At this week’s teen meeting, we started with a challenge about devotions by asking the teens how many days this week they had read their Bibles.  Sad to say, only one had read his Bible once; the rest hadn’t read at all.  You know the saying:

Seven days without the Bible, makes one weak!

Two of the teens had just recently trusted Christ at a week of revival meetings, and we had met with them a few days before to encourage them, even lending them two of our study Bibles to help them to get into the Word.

I was looking in my concordance for the verse about “falling seven times” when I came across this verse:

 “Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments.”              Psalm 119:164

That was a challenge to me!  Do I praise the Lord seven times a day?  I decided to find out.  The next day I placed a tally mark on the calendar by my computer every time that I praised God. (I only came up with five! 😦 )  AND, I almost forgot about the whole idea until I came into the bathroom that morning and saw the hand towel with the word ‘praise’ on it!  (Thank you, Walmart!)

How much do we praise our God?  It certainly isn’t for a lack of blessings that we do not praise Him.  So often our thoughts are consumed by the trials and activities of the day, that we find ourselves crawling into bed that night without one thought of our Heavenly Father’s interventions and blessings!

I challenge you to STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN for God’s presence.  He truly is everywhere!  We just don’t take the time to see Him! Perhaps a few reminders around the house would help: brightly colored sticky notes with the word PRAISE on them, for example!  All I know is that I was truly blessed when I took the time to praise God; and maybe today, I’ll hit seven!!!