"Praise ye the LORD. I will praise the LORD with my whole heart in the assembly of the upright, and in the congregation. The works of the LORD are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. His work is honorable and glorious: and his righteousness endureth forever. He hath made his wonderful works to be remembered: the LORD is gracious and full of compassion." Psalm 111: 1-4 KJV.
I love the Psalms. I love the raw honesty of David and the other Psalmists. I love how they all poured their hearts out to God, and I love how God gave us those prayers to be able to relate to. It is so important that we are honest when we talk to God, and the Psalms reflect that so well. They also show how worthy the Lord is of our worship, and the verses we are looking at this week are a great example of that.
The first thing we learn here is that we are to praise the Lord with our whole hearts. We cannot halfway worship God and expect Him to completely bless us. It has never worked that way. Even in Old Testament days, God asked for His people to give Him their all, and it is no different now. Verse 1 also says that we could praise Him in the congregation: this section proves that we should not be ashamed to worship God. We should not care who is watching or what anyone thinks when it comes to how we worship our Jesus. If you want to really experience the Holy Spirit in a powerful way, you must praise the Lord in the congregation with ALL of your heart, every bit of it.
Verses 2-4 discuss the work of the Lord and really lift that work up. I know that when I am worshipping, it comes from a thankful heart. I cannot help but thank God for my family, friends, health, etc. We should no doubt praise God for who He is, but we should also praise Him for what He has done and will do. The psalmist here states that His righteousness endures forever, which references the future. There is nothing wrong with thanking the Lord for the blessings He will give in the future because it shows we trust His faithfulness.
We see in verse 4 that it ends with naming some of the traits of God. He is gracious and full of compassion. This goes back to what I said earlier about worshipping God for who He is. God is God. That alone deserves worship and complete adoration. He created us; we are indebted to Him forever just for that simple reason. And what is so cool to me is that He is not just a Creator, He is a Father. He is FULL of compassion: He loves us. He does not have to be a Lover, but He chooses to be.
What we see in this Scripture is that when we worship, we need to fix our eyes on Jesus. We need to let go of the things of the world and give Him our all. We need to praise Him for what He has done, what He will do, and who He is. He is more than worthy of it.
