Psalm 146

As we come to the conclusion to the book of Psalms, we find the final 5 “hallelujah” psalms, as they are called.  Depending upon the translation that you use, you will read “hallelujah” at the beginning and end of each one, which also means “praise the Lord.”  These are 5 psalms dedicated to praising God and highlighting why we should praise Him!

For myself, I am still not at a point in my life where I automatically praise God for diversity, struggle, and difficulties.  I can look back after-the-fact and praise God for how He brings me through things or how He orchestrates a difficult situation for good, but in the moment, I just don’t think of it!  Hopefully, these psalms will help me in this dilemma.

As we consider the psalmist’s opening lines, there is a deep understanding of life and where, or from Whom it comes from.  A commitment to praise God for as long as we live isn’t just a promise, but an understanding that our very breath with which we are able to praise God comes from Him!  It’s like returning a blessing to someone by giving them back what they gave you because we don’t have anything else to give.  I heard a story about this years ago about people who visited an orphanage in a majority world country.  They brought toys and candy to share with the kids and on the eve of the team’s departure, the kids all brought pieces of the candy they had received to gift back to them, because they had nothing else to give!

Praise is more than just a recognition of who God is, it is a heart of gratitude.  It is recognizing that what we have is a gift, even life itself.  This is why the psalmist mentions the mortality of mankind and that there is no good reason to praise humans because we are all “dust in the wind,” as it were.  We come and go, get buried, and that is it!  God, however, the Creator of the universe, always remains and is actually worthy of praise because He is the one who creates, provides for, and saves us.  As I type this and we read it in Psalm 146, it is easy to say, “Well yeah, of course!”  But, the challenge here is to live it out.  Think back to your daily life.  Do you praise humans?  I think it is ok to be thankful and express gratitude to others that deserve it, don’t get me wrong.  But if we, for instance, praise our boss for giving us a raise and providing for our family, we have now transitioned to elevating them to the position of God in our hearts.  On the flip side of things, if our boss doesn’t give us a raise, it is not his fault necessarily either!  This is a tougher concept to swallow.  If God is our provider, He is also our non-provider.  When we don’t get what we think we need or deserve, it is not the company’s or government’s fault.  The Lord is in charge of it all.  So, how do we deal with this?

Gratitude is the answer.  Watching the story of Joshua at Sight and Sound recently, we watched as the Israelites moaned, complained, and cried out to the Lord in their initial 40 days and later 40 years of wandering in the desert.  As an outsider to that story, it is easy for us to judge them…but that is because we aren’t suffering with them AND we know how the story ends before it begins!  But what if we are wandering in the desert right now in our present circumstances?  There is a purpose to the wandering.  Looking back, we can see God provided everything they needed: food, water, guidance, protection, leadership, and more.  The bible says their shoes didn’t even wear out the whole time!  That’s a pretty big miracle that goes unnoticed until your shoe actually wears out and the miracle doesn’t happen.

Yet, God’s provision isn’t limited to just the physical needs of the human body.  It expands into the realm of the human soul.  Hope, faith, endurance, love, and protection from the evil spirits in this world.  These are the unseen things that God also provides.  The psalmist highlights these so that we will remember and pray when adversity afflicts us.  The Israelites even said, “better to live in Egypt as slaves than die in the desert.”  Yet, he kept them alive (that is, until they sinned with unbelief and this was their judgment).  Yet the few faithful remained alive, didn’t they?

When we find ourselves in difficult suffering, this psalm can help shape our prayers.  Instead of asking God to provide physical resources which will be received and instantly used up, we can pray for those spiritual things which actually will enhance our lives.  Hope, faith, courage, and wisdom are the first few that come to mind for me.  Instead of asking God to end my suffering, I can pray for God to give me strength and endurance to make it through.  Instead of asking Him to give me a raise, I can ask for wisdom of how to be a good steward with what I already have.  Instead of asking the Lord to take me out of a difficult situation, I can ask for the courage to see it through in a way that honors and glorifies Him!  He may not give you more money, a bigger house, or a nicer car, but He certainly will make sure what you do have continues to work for you.

In missions’ school, we learned a hard lesson: sometimes the struggle is the point!  It’s easy to say when you aren’t struggling.  When you are struggling, it just seems like another Christian platitude.  It doesn’t make it any less true.  If our goal is in increase in faith, follow Jesus more closely, and honor God with all that we are and have, then the struggles will be used to teach us to do that.  Difficulties in life are opportunities to grow in these things.  When we ask for an increase in faith, strength, moral fortitude, and the like, we are actually asking God to take us to the gym and work out our spiritual muscles.  For this, we should be grateful and praise God, because we otherwise wouldn’t do so.  We would simply make ourselves comfortable.  Growth is hard, but it is good.  Consider a child growing.  They are designed to learn a lot!  That’s because they have a lot of learning to do.  As spiritual children of God, we too have to learn a lot.  So, God takes us to school every day.  

Many children complain about school while they are going through it.  We have seen it in the kids we support with scholarships in Guatemala.  They want to go to school, they understand its importance, and they ask for help.  Yet, when they are a few years in and it gets tough and it isn’t easy, they complain and start to regret their decisions.  Their parents don’t know how to force them to lean in and do well.  The teachers tell us the kids simply aren’t doing the work that is required of them.  Then we come alongside them and encourage them and remind them of how important it is and that they asked for this.  Maybe they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into, but the majority eventually come around to understanding that even though it is hard, it is still good.  The same applies to our own spiritual growth.  When they finish, they look back at what they accomplished with our help and are grateful.  We too need to be grateful to God for his encouragement, tutoring, and provision to get through the school of life and forms our inner being and helps us achieve the goal of closeness with Him.