Psalm 33:1
Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
Sing! Praise God! Rejoice!
We've read verses like this a lot over the past few weeks. Is it
starting to feel a little repetitive?! Perhaps it's not very surprising, since we are in the songbook of the Bible. We should expect songs of praise to God to be a big theme.
And it's certainly good for us to keep being reminded to
praise him. The world is always telling us to do all kinds of things - buy this! watch that! take more exercise! seize the day! Billions of pounds are invested in capturing our attention, and then encouraging us to do something/buy something/be something. But there's no ad campaign for praising God. Unless you've been VERY deliberate about the settings on your phone, the chances are that you don't get many notifications during the day reminding you to rejoice in the Lord!
And so we need this psalm today, reminding us AGAIN to
praise God. Why? Because it is 'fitting' for God's people to praise him. It's appropriate. It's what he deserves. It's the right thing for God's people to do. Today and every day.
But what if I don't feel like praising God? Isn't rejoicing
supposed to be emotional? Isn't it hypocritical to praise God when I don't feel like it?
On the days when we're asking those questions, I think we
also need to ask ourselves 'Is it fitting to praise God today?' 'Is it
appropriate?' 'Is God praise-worthy today?' The answer to those questions is ALWAYS '100% Yes!'
Therefore we can still praise him. Not hypocritically, pretending to feel things that we don't feel. Rather, we can praise him honestly: 'Lord, everything feels terrible right now, but I praise you that you still hear me when I cry to you.' 'Father,
your word tells me that you are good and that heaven is real. I honestly don't feel like that's true but I praise you that I once believed it. Please help me to believe it again.' And when we can't
even do that, then we can read a psalm of praise and tell God that that's what we wish we could say right now, and ask him to make us able to say it and mean it. Or we ask a friend to praise God for us, and to pray for us, and we simply say Amen. Because it is always fitting to praise God. Whatever our situation, he himself is always worthy of our praise. So let's praise him today. And let's pray for those we know who are finding it hard to praise, that God would enable them to praise him, too.
