PRAISING GOD
This Psalm is dedicated to praising God. God is worthy of our praise for who He is and what He has done. The Psalmist writes, “Praise the Lord! Praise God in His sanctuary; praise Him in His mighty expanse. Praise Him for His mighty deeds. Praise Him according to His excellent greatness…Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord!”
Praising God is not a natural characteristic for mankind. The natural state of mankind is to live in sin and reject God. We cannot truly praise God until we love God. We cannot love God until we desire to live according to His guidance for us. Furthermore, we cannot know how God would want us to live unless we read and understand the Word of God, the Bible. Unfortunately, we will have no desire to read the Bible unless we believe it to be true.
How do we come to a point of believing the Bible to be true? God gives us the desire and the ability to believe His Word. Coming to the point of believing God’s Word begins with believing in God, that He exists.
The Bible says that ‘the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.’ When we believe that God exists and understand that God has the power to punish us for our sinful behavior, we learn to have a healthy fear of Him. We then start to live our lives in a way that we try to avoid sin. It is not easy.
BELIEVING IN JESUS
When we try to live rightly before God, He will then draw us to believe in Jesus. We are not able to believe in Jesus unless God enables us to do so. The Bible says that ‘no one comes to Jesus unless the Father draws them.’
Once we believe in Jesus, we then gain a desire to read and understand God’s Word, the Bible. As we read the Bible and try to live our lives accordingly, we will then desire to praise God for who He is and what He has done.
I believe that praising God is the final stage of our spiritual development. Praising God is an open expression of one’s love for God. We should praise God frequently and openly in the presence of others at appropriate times and occasions. Praising God should come to be a natural and delightful thing for us.
