Tag Archives: praising the Lord

PRAISES FOREVER!… Psalm 146

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I must admit it.  Can’t deny it any longer– as much as I’d like to.  No hiding.  Need to bring it out into the open.  What gives?  This sounds serious.  It is.  My prayer life is in shambles.  Too many requests, begging God to act and give me what I want.  After all, I know best!  So I’d like to think!  Seriously, here’s the rub.  Praise needs to be front-and-center in my prayer life.

Why not read those last five psalms?  None are long.   You’ll see what I mean.  Like sturdy bookends, ‘Praise the Lord’, begins and ends each of those soaring songs.  At the very beginning, it’s praise time.  At the very end, it’s all about praise to God.  Nothing less.  That’s what I need.  More praise to the Lord.  More appreciation.  More thanks to Jesus.  More gratitude for the Holy Spirit.

Here’s something that none of us want to be– a phony.  Saying some nice words to God, but actually being manipulative, trying to make ‘brownie points’ with Him, hoping to grab some ‘goodies’ for us.  Know what I mean?  But we don’t want to be sham, counterfeit, self-centered Christians.  Do we?   That’s why I want more ‘hallelujah’s’ in my day…and night.

Hallelujah!  The Hebrew word for ‘praise the Lord’.   ‘Jah’ is the shortened form for God’s name, ‘Yahweh’.  ‘Hallal’ is the verb ‘to praise’.  So, ‘praise Yahweh!’  That’s it!   The Hebrew word ‘hallal’ has a bit of an edge to it.  Yes, it means to praise, but it also carries the connotation of ‘to shine’ and ‘to boast’, to ‘rave about and celebrate’.

That’s where the rub comes in.  Most of praise in this world shines below the clouds.  Rarely above.  Recently we endured a ‘temperature inversion’, as the meteorologists call it.  Where the warmer air above traps the colder air below, giving us dirty air and fog.  Rarely happens, but we had it for almost a week.  Too bad the ‘temperature inversion’ of our selfishness and self-absorption isn’t likewise as rare.   It’s epidemic.  Praise… of ourselves.  Wonderment… at human control over all of life.  What man can do.  Thanks for what money can buy.

God deserves all our praise.  I want to bookend my life with His praises.  From start to finish.   Beginning to end.  Who cares what others may think?  Who cares when we get laughed at and mocked?  Too bad, so sad.  Makes me think– maybe God cares.  Maybe He loves to hear His children singing His praises all day long!  Maybe He matters more than anything else.  No maybe about it.  None whatsoever!

Prayer:  Thank you, Lord, for all you are.  We want to praise you all day long.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

 

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT… Psalm 146

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What do you most like to do in life?  Maybe your job (yeah right, you say!), or a hobby or helping at a food bank or being with your children/grandchildren?   I am almost never, ever bored because there are so many interesting things to do.  If I were to list them, you might throw up your hands and say what a dull man John really is!  We’re all different in so many ways. What grabs you, may have no interest whatsoever for me.

Psalm 146 has something for all of us.  Like what?   How about praising our Lord?  The final five psalms in our Bible are all ‘praise songs’.  Each begins and ends with “Praise the Lord”, which is but one word in Hebrew.  A familiar one–‘Hallelujah’.

‘Hallelu’–Praise, ‘Ya’–Yahweh.  Praise the Lord!  Praise all through your day.  As the psalmist says, ‘I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being”.  Whatever time we have left in this world, fill it with uplifting praises to our Lord.   We’ll be singing His praises for all eternity, so why not get started now?

They say that this life is no dress-rehearsal.  But maybe, in some ways, it is.  When I sang lead with a Gospel quartet called ‘Livin’ Harmony’, we would practice and practice,  rehearse and rehearse…until we felt comfortable with the words and music.  Took lots of time and effort, feeling like the proverbial ‘grind, grind, grind of the grindstone’.  But the end result was worth it.  The audience could enjoy what they would not have if we had not worked hard to make it as good as we could.  Practice made perfect…well,  almost!

In the same way, you can tell when you’ve spent time through your day praising and thanking the Lord.  Others probably can sense it also.  Since we’ll be praising Him for all eternity, why not start right now?  Why not…even when you feel quite the opposite?   When you’d rather shake your fist at Him in disappointment, hurt or anger.  Praise Him anyway.   Practice now.  Do it.  Will come in handy later.  Practice will make perfect in the ‘sweet by and by’…with Him who is worthy of all our praise.

 

Prayer:  Lord, we praise you today.  Every day.  All day.  Day in and day out.   In Jesus’ Name.  Amen.