July 27
“Bless the LORD, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits; Who pardons all your iniquities; Who heals all your diseases; Who redeems your life from the pit; Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion; Who satisfies your years with good things, So that your youth is renewed like the eagle.” (Psalm 103:1-5)
So what are some tips and strategies for leopards changing their spots, for those of us who are seemingly by nature negative and critical to become those who are characterized by rejoicing and giving thanks? The verses from Psalm 103 above are a good place to start. The Psalmist practices two things: blessing the Lord, and not forgetting His benefits. Maybe one could think of this as general praise for God and specific praise for what He has done for us in particular.
The Psalmist blesses God and utters words of overflowing, heart bursting praise. You can almost feel his whole being getting involved when he invokes his soul to do the praising. Not just with his mind and intellect is he reflecting on God’s attributes, but he brings his soul into it as well. And not just mind and soul but he invokes everything within him, his heart, his spirit, his body, his will, and anything else that might be inside him. David sets the standard of how we ought to praise God – by throwing everything we are into it – just like he demonstrated when he danced before the ark, and just like he demonstrated when he conceived and made provisions for a great temple to be built, so that God would have a house of praise for generations to come.
Think about how much praise David facilitated for God by his words and deeds! What an impact for generations which continues to this day! All because he praised God from the bottom of his heart with everything he had in him. Do I praise God like that? Do I thank Him and praise Him until I am bursting at the seams? Am I the kind of person whose praise and appreciation for God and others is uncontainable and bursts out at the seams? Unfortunately, I am not. But I want to be! And I intend to be. God deserves nothing less than this from us, each and every day.
David did something else in this psalm that facilitated praise to God: he began mentioning specific things for which God was worthy to be praised. David didn’t stop with generalities, he got specific and named things out loud. He mentions huge and essential things (like “pardons all your iniquities,” and “redeemed your life from the pit”) and lesser things (“who heals all your diseases,” “who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion, who satisfies your years with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle”). David covered all the bases with his praise.
When is the last time you praised God out loud, bursting at the seams, for His eternal life that He gave to you through faith in Christ Jesus? For those of you who have been Christians for a while, when is the last time you thought about what it would be like in this life to be without God, without hope of eternal life, without forgiveness of sins, without knowledge of God and His good will for us in Christ, and what it would be like to spend eternity in hell? Remember His forgiveness of sins and do not think it a small matter to be taken for granted. Think hard and long on what eternal life really is and what His plucking you out of an eternity in hell means for you. It is everything, is it not? Nothing else in this life matters in comparison to that. Nothing.
If we just contemplated these things more often, we would give God the praise He deserves and do much less grumbling and complaining about what we lack. And we would avoid many temptations along the way.