Our Scripture reading for this Sunday is Psalm 146.
“Praise the Lord,” the Psalmist proclaims, “Praise the Lord, O my soul. I will praise the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.”
In his book, “Praise Habit,” David Crowder writes:
We naturally understand praise. As kids, we talk about our favorite toys; later we praise pizza and football players. Kids just know how to enjoy things. They give themselves fully to whatever has a hold on them. Remember as children how we would fearlessly hold up our favorite toy and petition anyone who was in close proximity to behold it? “Look, Mom, look!”
We instinctively knew what it was to praise something. It’s always been in us. We were created for it. It’s part of who we are.
So often we are quick to praise ourselves, praise our kids, praise our human leaders, praise our new things … but praise God? When things are going well, maybe, but when things aren’t going well it’s tough to praise the Lord.
“Praise the Lord!” the Psalmist encourages us. Doug Bratt, a commentator for the Center for Excellence in Preaching, explains that praising God isn’t about being thankful to God for God’s gifts of food and good health, praise is about recognizing who God is. Praise is about giving everything we are and have back to God who gave it to us in the first place.
Praise is surrender.
When we surrender that to God, we can praise Him in all circumstances. Praise isn’t only something we do on Sunday’s, or when we listen to Christian music in the car, or when we pray, or when we read the bible. Praise is something we do all the time. When we wake up, when we eat breakfast, when we work, when we sit through meetings, when we enjoy fellowship with friends and family – Praise the Lord!
The challenge is for us to remind ourselves, as the Psalmist does, to praise God as long as we live. It`s easy for us to direct our praise elsewhere but it belongs only to God. Even something as simple (and as difficult) as the way we live our lives is an opportunity for us to direct praise to God.
As David Crowder said: We instinctively knew what it was to praise something. It’s always been in us. We were created for it. It’s part of who we are.
Let's make it our habit to praise the Lord.