Praise Him! - Ps. 147

"How good it is to praise to sing praises to our God! How delightful and how right!" Ps. 147:1

We talked about prayer at length in our small group this week. Part of the focus was based on perspective: Were we just coming with our list of requests, or were we actually spending time with our Lord and Savior? Obviously the desire is for the latter, but if this were the case, our conclusion was that a disproportionate amount of our time with him would be spent in praise. In fact, if we REALLY considered the enormity of the being we were approaching, many of us agreed that we would basically be speechless! But at the very least we would be praising our God more than we would be asking for stuff. How simple Ps. 147 is. How delightful and right is it to praise our God. We get an indication that the writer of this psalm is living through the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and decided to simply start praising God for his awesomeness. Amongst other things, he concludes that it is "good," "delightful" and "right." I find that when I praise God for an extended period that, increasingly, this is how I feel. It is obviously "right," but importantly, it starts feeling good and delightful -- I actually start smiling! What is that all about? I think it is about piercing the facade of the cares of this world, and tapping into what is REALLY real. I think I need to do it more.

God, how amazing you are that you would choose to love me. Help me to tap into you for power and perspective on a daily basis. Keep me from believing any lie that tells me that there isn't time or to do it on my own. I desire to depend only on you.

Today's reading: Zech. 13-14; Ps. 147; Lk. 15