonna have on you. I I shared what happened on Facebook about me stumbling around and about falling and I th the response I got was unbelievable. Not the fact that I was stumbling around, but that there are people that need help. The the lesson I learned from that is people stumble and fall and there's nobody there to help. There's nobody there that is catching them or even if they do fall to help them up. And I think sometimes the church is kind of slow in helping people who have fallen. And There were people who were related to that. And I thought, well, maybe the Lord just needed me stumbling around so I could share that with others, that they could see that God does care for us, that He is there. When I I look at the scripture, the scriptures tell us of times that God was there. When they got ready to cross the Red Sea, people were desperate. They're looking behind them and here's Pharaoh's army coming. What do we do? God says, Don't worry about it, opens up the Red Sea, they walk across And he closes the Red Sea on the Egyptian army. You know what they did after that? They sang a song. They sang a song. And all of them joined together. There was a time when they were about ready to go to war. They weren't gonna win. They knew they weren't going to win. And they they didn't know what to do. And so what do they start? They started a song and they started singing of the great mercy of God and God opened up and took care of them. Isn't that amazing? Remere remember Mary, the mother of Jesus, when the angel came? Do you know Mary sang a song? She wrote a song and sang about what happened. And I I thought, well, maybe I could do a song. I got enough things happening in my life that I I need to thank the Lord for. So I I decided I would put this together and share this. it's praise the Lord. I didn't know what else to call it, just said praise the Lord. And it has to do with my personal experience with God. So it may relate to you, it may not, but I think Kyle's keying that up right now and we'll we'll see. Two weeks ago the church gathered around and prayed for healing. And I have to have blood work done about every other day. and I could I could see progress. And the first first blood work I had I was excited because I was improving and going from a stage five kidney failure, moving in the other direction was encouraging. And then the next blood test, things went from bad to worse. And I'm thinking, but Lord, what's going on? I I'm believing and trusting and this isn't going right. This This isn't this isn't good. So where are you? And the next one was a little better. the last one I had, I'm just about two and a half points off of being back to stage four. And that was between about two days. So there's improvement. I said if I got back to stage three, it it's a miracle. And I'm I'm still trusting. The Lord is answering prayer. I I remember the the story in the scripture where the Lord healed a lady and the healing started. It didn't say that she was healed immediately, but she began to get better. And so I'm looking at this, I'm in the get better. And things are are looking better. So I thank the Lord for that. I thank the Lord for that. When we come to praising the Lord. And giving him honor and glory for what he does, he honors us. He honors us. And I think it's important I I'm not I'm not sure what your stories are, but you need to share those. You need to share the story of what God has done for you. It doesn't matter how small and simple it may be, it has a major impact and you're thanking God and praising Him. And that's part of worship. And so we're gonna stop there. We have an opportunity coming up. Think about it. That you can share what God has done for you. It's always, always the best services when the preacher doesn't preach. I've been told that all my life, so So that's coming up. Come prepared, come expecting something, and God will do that for us. And He will bless us for honoring Him and praising Him. So worthy is the Lamb. Worthy is the Lamb. He is worthy of our praise. Let's bow our heads. Our Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for each one that has taken the time to worship you and praise and thanksgiving for what you have done in their life. And we just ask that you encourage each of us, Lord, to share what you have done, that we are a witness and a testimony to the greatness. of your love, your mercy and grace. We thank you for each one here and ask your blessings upon In thy name we pray. Amen.