Tuesday, July 6: Praise the Lord!

Whenever I feel down, or that the world is taking me for a rough ride, I reflect on the Book of Job, which Bible scholars postulate was the first book of the Bible ever written. God described Job as His most righteous servant on the earth, yet the Lord allowed him to be attacked strongly by Satan. Most of us know the pain associated with burying a parent, someone who brought us into this world and shared every step of our walks while here. Yet the exception to that rule occurs with the people who have to bury their children. There is no greater pain on this earth. That being said, Job’s 10 children died one fateful afternoon in a tornado. What was Job’s response? He praised the Lord! No wonder he was called the most righteous servant on the earth! Most of us struggle to praise the Lord when the slightest issues arise in our lives! We should praise the Lord in everything, as we know that God has a perfect plan in each of our lives!


8 Oh, give thanks to the LORD!
Call upon His name;
Make known His deeds among the peoples!
9 Sing to Him, sing psalms to Him;
Talk of all His wondrous works!
10 Glory in His holy name;
Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the LORD!
11 Seek the LORD and His strength;
Seek His face evermore!
1 Chronicles 16:8-11


We can praise the Lord in our words to Him, yet we also can praise the Lord in our actions to others. Do you think it glorifies God when we speak of His wondrous deeds? If the Lord lives in your heart, you cannot help but tell others of the miracles He has performed in your life! Let’s see what Jesus said about the relationship that exists between the mouth and the heart:


Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
Matthew 12:34


When the verse in 1 Chronicles 16 reminds us to “Seek His face evermore,” it speaks of the closeness that God desires from each of us. As much as I enjoy writing this devotional, when I send it out each day, it is not the same as looking into each of your eyes to see how you are receiving it. At the same time, you cannot look at my face and see if I am exhibiting true joy. But that face-to-face relationship is what God desires from all of us. He wants intimacy! If we know God in an intimate way, we will understand the lengths that He went to so that we would feel His love, even though we should be separated from Him because of our sin. That gives us the greatest reason to praise Him…that He forgave us!

It is interesting that one of the Hebrew words for praise is also the same word used for confession, yadah (יָדָה). While praise and confession may appear to be unrelated, they are closely related when you understand that confession doesn’t really refer to the daily sins, but instead, our confessions to God that we are completely overrun by sin and unworthy to be allowed into His presence. That certainly makes us feel more like praising Him, for our access to Him has nothing to do with who we are and everything to do with who He is. It has nothing to do with what we have done and everything to do with what He did!


We love Him because He first loved us.
1 John 4:19


Agape is the word used for love both times in the verse above, which is a self-sacrificing love, contrasting to brotherly or sexual love. Yet the most telling part of that verse is the first occurrence of the word, reflecting our love for God, is in the active tense, while the second occurrence, reflecting God’s love for us, is in the Greek aorist tense. That tense refers to an event that happened at one moment in the past. When was the time that God demonstrated His love for us? It was at the cross! That is why we praise Him. He died so that we might have abundant life. If you love Him, tell someone about that love! And most importantly, praise Him for everything!


O LORD, there is none like You, nor is there any God besides You, according to all that we have heard with our ears.
1 Chronicles 17:20