Ugly Praise

As you know, I’m not one to post other folks’ words in my blog too often, but when I do, it’d be best if you sat up and took notice.


The following is an excerpt from Jentezen Franklin's sermon "Ugly Praise" a deep soul-wrenching teaching on Rachel and Leah and the line of the Lion of Judah.


I listened to this on the way home from work a couple of days ago, and almost had to pull my car over to raise some Judah of my own!


Click Here to Hear the whole message, or enjoy an excerpt of the message below.

Now I will praise him. You cannot produce enough works or self-righteousness to get God to join you. When you can’t see God, when you can’t hear God, when you can’t feel God there’s one thing you’re supposed to do, you’re supposed to give birth to Judah which means praise.

When you make up your mind now, not when things get better, or when it looks like you’ve got the majority on your side. No, Now, you make up your mind that you’re going to give birth to praise, then suddenly God hears you, he sees you. As long as you tell God about all that you’ve been doing right, he’s going to say “it’s not by works.”

But when you shift and say “I’m going to give birth to Judah,” when you say “I’m gonna praise the Lord,” God the husband will then see you, hear you, join himself to you.

He is your source your healer, your deliver your God. Notice the pretty sister didn’t give birth to Judah. It was the ugly situation that brought out Judah.

When life is pretty and pleasant, you can praise God then and that’s a good thing to do. But when everything is ugly and you’ve been rejected and put down, but right in the middle of it you say, “NOW I will praise the Lord, I’m not going to be depressed, or go around talking about how miserable I am, or how bad things are. But I’m going to go around talking about the fact that you’re my God and you died for me and you’re coming back for me and you are all I need.”

You can praise him when life is pretty, but it took the ugly to give birth to Judah. After she gave birth to Judah, Judah had a son named Jesse and Jesse had a son named David and David had a son named Nathan and Nathan had a daughter named Mary and Mary had a baby named Jesus, the Lion of the tribe of Judah.



Inside your praise is your deliverance, your victory, your needs met and the worst thing you can do when you have a need is to sit around waiting to see something, or waiting to hear something before you praise, or waiting for everything you need to hook up. Now if you wanna give birth to a miracle. If you want our heavenly Father to join himself to you, then you have to in ugly situations in life be like Job, the Lord gives, children dead, family dead, finances messed up. The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, now I will praise the Lord, blessed be the name of the Lord.