A 5-year-old girl was sitting at the breakfast table one morning and, in between bites of sugary cereal, she sang with one hand in the air and the other cradling her spoon. Her mom asked her what she was doing. “I’m praising God, Mama.” Then, in a huff of overly dramatized exhaustion, she dropped her hand on the table saying, “But sometimes praising God is hard. My arms get sooooo tired.”

Do you realize how true that statement is? There are definitely times when praising God is easy… Blessings are realized, we feel close to God, there’s so much good things going on.

But then there are times when it is almost exhausting to lift up praises to God. Life wears us down, people are taken away from us, things seem to end up in failure. Maybe you are in a season right now when praise just gets stuck in your throat and, like that little girl, you drop your arms on the table, crying out: “It's too hard!”

We are coming to the conclusion of this amazing letter to the Hebrew believers. And in the midst of the doctrine it teaches, we can see that ultimately what the Author is demonstrating is how the new covenant through the death and resurrection of Jesus is actually designed to lead God’s people into a new way of worship. Previously the Hebrews had been burdened with fulfilling the Mosaic Law, but by his sacrifice and resurrection, Jesus fulfilled those impossible standards and opened the way for the Holy Spirit to indwell believers and write the Divine Law on their hearts.

And if this is a new way of worship, then through that same Holy Spirit at work in our lives to get rid of the old self, the sinful nature, we are led into this lifestyle of worship.