Dear Friends,
As a staff, we pray together twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and we have taken to reading one or more psalms before we pray. On Thursday it was Psalms 149 and 150. They both begin and end by telling us to ‘Praise the Lord’. In fact, the last five psalms all begin and end the same way.
Do God’s people really need to be told to praise him? Apparently they do! If you think about it, all the commans in the Bible instruct us to do things we are capable of and yet may fail to do (or else what’s the point in telling us?). Praising the Lord seems to be one of those things.
If we have trouble getting started in praising, Psalm 150 is a good place to start. It tells us where God is to be praised (“in his sanctuary” and “in his mighty heavens”), for what he is to be praised (“his acts of power” and “his surpassing greatness”), with what he is to be praised (I’ll leave you to read the list that begins with the trumpet and ends with cymbals), and by whom he is to be praised (“everything that has breath”). I reckon we can all find a starting-point for our praise somewhere there. Why not start now?…
Yours in Christ,
Chris Hobbs