You and I were created to praise the Lord. The more I study scripture, the more I see how important this is to God. You see it from the very beginning. Every time God created something, He declared that it was good. It seems clear that we should follow His example and praise Him for how great His creation is. The psalms are full of praise. Moses, David, Daniel, Jacob, Abraham, Joseph, and Mary made a habit of praising the Lord. The Lord’s Prayer begins with a declaration of praise. The disciples and Paul and New Testament saints praised the Lord even when doing so was threatening to their lives. We are told to rejoice always…even in our suffering.
At the end of the Bible, we see in Revelation that every tongue and tribe and nation will praise the Lord forever and ever.
We are told to confess our sins and love our neighbors and honor the Sabbath and tithe and forgive and do lots of things, but more than anything else, we are told to praise The Lord.
The most important thing is to invest in our eternal relationship with God through the means of praise. Praising Him is not dependent on how well things are going or how good we feel. We are to praise Him before we see how He has “used it for good”. We praise Him because He is good and He is God.
We must always remember that the only thing we ever contributed to our relationship with Jesus is our sin… that’s it. We should never forget how He painfully paid for our contribution. He is worthy of praise for His sacrifice and power over death.
We are to thank Him for all the gifts He has generously given us, and we are to praise Him for being generous and kind and gentle and forgiving.
When I don’t feel very “praisey”, it is because I am focused on me or the gifts He has given me, or the painful effect that sin has dealt on my life. My soul is eternal and I will be praising God for eternity; my life is out of focus if the temporal keeps me from praising The Lord. When our lives are crowded with junk, we need to remove what is junking it up. We can get blinded by junk and lose sight of the savior.
I have also learned that I can and should clean out my life closet of the junk that is crowding it up. A couple times a year, I clean out the closets in my house. I throw or give away the things that don’t fit, are worn out or just not worn.
I have begun to do this with “my life closet”. I have purposely cleaned out things that wear me out or have no value. I have had to clean things up and let some unclean things go. When we clean out our clothes closets, we see all our pretty clothes and we smile over how neat and organized they are. Our lives will never be totally neat and organized, but when we clean out our life closets, our vision is not cluttered by the overcrowded mess of things that don’t fit in the eternal.
We were created to praise the Lord, and if we are not doing that, our lives are overcrowded. Oh precious friends, get to cleaning. You were created for more than an overcrowded life. You are precious and valuable. Praise the Lord for declaring that to be true. Praise Him today… no matter what. It is time to get started. Praising Him is something we will be doing forever.
“The Lord is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; He is my God, and I will praise Him; My father’s God, and I will exalt Him.” Exodus 15:2 (NKJV)
Let All Things Praise the Lord
“Praise the Lord!
Praise God in His sanctuary; Praise Him in His mighty firmament!
Praise Him for His mighty acts; Praise Him according to His excellent greatness!
Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet; Praise Him with the lute and harp!
Praise Him with the timbrel and dance; Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes!
Praise Him with loud cymbals; Praise Him with clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord!” Psalm 150 (NKJV)
“Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.” Hebrews 13:15 (NKJV)
“After these things I heard[a] a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, “Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor and power belong to the Lord[b] our God! 2 For true and righteous are His judgments.” Revelation 19:1-2 (NKJV)