PSALM 150 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS

In this texting generation few abbreviations are probably used more than PTL, aka praise the Lord. And praising the Lord is a theme that is ubiquitous in the book of Psalms. It is everywhere. It is a praise book. And in the book of Psalms today we are going to come to Psalm 150, and we are going to see how a life of praise can add significance to our own lives. In fact coming up to Psalm 150 we read in Psalm 146 a little bit about praise. “Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul. I will praise the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.”

Why are we to praise the Lord? What exactly does it mean to say, Praise the Lord? And if our life is bereft of praising God, what will that mean to us? And as Christians, why is this idea of praise so critical, so optimal and so important to us in fashioning and helping stitch together our Christian sanctification?

Well, I think in Psalm 150 as we move our way toward that passage we will see that there is something beautiful about praising God. It is God’s goal for our lives. It is why we exist. It is our life’s being to live in a life of God connected praise. But like me, I am sure you know what it is like to get distracted, to lose sight of praise, and to lose sight of really where God is at work in our lives. Sometimes we get so focused on the here and now that we don’t recognize God’s hand at work in our lives.

I wonder how many times in my life I have failed to praise God just because I wasn’t cognizant of where He was at work? I wonder how many opportunities I have missed to surrender to Him because I was so focused on right here. See, God wants to bring us to places and to show His glory off in our lives. And when we live in habitual praise this can help us to keep our eyes open more for where it is that He is at work. Not only that, if we struggle with gratitude in our lives, nothing will skyrocket our lives more into a life of glad gratitude than to just start praising Him for all that we have been blessed with. To realize that He has blessed us exceedingly and abundantly above all that we can think or imagine.

I mean if we are dressed today, that is something that we could thank Him for. Right? ‘God, thank you that I could go to church dressed, unlike Adam and Eve who would have had to come in their garden attire.’ So we can always be thinking of things to praise God for. What I want us to do in Psalm 150 is we are going to look at the object of our praise, the environment of our praise, the theme of our praise, the instruments of our praise and the participants of praise.

And that is going to be the way this passage is going to unfold itself. So when we look at Psalm 150, what do we read first of all? We learn about the object of our praise. Let’s look at this beginning in verse 1. “Praise the Lord!” So immediately we learn about the object of our praise. And this is a theme we have seen come up a lot. Even on Sunday mornings as we have looked at different Psalms, the object of our praise must be

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God. We are being invited by the Psalmist into a God centered life, to live a life that is God centered, that is focused on Him and one that thinks about Him. And that simple phrase, ‘living a God centered life’ can revolutionize each of our lives. It can transform us.

Now when we think about this idea of having God as the object of our praise, listen to what A. W. Tozer, the great writer once wrote. “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” What comes into your mind when you think about God? Who is God to you? Is He a detached curmudgeon? Is God someone that is just waiting like a glorified slot machine just to pass out whatever we want? Is He our servant? Do we treat Him like we are His master, or do we realize we are here to serve Him, and He is our master, He is our Lord, He is our God?

What comes into our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us. I wonder how much tweaked theology I have in my life at times. For instance, when I get put in the pressure cooker of trials, that often reveals my theology like, ‘God, what is going on? Why aren’t you answering this right now? God, get me out of the boiling pot here? Help me out.’

What lies do we believe about God? Do we believe that He genuinely loves us? Look we get saved by grace, but then we spend the rest of our life trying to figure it out. What does it mean that “We are fearfully and wonderfully made?” What does it mean that we are so forgiven? Look, some of us go and ask God for forgiveness and then we start beating ourselves up. Why? It is because we don’t understand the object that He is a forgiving God.

For instance, I was at the airport this past week. I flew out to speak at Summit Ministries on Wednesday in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I went on Wednesday and I was back at the airport on Thursday to make my way back home. I got to the airport at 1:30. I had a flight at 4:07. So check this out. Here is how knowing God can help a little bit. I show up at the airport and I realize there is a 2:30 flight back to Charlotte so maybe I won’t have to wait for the 4:07 flight.

I go stand in line to see if I could get on standby. And someone walks right up in front of me, kind of cuts in front of me. Have you ever stood there in line and the person at the desk won’t acknowledge you? Like, you just wish they would say, ‘Hey Bro, I’ll be right with you. I just have to wrap this up.’ But they just stand there and they make you wait. So I am in that moment and this other lady just walks right up in front of me and they start helping her.

Well, on my insides I am hot. Right? Now what do I do? I am getting frustrated and I realize that there is a limited amount of available seats, and this lady says, “Hey look, I need to get up to Chicago. Can I get a seat?” And now the airline person is

Page 2 of 13 pages 7/17/2016 PSALM 150 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS looking for a seat for this lady. How dare she do this? So what do I do? I am a Type A personality so I said, “Excuse me, I have been waiting in line and this person just walked in front of me.” And you should have seen the look on this lady’s face. It was like she couldn’t believe I had called her out like this. So then she went back and sat down and I didn’t want to let this airline employee think that I was wrong, like I was going to stand justified. Pride was building up in my heart.

And then all of a sudden I started thinking, ‘Well, that was kind of selfish of you, Bobby. Who are you to think the world revolves around you?’ And I started feeling bad. And I thought that maybe I should go and apologize to this lady. Now I didn’t want to do that because it would make me look shameful. And then I decided that was just pride. So I walk up to this lady who is sitting over there and I went, ‘Mam, look I am really sorry. That was selfish of me to say that to you. The reality is I am just an anxious father and I wanted to get home to be with my family. I have a Type A personality and at times I don’t know how to deal with this personality and it gets the best of me. I just can’t figure it out but please forgive me.’ And I went over a few seats and sat down.

And then I got caught up in my research and obviously I missed the 2:30 flight and so my 4:07 flight was coming. But I stayed at the same gate and when they started to board I went up and was just waiting in line and guess what? I was at the wrong gate and my flight had already left. And this flight was going to Dallas. Now guess how my theology begins to work? ‘I guess, God, I am being punished for this. I am getting what I deserve. I should never have done that.’ So I had this temporary mentality that God was out there trying to pay me back.

And the reality is God loves me. And I just want you to know that I do that stuff to myself, I do that stuff to my family, I do that stuff to others, and I am my own worst critic. But I know that what I learned even back in my AA meetings was how important it is to apologize. And if I offend someone, I will honestly say that I have tried in my life to recognize my wrong and to apologize for it, to my wife, to my kids and to others, because I believe that protects my heart from getting hard.

And I wish I could get to the place where I quit letting my Type A personality get the best of me. But I think that is just going to kind of be there with me. I am hoping to learn, but I hope what I can never forget is my need to just ask people for forgiveness. And I will say that to all of you this morning, if I have ever offended any of you, I am sorry. The hardest thing about being a pastor is to know that I can’t meet everyone’s expectations. I have let people down over and over.

I can’t even meet my own expectations. I will set goals to get out of bed just to have time to get with the Lord and I will oversleep. I can’t meet my own expectations to make it to the gym and do a hard workout. Or I don’t meet my expectations in loving my

Page 3 of 13 pages 7/17/2016 PSALM 150 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS wife the way I want. So I need this quality of God called grace that beckons praise. And God is a gracious God and He loves you and He loves me. He is passionate about us. And that is just one little quality that I am trying to figure out how that I am loved by God in an unconditional way. And the object of our praise should be our God of love, our God of grace and our God of mercy.

The Scriptures show that people are praised for their beauty. And we praise artists that we admire their work, like a Rembrandt or a Michelangelo. We praise Michelangelo’s sculptures like the Pieta or the David. We will praise Chopin’s Nocturnes or Bach or Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. We will even praise the game Pokemon Go. The craze for it is ridiculous this week. In fact during our response worship we have a special Pokemon at the altar. No, I am just kidding. We won’t do that. But the staff was laughing yesterday and thinking that would be one way to see a revival. ‘Revivals are breaking out as there are Pokemon sightings at the altar.’

But God’s praise is in another category. We might praise these things like great artists, or great musicians, but all other praise is lower case praise. God’s praise should be with a capital P. He deserves the highest praise. He is in a league of His own. And that is what we need to understand. And guess what, we praise what we love. We talk about what we love.

I know a guy that I have been talking to this past week and he loves guns. He wants to talk about guns all the time. And that is okay, I guess I need to learn about them, but there are other people that I meet and they may love farming or they may love sports or they may love playing the stock market or they may love whatever. But God is to be the object of our praise.

C. S. Lewis said it like this: “We delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes our enjoyment. It is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliments that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are. The delight is incomplete until it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not be able to tell anyone how good he is or to come suddenly at the turn of a road upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than a tin can in the ditch. Or maybe you hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. We watch a good movie, we listen to a good song, we hear a message we enjoy, we see a piece of art and we want people to know about it.”

I was in Laguna Beach and I got to go into an art gallery. And ever since I have not stopped talking about Vladimir Kush’s surrealism art. It set me on a journey of studying surrealism. And surrealism is an art form that combines dreams with reality so you can paint a bird under water and flip it upside down and it is reading a book. It is the

Page 4 of 13 pages 7/17/2016 PSALM 150 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS stuff that makes sense in a dream but not in reality. And the artist has this crazy imagination and I am not saying there is anything Christian about it; it is just like entering a dream world to look at his art. I will look at one of his pieces and I just love it.

And I want to talk to people about Vladimir Kush, but I find that most people when I tell them about this artist who is a surrealist, there is usually a kind of glaze that comes over them. And I find that I don’t have anyone to talk to about this art that I love. And it causes me to feel frustrated. So if you are someone who likes surrealism, then please come talk to me. I just need to share it with someone.

So the object of our praise is to be the Lord. And the environment of our praise is heaven and earth. “Praise the Lord! Praise Him in His sanctuary; praise Him in His mighty heavens! In other words, praise Him in the sanctuary and then praise Him in the expanse. And we remember that Jesus even said in the New Testament that the Samaritans worship on this mountain and the Jews worship over here. But we are to worship in spirit and in truth.

God’s worship is not localized only; we are to be in a relationship of praise with Him while we drive our car or while we exercise. We are to be on the hunt for opportunities to praise Him. We are to be looking to revolutionize our perspective of Him by praising Him, by making much of Him, by lifting Him up, by exalting Him. And I am not saying we have to be these weird people that walk up to others and say so slowly, ‘Praise the Lord.’ We need to just be natural and still be excited about what God is doing in our lives. We don’t have to get glassy eyed and creep people out.

Sometimes people get like that. Have you ever talking to someone and they just go on and on, ‘You know God told me this and God told me that.’ And I don’t relate to someone telling me like 15 times a day that God said this or that. Now I used to do that when I was a new Christian and full of zeal. ‘God told me this. God told me that.’ Until I began to realize that it was me telling myself a lot of things. I was telling myself what I wanted to hear.

You look at how God spoke to individuals in the Bible, sometimes He did speak to them audibly. And then you have Abraham who waited 25 years for what God told him would happen. God speaks to us through His word. He tells us not to steal, He tells us to love our spouses unconditionally, but any other little specific moments could just be us wishing God would say it to us.

So the environment of praise is to make much of Him. “Praise Him in His mighty heavens!” Perhaps that is the place of angels. Probably the best way we can even learn about praise is by studying angels in the Bible, and by studying the life of Jesus. We can see how the angels were so caught up in Isaiah Chapter 6 where it says, “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted

Page 5 of 13 pages 7/17/2016 PSALM 150 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above Him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory!”

And then in verse 4 it says, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” And in this passage right here you see the angels calling out to each other and they can’t stop saying, “Holy, holy, holy.” They are caught up with how great He is. God is holy. What does that mean? It means that He is not tainted by sin. God has never sinned. He is sinless. And sometimes we can just so easily sin and not even think about it. But it is unthinkable for God because He is so holy.

In Psalm 148 we see this idea of praising God. Listen to the Psalmist praising God: “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise Him in the heights! Praise Him, all His angels, praise Him, all His hosts! Praise Him, sun and moon, praise Him, all you shining stars! Praise Him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!

Let them praise the name of the Lord! For He commanded and they were created. And He established them forever and ever; He gave a decree, and it shall not pass away. Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy winds fulfilling His word!

Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Beasts and all livestock, creeping things and flying birds! Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! Young men and maidens together, old men and children! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for His name alone is exalted; His majesty is above earth and heaven.”

The Psalmist just starts going off. He is just envisioning how the mountains and the birds and the sea creatures and everything could just start shouting out with praise to the Lord. It is the desire of the Psalmist’s heart to show how caught up he is with God and he wants everything to just leak praise to Him.

In Revelations Chapter 4 you can read this great praise scene. You can learn best how to praise God by looking at Jesus’ life and at the angels. And then by seeing how we will be in the future in the book of Revelations. You can see how it will be when we are so God centered in our focus. Now that might sound boring in a culture like ours to be praising God all the time. I don’t want you to get a vision of catching a cloud and just riding it around playing our harp. I want us to get a vision, a reality of a place where there is no more weeping, no more sorrow, no more lack of fulfilment, no more

Page 6 of 13 pages 7/17/2016 PSALM 150 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS discontentment, no more regret, no more remorse. It will be a place with God where we will be able to experience a love that is deep, that is profound and that is powerful.

And then to be able to have the vocabulary to be able to put into words our highest praise, to be able to express to God our gratitude, to be able to be so fully aware of what it means to be in a God connected relationship, to be in perfect harmony with others, to be able to correspond with the angelic realm. To be able to live with God in a place forever, and it will be like being at a party and you never want to leave. Or like drinking the cup of coffee you never want to be empty, like having a plate of food that you never want to finish. Folks, this isn’t pasta, this isn’t coffee; this is the creator of the cosmos.

The object of our praise is the Lord. The environment of our praise is everywhere. It is in the expanse of the heavens and in His sanctuary. And then next we see the theme of our praise. And the theme of our praise is the deeds and the character of God. Let’s look again at Psalm 150 and verse 2. “Praise Him for His mighty deeds; praise Him according to His excellent greatness!”

I love that. We should want to be the kind of people that are in Christian consideration of the great works of God and being able to see God at work. What are the deeds? His deeds are often being recounted. I love the way that Psalm 9 begins. It starts with the Psalmist saying, “I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exalt in you; I will sing praise to your name, O most High. “

What is he doing? He is praising God for his deeds and character. Maybe you don’t know how to praise God or what to praise Him for. We just need to praise Him for His deeds and His character. What does that imply? It means we need to know something about God’s deeds. And it means we need to know something about His character. It means we need to become acclimated with the Scriptures. So we need to read the Scriptures so that we can better praise God. We have to know more of God’s word so that we can give Him greater praise. We have to know what He has done in history, where He has been at work so that we can praise Him.

And sometimes we are more interested in keeping up with sport facts than seeing the hand of God at work. Sometimes we are more interested in keeping up with our portfolios than we are with what God has done throughout history. Sometimes we are more concerned about our body fat than we are about the God of the universe. And this is a tragedy.

I will tell you that when we begin to think about what God has done and who God is it can excite us spiritually. Maybe you are having a hard time wanting to know God. Maybe you are having a hard time feeling connected with God. Start thinking about what

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He has done in the Scriptures. Start thinking about where He has been at work in your life. Start thinking about the nature of who He is. And then something can begin to stir in our lives when we take our thoughts, and it can turn into praise, prayer, song and fellowship. Oh that we would be a church that gets excited when we talk about spiritual things in God centered conversations.

Not only that, folks, but praising God has a way of emotionally healing us. I believe that sometimes we can be brought into a trial that is deep and we are emotionally hurt, and the only way out of that emotional trial is through praise. Some people have struggled with negative and critical attitudes their whole life. And a lot of times the people who struggle with negative and critical attitudes are those who struggle with having a life of praise, a life of gratitude. The cynical, the critical, the person always pointing out negative things, the person who is always comparing and feeling jealous of others, the person who doesn’t know how to celebrate, the person who looks at other people’s lives and asking why it isn’t happening to them, that kind of personality often struggles with praise.

And the way to emotional healing is through a life of praising God, of being grateful, of being thankful for what it is that He is doing in their lives. God has a unique wiring for each of us. And each of our personalities need a certain set of trials, a certain set of circumstances. We all need a certain pathway for our own Christian sanctification to become like Christ. And God is the theme of our praise.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon on January 7th, 1855, was the minister of New Park Street Chapel and he opened his morning sermon as follows: “It has been said by someone that proper study of mankind is man’s. I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that proper study of God’s elect is God. The proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy which can ever engage the attention of a child of God is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom He calls Father.”

“There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of divinity. It is a subject so vast that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity, so deep that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass and grapple with. In them we feel a kind of self-content and go our way with the thought, ‘Behold, I am wise.’ But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumb line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass’s colt and with solemn exclamation, ‘I am but of yesterday and know nothing.’

“No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind than thoughts of God. But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of

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God will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe. The most excellent study for expanding the soul is the science of Christ, and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead and the glorious Trinity.”

“Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as the devout earnest continued investigation of the great subject of deity. And while humbling and expanding this subject is imminently consolatory, oh there is in contemplating Christ a balm for every wound. In musing on the Father there is quietness for every grief. And in the influence of the Holy Ghost there is a balsam for every sore.”

“Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea. Be lost in His immensity and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the souls, so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief, so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing on the subject of the Godhead. It is to this subject that I now invite you this morning.” Charles Haddon Spurgeon at 21 years of age, wrote those words.

Now here is another thing. C. H. Spurgeon was not considered a scholar. He was a popular level preacher of his time. Do you see how far we have drifted? We listen to his words and we think he sounds like such a scholar. But he was a popular preacher and that was the kind of preaching he did. He was a very gifted orator but Jonathan Edwards was the scholar. George Whitefield and Charles Spurgeon were popular level preachers of their time. But that is how they talked. They spoke that way because they were so accustomed to who God is.

The theme of our praise, folks, is the deeds and the character of God. Let’s now turn to the instruments of our praise. Look at verses 3 through 5. “Praise Him with trumpet sound; praise Him with lute and harp! Praise Him with tambourine and dance; praise Him with strings and pipe! Praise Him with sounding cymbals; praise Him with loud clashing cymbals!”

Check that out. There is an entire denomination that doesn’t use instruments because they believe that they are evil. I wonder if they have ever read Psalm 150. I mean clashing cymbals and strings and pipe. In other words if we are going to use an instrument, if we are going to make noise, Godward noise, then that is good. Bring out the Godward noise. There are so many opinions out there when it comes to worship and how it is to be done, and every person with opinions thinks they are the final arbiter of what is right and what is wrong.

Look, folks, I honestly like the diversity. I love that our kids that are at our sister church, Fellowship Memphis, are having an experience this morning where it is going to be almost half and half African American and white. And you know what they are going

Page 9 of 13 pages 7/17/2016 PSALM 150 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS to be hearing? They are going to be hearing some good gospel music. And they are going to see people losing their dignity in worship. And I am excited about that. They are going to see people get with it. I think that is one of the criticisms that I would have sometimes of the white culture. I see our African American brothers and sisters that come here and I hope that they feel comfortable to let it loose.

But I am thinking if I was African American and I showed up at a white church, I would wonder if they were missing something. I know white folks can get excited about athletics when they are watching sports, but I just don’t know what happens to them at church. I am not saying that we need to force anything or manufacture anything here, but sometimes I don’t know if our lack of expression is just because we want to think we need to be dignified worshipers, or if we are just really not delighting in God all that much.

And then, God forbid we use the word ‘dance.’ But verse 4 says, “Praise Him with tambourine and dance.” I mean honestly if someone brought a tambourine to church and came up here and danced around, how would you feel with that? Would you want to find another church? Would you want Pastor Bobby to deal with this person? ‘I hope he is on to this person. This is a little bit odd.’ Or would you just be able to think, ‘Hey, you know what, I am glad this person can have such joy in the Lord.’

Have you ever seen someone walking down the road and they have a Walkman on and they are just singing and moving with the music? My first thought was, ‘That is a sick person there.’ But now I think that person is just a lot more secure and shameless than I am. I am just too worried about what other people think to do that. The reality is I just wish I could be comfortable enough to do it. How much are we inhibited in life because we are too self-conscious about what others are thinking about us?

David danced before the Lord and his wife got irate. David said, “It was before the Lord.” And then he told her he would get more undignified than that. That could start some intense fellowship right there on the marital front. Right? He didn’t let her stop him. In Jewish culture dance is a common thing. If you see a bar mitzvah at the temple you will see them dancing.

I remember being at a hotel in Israel on a Sabbath, and for probably two hours we looked over at another hotel and there were five or six guys running around and around a table. And I was exhausted just watching them. But they were just praising away. So we could do this stuff around LL Cool J, or when we listen to Usher, or all this other stuff. Why can’t we come before the one who created the heavens and the earth and just tell Him He is worthy, He is awesome, and we are excited about Him?

So we see that we can use whatever as the instruments of our praise. We can use strings, we can use pipes, we can use drums. It is Biblical worship if it is God centered.

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We are to sing about what He has done. And then for the participants of praise, let’s read verse 6. “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!” I love that verse. “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!” Allen Ross in his commentary said it like this: “Here then is the glory of creation. God gave humans breath. And so they owe their breath to Him, making praise the primary reason they have it. The call then is for the breath to be used in this way.” Just in the same way that breathing gives us life, we need to learn to live a life of soulish praise to God.

Well, here are some closing thoughts as we wrap up. First, do a little soul searching and genuinely ask yourself, ‘Am I really impressed with God?’ Just ask yourself that question honestly. ‘Am I really impressed with God?’

Secondly, spend a little time reflecting on this question, ‘What prevents me from praising God?’ What a great discussion this would be to have with your friend after church or with your family. And be secure enough to be able to say, ‘This is kind of where it is at for me.’ Learn to get in authentic community.

Third, start and end each day by determining to praise God for that which you are grateful for. You know I have talked openly about this season of dark depression that I went through. I can’t tell you how much praising God helped me. I told you a few months ago that I end each day with a certain prayer and still yet I am ending it this way. I said if there is anything I want to be legalistic about in life, folks, it is my gratitude. I don’t want to be legalistic, but I want to be a legalist about gratitude.

Every night I find myself going, ‘Oh God, thank you for helping me with my fears, and my worries, and my anxieties, and my hopelessness, and my doubts, and my depression and my marriage and my family.’ All that other stuff was inhibiting the kind of husband and the kind of dad I could be because I was so emotionally paralyzed. And I thank Him and I praise Him. And sometimes I will even say, ‘God, from the very depths of my being, I want you to know that I thank you for helping me with my fears and my worries and my anxieties.’ And I continue to see Him helping me, so I thank Him in glad praise. Start praising your way out of some of the pain that you are in.

Fourth, train yourself to look for opportunities to praise God throughout the day. It protects us from being compartmentalizes in our relationship with God. We will say, ‘I am going to talk to Him for a few minutes in the morning.’ Then we get busy and go on with our day until we remember and then we say, ‘God, it’s me again.’ That is great and all, but we need to break free of a compartmentalized relationship with God.

We should all want to do what Brother Lawrence did and that was ‘practicing the presence of God.’ Start becoming highly attuned to where God is at work in your life, and then thank and praise Him. I want to be thankful like that. After we get in

Page 11 of 13 pages 7/17/2016 PSALM 150 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS conversations with someone, remember to thank Him for that person. And just stay in that state of thankfulness.

And finally, become highly acclimated with who God is by taking on a little study in divinity. And I am not talking about going to Dallas Theological Seminary. But I am saying maybe you should read, ‘Knowing God,’ by J. I. Packer. Another book I would recommend is one that Christians were chewing on twenty or thirty years ago, and it is ‘A Purpose Driven Life.’ I think many people would read it today and think, ‘Oh man, this book is really tough.’ But if something is really hard to read, it doesn’t mean that you can’t get there.

Look, you can do this. In this past year I have read Jonathan Edwards book, ‘Religious Affections,’ Karl Marx’s book, and Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ as well as a lot of other books. I read two volumes of John Calvin’s, ‘Institutes of Christian Religion.’ I read Augustine’s ‘Confessions’ this year. I read Saint Athanasius’ book on the Incarnation. I have read stuff by Shakespeare, Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince,’ and a lot more. I try to read two or three books a week. And I try to read great scholars when I read. I want to know what the greatest minds have to say about God. I didn’t start there, but I trained myself to increase my reading habits.

Don’t you want to know what the greatest theologians have to say about God? We need to acquire a hunger for it. Start where you are. I had to start really, really practical, but I kept going up and up and now I love to sit and read Thomas Aquinas and think how great it is. And I want to be able to stretch you. I want you to desire to learn about what it is to have a mind of Christ and to know God. Listen, for a start get the book, ‘Knowing God,’ because that will help you out.

Here at Life Fellowship we should praise God for becoming flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. And that He died on the cross for our sins so that we could be forgiven for everything we have ever done wrong. And we should spend the rest of our life praising Him for that. If that is the only thing that we have encountered in our life was His saving forgiveness, then I would say we are suited for life with material for praise to Him.

Lord, we thank you for sending Jesus to die on a cross and rise from the dead. We love you, we praise you and we adore you. I would ask if there is anyone that doesn’t know you that they will say this in the quietness of their heart: Jesus, I praise you for dying on a cross for my sins and rising from the grave. And I praise you that you would welcome me into relationship with you. I surrender my life to you right here and right now. I ask you to be my Lord and Savior. Help me to turn away from my sins. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

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The preceding transcript was completed using raw audio recordings. As much as possible, it includes the actual words of the message with minor grammatical changes and editorial clarifications to provide context. Hebrew and Greek words are spelled using Google Translator and the actual spelling may be different in some cases.

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