If You Lose Everything, Will You Still Praise God?

Ministers Ken and Lesa Henderson recall a time when, after the economic recession of 2008, they lost everything. Yet they chose to continuously praise God despite their circumstances.

“We got sucked down in that financial collapse and we were really struggling,” Lesa says. “We lost our cars, our houses, absolutely everything. We had our furniture still, but we lost our homes. We were renting a place. It wasn’t a very good place. But we were grateful to have shelter.

“And we were actually driving around in our youngest daughter’s little beetle bug that we had bought her earlier. It was her first car. We called it Superman. It was bright red with yellow fenders, yellow hubcaps and blue on the door handles and mirrors. … She was gracious enough to let her parents borrow her car because her parents didn’t have a car. … But I remember we just kept trying to work on our faith and have a good testimony and a good word that we would speak. But praising God was very important during that time.”

It was an important time in which they were reminded that what matters most is they still had their family and relationship with God, Ken says on the Faith Works podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. God never failed to provide their basic necessities, including food. They even volunteered to help feed the homeless during that time.

“If praise is continually in your mouth, does that mean that only good happens in your life? Absolutely not. I mean, we know that bad things happen to good people,” Lesa says. “Not all things are good. Yet we know that the Scripture says that He works all things together for our good, but that doesn’t mean that only good things happen to us.

“And it’s very easy to praise Him when everything is going good and great. … But not so much when things aren’t going like we thought they should. But praise is an act of faith. And it’s probably one of the greatest acts of faith that we have when we can praise Him when things aren’t going at all like we hoped they would.”

To listen to more encouragement about rejoicing in Jesus even when circumstances are bad, click here for the entire episode titled “Anchored in Praise.”