Dear brothers and sisters,
Praise the LORD, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits…
Psalm 103:1-2 (NIV)
How’s your prayer life? That’s always an uncomfortable question to be asked! Who is content with their prayer life? I’m not! And I don’t think I’ve every heard anyone respond, “Oh, it’s fine, thanks.” Perhaps just as discomforting is a similar question: How’s your praise life? How easy do you find it to praise God, whether gathered with others or on your own? In fact, do you praise God?
It seems, thankfully, the psalmist knew the same problem. And so he speaks to himself. We all speak to ourselves – a lot – and more than we realise. The question is, what are we telling ourselves? Good things, or not? The truth, or something else? Well, the psalmist is telling himself to “Praise the LORD, my soul.” That’s how he begins, and that’s how he ends. And then the whole psalm is taken up with giving reasons to praise his God. In other words, he gives himself a really good talking-to! Perhaps surprisingly he addresses the entire psalm to his soul, and none of it in actual praise to God (although it seems likely that he followed his own advice).
Interestingly, some of our best-known hymns follow the same pattern. For example, the first verse of “Crown him with many crowns” ends with us speaking to ourselves: “awake, my soul, and sing of Him who died for thee, and hail Him as thy chosen King through all eternity.” By the end of the final verse our souls have at last awoken to do what we’ve been urging ourselves to do all along and sing to the Lord, “all hail, Redeemer hail! for Thou hast died for me; Thy praise shall never, never fail throughout eternity.”
The Lord knows we need encouragement to praise him, and we need reasons, and so he provides them. So, if your praise life isn’t quite what it should be, or even if it is, why not turn to that hymn? It’s a ‘banger’! Or why not turn to Psalm 103? I’ll leave you to find all the reasons the psalmist gives for praising the Lord, but here are a few he gives us to begin with, a kind of summary list:
He “forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
[he] redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
[he] satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
Psalm 103:3-5 (NIV)
Yours warmly, in Christ,
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister)
24th July 2022