Praise the Lord from the earth, you creatures of the ocean depths, fire and hail, snow and clouds, wind and weather that obey him, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all livestock, small scurrying animals and birds, kings of the earth and all people, rulers and judges of the earth, young men and young women, old men and children. (148:7-12)
It is not hard to discern the theme of Psalm 148–”Praise the LORD!” In fact, I count ten times that the command is repeated in the fourteen verses of this psalm. In Hebrew, the command is “hallelujah.”
All of creation is praising the LORD. Everything is made by Him and reflects His glory and His character in some way. Psalm 148 invites us to join this chorus of praise. However, as humans created with free will, we are the one creatures on earth who can choose to ignore and disobey this command.
Scripture makes it clear that we were created to praise God, to worship Him, and if we choose not to worship God, we will inevitably worship something else. We are all worshippers. The perennial question is, “What are we worshipping?” What commands our attention, our energies, our focus, our time, our joy, our love? What is the things that you absolutely want or absolutely cannot live without? These are the things competing for your worship.
As I contemplated this fact this morning, I was struck by how fickle I am, how easily distracted, how easily sidetracked. I dart from one thing to another looking for joy and satisfaction. I know I am called to praise God. I know that praising Him is the place of my ultimate satisfaction. But sometimes I simply do not want to praise Him. I would rather pursue something else for awhile. I am reminded of the words of Paul in the midst of his own spiritual struggle…What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:24) We are all in the midst of this struggle and we must choose daily, moment by moment, to praise the Lord.
So what does it mean to praise God? I like acronymns so I challenged myself to think through what it means to praise God using the letters of PRAISE. Here is what I came up with:
To Pray to Him. To pray without ceasing constantly communing with Him in our heart and acknowledging our dependence on Him.
To Reverence Him. To fear Him, to respect Him, to recognize His holiness, His power and His sovereignty.
To Acknowledge Him. To thank Him for His daily gifts of grace.
To Imitate Him. To seek to model His holiness, His love, and His mercy in our daily lives. Since His mercies are new every morning, our mercies should be new every morning, extending grace and forgiveness to those around us.
To Sing to Him. To find good songs of praise and sing them to Him.
To Enjoy Him. To simply rest in His arms and allow ourselves to be loved by Him, to find pleasure in serving Him, following Him, and knowing Him.
When we pray, reverence, acknowledge, imitate, sing, and enjoy Him, we are lifting up His praise with the rest of creation.
Lord, tune my heart to join this chorus of praise today!