Verse for the week of September 6th:
‘I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.’ (Psalm 146:2)
The dictionary defines praise as ‘to express adoration of; glorify’ (Doubleday Dictionary). This may sound basic to many people, but this verse serves as a good reminder for all Christians. Our lives should be a life of glorifying God. This can be easy when our lives are going well and things seem to be going our way. In good times it may come easy to sing praises to God. But the Psalm encourages us to do this all the days of our lives—in the good times and in the bad.
How is it that we praise God?
The first thing that people may think about is going to worship or singing hymns/spiritual songs. But praising God is much more then this.
When I think about how we are to praise God a story that comes to my mind is about Michelle when we lived in South Carolina while I attended seminary. Michelle worked at a print shop. One day soon after she started working, a man came in and did not know Michelle (duh, she was new to the area). His first question to Michelle was: ‘Who’s your daddy?’ This question took Michelle by surprise. Michelle simply stated that he would not know her father as he did not live in this area. Someone at Michelle’s work told her why this man asked the question. The reason is that the man wanted to know who her father was—for if her father was a good man, then Michelle must be a good person. For in his mind, Michelle was a reflection of her parents and her parents would tell him a lot about Michelle.
This relates to praising God in the sense that if people know that we are Christians, then everything that we do communicates a message about God. For how we act, how we speak, how we respond to others communicates a message—and what message are we proclaiming: a life of praise to God or not?
Praising God encompasses all that we do and say and is not in any way limited to our behavior on Sunday morning while we are sitting in a pew. Rather this Scripture verse calls us to be intention with how we live our lives—and seek to live in a way that glorifies God in all that we say and do.
How do you live out this Scripture? How do you praise God all the days of your life?
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