What He said!, Pt 6: Called praise
Isaiah 60:18 No longer will violence be heard in your land, nor ruin or destruction within your borders, but you will call your walls Salvation and your gates Praise.
Isaiah 62:10 Pass through, pass through the gates! Prepare the way for the people. Build up, build up the highway! Remove the stones. Raise a banner for the nations.
Psalm 100:4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.
Psalm 22:1-3 1God, my God! Why would you abandon me now? 2Why do you remain distant, refusing to answer my tearful cries in the day and my desperate cries for your help in the night? I can’t stop sobbing. Where are you, my God? 3Yet I know that you are most holy; it’s indisputable. You are God-Enthroned, surrounded with songs, living among the shouts of praise of your princely people.
When we think of gates we usually have in mind the way of entry through a wall or barrier which encloses an area. The ancient cities of Israel had thick and high walls intended to protect the inhabitants from marauding animals and warrior tribes. Isaiah and Psalms use this metaphor to describe the relationship between YHWH and His people. Outside His walls of protection are violence and danger while inside we find peace and righteousness.
As we traverse this journey called life, we move through times of gladness and times of sorrow. We would like to be happy all the time, but it is the nature of existence that things will occasionally go wrong. The thing is we humans are prone to wanting to blame someone when things do go wrong. We believers can be sometimes heard to say that ‘Satan is attacking me’ or accusing God of indifference when bad things are happening as in Psalm 22 above. The truth is that for a great percentage of time neither of these things is happening: Neither is Satan attacking nor is God indifferent. In life, stuff just happens.
It is what we do during those times that is a measure of our character. Do we, or do we not believe that God is just and righteous. In our mind we believers do believe God is just and righteous, but in our heart we need to feel loved and cared for. I saw a Facebook posting the other day forwarded from a person who seemed to say God only loves those who seek after Him. This is patently wrong; God loves all of His children all of the time. But He wants us to learn that following Him is the righteous path.
The King James version of Psalm 22:3 says, ‘God inhabits the praises of His people.’ That means when we are loving God, when we are praising His Name, He is there. This is not just an ‘intellectual assent’. When God inhabits the praises of His people, He is actually present. He can be felt, he can be talked to (prayer), even yelled at (also prayer).
Following the righteous path does not mean we will never again have struggles. This is not so: struggles come as a result of our own errors or the actions of others. The point is to ask, how will we respond to those hard times? Will we blame? Will we seek retribution or revenge? The answer lies in our attitude, or more precisely, in our general approach to life. Do we go to God just when stuff happens, or just at Church? Or is He a real part of our everyday life? But having God as an everyday part of our life can be taken to extremes. I have friends who won’t make any decision unless God first tells them to do so, even to the point of doing an everyday thing. I have a friend in another part of my state that I occasionally go visit. Once I asked another friend to go along. That other friend never went because that person never got the OK from God. There is a problem here folks; God gave us free will for a reason. God wants us to choose Him, and to choose to align our lives with His precepts. Otherwise we would be robots. He wants us to seek Him through prayer and through reading His Word. If He dictated the direction of our life by saying ‘do this’ then ‘do that’, then do ‘that’ we would not have free will.
No, having God a part of our everyday is all about how we approach Him. Let’s look at the two greatest commandments. They are found in Matthew 22:37-40 where Jesus says,
37Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Does following either of these commandments depend on whether or not we take a trip tomorrow? No, of course not. Having a free will allows us to choose for God or against God. Let’s do the former. And if we are choosing for God, let’s be all in. Not so much in the sense of ‘getting permission’ to do something, but in the sense of aligning our will with His. If we do that we will know the right way to behave and the right choice to make in almost every situation. In the others we can go to Him specifically for that situation.
So praising God is a way of life, and in the praising lies a great deal of blessing because we are in frequent contact with our creator God. Are you feeling burdened? Praise His holy Name. Are you burdened with an addiction? Praise His holy Name. Are you feeling low and depressive? Praise His holy Name. Now, I’m not talking about the casual one-off remark like the occasional ‘I love you God’. I’m talking about consistent long term praise and worship. I am certain that in every such situation you will find a peace and contentment come upon you that brings you rest and refreshment.