Focus
Stop and thank God for being present with you today. Ask for God’s guidance as you hear God’s voice through scripture and the writer.
Read
Praise for God’s Goodness to Israel
To the leader. A Song. A Psalm.
1 Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth;
2 sing the glory of his name;
give to him glorious praise.
3 Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds!
Because of your great power, your enemies cringe before you.
4 All the earth worships you;
they sing praises to you,
sing praises to your name.” Selah
5 Come and see what God has done:
he is awesome in his deeds among mortals.
6 He turned the sea into dry land;
they passed through the river on foot.
There we rejoiced in him,
7 who rules by his might forever,
whose eyes keep watch on the nations—
let the rebellious not exalt themselves. Selah
8 Bless our God, O peoples;
let the sound of his praise be heard,
9 who has kept us among the living
and has not let our feet slip.
10 For you, O God, have tested us;
you have tried us as silver is tried.
11 You brought us into the net;
you laid burdens on our backs;
12 you let people ride over our heads;
we went through fire and through water;
yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.
13 I will come into your house with burnt offerings;
I will pay you my vows,
14 those that my lips uttered
and my mouth promised when I was in trouble.
15 I will offer to you burnt offerings of fatted calves,
with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams;
I will make an offering of bulls and goats. Selah
16 Come and hear, all you who fear God,
and I will tell what he has done for me.
17 I cried aloud to him,
and he was extolled with my tongue.
18 If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened.
19 But truly God has listened;
he has heard the words of my prayer.
20 Blessed be God,
who has not rejected my prayer
or removed his steadfast love from me.
Reflect
Praise God!
This is one of those phrases that we hear all the time in church and in our circles of Christian friends. I don’t know of anyone attending a church who could say that they had never heard anyone say this, yet I am afraid that, because of the frequency of its use, sometimes we
mindlessly utter it, or similar phrases, in our liturgies and sing it in our hymns without connection.
This is unfortunate because offering meaningful praise, besides being pleasing to God, is a transformative spiritual practice for us. If we were to pause in our quiet time and attempt to list all the praisable aspects of God, we would quickly find that the sheer volume of this list would
exceed our capacity to complete it. How humbling this is! How grateful and thankful we are when we recognize the magnitude of the Lord’s blessing.
In our text today, the Psalmist extends the invitation to “Come and see what God has done!/his awesome deeds for mankind!” Let us pause to see for ourselves what God has done in creation, in the story of humanity, and in our own story, and then let us bear testimony before God and others in praise of our God.
Pray
O God, let us be mindful of the good that you have done, and let us utter with our lips praise that is pleasing to you. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Go with God!
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