14 May the Lord cause you to flourish, both you and your children.
15 May you be blessed by the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.
16 The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he has given to mankind.
17 It is not the dead who praise the Lord, those who go down to the place of silence;
18 it is we who extol the Lord, both now and forevermore.
Praise the Lord. Psalm 115:14-18
God’s given us at least one job on this earth: to praise the Lord. When we perform that job well, all the other things we “should” be doing just seem to fall into place. In other words, there’s a natural progression of activities that occur when we praise the Lord.
- We get encouraged.
- We encourage others.
- We tell others about this encouragement and who gave it to us.
- We read more so we can be encouraged more.
- We pray because we are encouraged to do so.
- And the cycle begins again.
Of course I am oversimplifying the idea, but our Christian lives are not much more difficult than that, or at least they’re not supposed to be.
Praise is both therapeutic and powerful.
We would do well to praise early and often. We can’t praise too much nor should we rely on the rocks to do our job for us.