Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things;
his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.
The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations.
He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to Israel;
all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music;
make music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing,
with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn— shout for joy before the Lord, the King.
Let the sea resound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.
Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy;
let them sing before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.
Psalm 98

Bottom Line

God wants to connect with you in your joy.

Praise in the Psalms

1. What God has done
2. Who God is
3. What God is doing now
4. What God will do and what we hope God will do
5. Joins us with the rest of creation in praise

“All psalms of praise describe in some fashion who God is by telling the reader what he has done, and they invite the reader to bear witness to such a God and to yield oneself to this faithful God.”
— W. David O. Taylor

The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.
Psalm 145:9

“[Humans] join in the song and add other dimensions…What looks to the flattened-out imagination of late Western modernity as ‘lifeless’ matter is in fact a world throbbing with God-given life. That life is constantly praising its maker”
— NT Wright

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
Psalm 19:1-4

Expressing your joy to God multiplies it.

Why we need to practice praise

• Directs our joy in the right direction
• Helps us see reality more clearly
• Helps us trust God more fully and deeply

“Within the Psalter, the experience of joy is grounded in the work of God, but not in any generic sense. It is grounded in the economy of abundance that marks the life of God…Praise is inevitably an experience of of the overflow of God’s faithful generosity”
— W. David. O. Taylor

“The joy of God has been through the poverty of the manger and the affliction of the cross; therefore, it is indestructible, irrefutable. It does not deny affliction when it is there, but it finds in the very midst of distress that God is there; it does not argue that sin is not grievous, but in that very place of sin is found forgiveness; it looks death in the face and it is just there that it finds life”
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Action Steps

Prayerful reflection

• Do you tend towards dwelling on the positive or the negative?
• How might God be inviting you to lean into what feels less natural in prayer

Practice

• Create some space to daily express gratitude to God
  • Journal
  • At a certain point in your day routine
  • Sheet of paper at dinner with your family
• Pray a Psalm of Praise every day this week (Psalm 19, Psalm 145, Psalm 98, Psalm 117, Psalm 150)
• If you’re in a season of struggle
  • Along with bringing your honest, difficult feelings to God in prayer, ask God to help you see what joy and goodness that you might be overlooking.
  • Pray a Psalm of Hopeful Joy - Psalm 112