Resounding Praise!
Psalm 146 (ERV)
1 Praise the Lord!
My soul, praise the Lord!
2 I will praise the Lord all my life.
I will sing praises to him as long as I live.
3 Don’t depend on your leaders for help.
Don’t depend on people, because they cannot save you.
4 People die and are buried.
Then all their plans to help are gone.
5 It is a great blessing for people to have the God of Jacob to help them.
They depend on the Lord their God.
6 He made heaven and earth.
He made the sea and everything in it.
He can be trusted to do what he says.
7 He does what is right for those who have been hurt.
He gives food to the hungry.
The Lord frees people locked up in prison.
8 The Lord makes the blind see again.
The Lord helps those who are in trouble.
The Lord loves those who do right.
9 The Lord protects strangers in our country.
He cares for widows and orphans,
but he destroys the wicked.
10 The Lord will rule forever!
Zion, your God will rule forever and ever! Praise the Lord!
What is Resounding Praise?
When we think about God and who He is, do we have a heart filled with joy? Do we get excited thinking about all He has done for us? Does the wonders of God’s creation make our breath stop at times? Sunsets, sunrises, an horse loping across the field, a hawk soaring overhead or the beauty of a smile, a warm hug…do any of those type of things cause us to smile with joy? That is essence is experiencing the works of God. Those wonderful days of peace and rest, the times He answers our heart’s cry, the manifestation of His holy presence in our midst all should make our hearts expand with praise and thanksgiving.
Resounding praise is our response to His greatness. It is our exuberance and shouting out our wonder and praise at His mighty works in our lives. While we usually have a daily place of thanksgiving and wonder at His relationship with us, resounding praise is an outward and very expressive response used for those times when we are overwhelmed with how much He loves and cares for us. It can include shouting, singing, worshipping in song and just voice, dancing, jumping and even running with joy! All of our being is responding at one time to Him.
When we see someone responding like that and question their motives…we need to think about how much God has done for us. If we start thanking Him and listing the things He has done for us, the times He loved us through bad times and brought us out, He protected us from harm, held us close in times of grief, provided for our financial needs when we were at our wit’s end. We might just find ourselves joining in! We as believers in God and his son, Jesus need to be more responsive and expressive in our praise. Without the intervention of Jesus, we all would be lost. Let freedom of worship and praise resound in our midst.
The Bible says we should be like children. They don’t hold back, they fling themselves into life. We may have to be more childlike to enter into Resounding Praise. The Father God, does not hold back when blessing us, and we should not hold back when blessing Him back.
Psalm 8:2 (ERV)
2 From the mouths of children and babies come songs of praise to you.
They sing of your power to silence your enemies who were seeking revenge.
Matthew 18:2-4 (ERV)
2 Jesus called a little child to come to him. He stood the child in front of the followers. 3 Then he said, “The truth is, you must change your thinking and become like little children. If you don’t do this, you will never enter God’s kingdom. 4 The greatest person in God’s kingdom is the one who makes himself humble like this child.