Faith along the way

My Bible reading recently has been from my New Living Translation Bible. I was reading Psalm 96 and a portion from verses 12-13 really stuck in my mind: “Let the trees of the forest rustle with praise before the LORD, for He is coming!”…. What a word picture! For days as I’ve heard the wind blowing through the trees, because it has been extremely windy this week, it brings to mind this verse and I think of His creation praising His name, and it reminds me of how creation points to our great God and Creator. He is worthy of all praise and honor and glory, and I must admit I sometimes become complacent and don’t praise Him nearly enough.

When we praise God, we declare who He is, we proclaim His power, we adore Him, we honor Him, we reverence Him. The book of Psalms is filled with verses encouraging us to praise God and I am listing a few below, all from the NLT version:

• Psalm 104:1, “Let all that I am praise the LORD.”
• Psalm 105:1, “Give thanks to the LORD and proclaim His greatness. Let the whole world know what He has done.”
• Psalm 113:1-2, “Praise the LORD! Yes, give praise, O servants of the LORD. Praise the name of the LORD!”
• Psalm 145:1-3, “I will exalt you, my God and King, and praise your name forever and ever. I will praise you every day; yes, I will praise you forever. Great is the LORD! He is most worthy of praise! No one can measure His greatness.”

There are so many more and I encourage you to do a word study sometime and lookup verses on this topic.

He is worthy of all praise and all glory simply because of who He is. We praise Him for who He is, and we thank Him for what He has done for us. Who He is: He is holy, He is righteous, He is faithful, He is just…and so very much more. Praising Him reminds us of who He is and places our focus on Him and takes our focus off ourselves. When we begin our prayer time praising Him, it puts things in proper perspective, places Him first, as we always should.

I’ve been convicted of not giving Him adequate praise due Him. I want to do better, to cultivate a habit of beginning my prayer time praising Him just for who He is. After all, if I fail to praise Him, the rocks will do it instead (Luke 19:40) and I don’t want a rock to cry out instead of me! May the rustling of leaves on the trees be an ever-present reminder for me to praise His name!!!

All glory to God and His blessings to you!

Jackie