Today, as I was reading in Jeremiah, I came across these words.
Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise. (Jeremiah 17:14, NIV)
For as long as I can remember, I’ve struggled internally when someone says to me, “Praise the Lord!” I can distinctly remember the emotional reaction I felt when a life-long family friend looked at me and said, “Praise the Lord, Eddie!” I cringed on the inside – not wanting to “praise the Lord.” Nearly three decades later I still “feel” resistance within me when I hear that phrase, and it bothers me.
We do a great disservice to those who are already Christ-followers, and to those who are not, when we focus only on behavior that is displeasing to God. The real issue, the real wound between us and God, is an attitude of not wanting to let God be God. We don’t want to surrender control. We want to think what we want to think and do what we want to do. We are too full of ourselves and convinced of our own self-importance to acknowledge a relationship of dependency upon God. That’s why my internal reaction when someone encourages me to “praise the Lord” bothers me. What is it telling me about how I am dealing with that attitude of self-sufficiency that is at the root of every sinful thought and act?
Genuine praise of God, or the lack of authentic praise, is an indication of what place God holds in our lives. To praise God is to give him credit; to lift him up. To praise God is to acknowledge who he is and, therefore, who we are. He is God; we are not. So when I sense hesitancy or reluctance within myself to give God praise, then I have to take a moment to wonder what’s going on in me that I would not want to acknowledge God as God!
I hope my resistance to someone telling me to “praise the lord” has more to do with how those words might have been abused in my past rather than with me not wanting to give God his rightful place in my life. I don’t seem to have the same resistance when I acknowledge God’s greatness in other ways. Still, since I am human, infected with the same tendencies as every other mortal on the planet, I know resistance to letting God be God is always lurking somewhere within me; preventing me from being in a right relationship with him and experiencing the good gifts that come through that relationship; gifts like healing and salvation.
Fortunately, that very attitude is why Jesus died. He died, not only for our forgiveness of it, but to render its negative influence in our lives powerless. It is precisely because we struggle with a willingness to let God be God that he died.
With this in mind, is it possible that our praise of God is not just an emotional or mental response to God? Could it also be that scripture repeatedly encourages, even commands, us to praise God for the benefit we derive from it? After all, does God really need our praise?
God does not need our praise, and he loves us unconditionally. Therefore, God’s instructions to us in scripture always contain benefit for us. When we praise God, whether we feel like it or not, it functionally helps us to let God be God of our lives. It deals with the root attitude, from which all sinful thoughts and activities in our lives flow, and reminds us who God is and who we are to be. Perhaps the praising of God is not just intellectual or emotional response. Perhaps it is also a spiritual discipline; a gift God has given to us to practice so that he can enter more fully into our lives. If that’s the case, then there is only one thing to say or do. Let’s PRAISE THE LORD!
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