About a month ago I read a verse, and I haven’t been able to really get it out of my head. Actually, I’ve taken to writing on my hand. I’ll explain more about that in a minute…
The phrase that really struck me, (which is the phrase that I write on my hand), is a simple 3 word phrase: “All my bones…”. Out of context, it makes no sense, (or… I don’t think it does. If that made sense to you then… That’s amazing…) but it comes from Psalm 35:10 which says, “All my bones shall say, ‘O Lord, who is like You…” (ESV)
See, in Psalm, it’s sort of normal to read phrases like, “I will praise You with my lips”, or, “My heart will say, ‘Who is like You?”.
But from his bones? That seemed sort of special.
David, (the writer of Psalm) wasn’t just proclaiming God from his lips, or from his heart. He was proclaiming God from the very core of his body! His entire being!! The very parts of him that make him up were the very parts of him that were praising the One who made him up!
Everything in him was giving praise to God!! Isn’t that just beautiful? You can’t get any closer to the very core of yourself than your bones, and if you are praising God from that deep inside you, then the praise will spread through the rest of you too!
I feel like that’s what true worship is supposed to be. The giving of ourselves, of the very things that make us up, to the praise of Him! When it comes from everything within us… I feel like that’s the most glorifying form of worship, when we are completely focused and completely filled with… Him!
We’re giving everything we have to Him, saying, “I am yours, because You are worthy to be praised”.
Sometimes we can be funny when it comes to really giving our everything to God… Sometimes we just pay lip-service to God, or… we sort of want to be doing the right thing, but the application of that desire is sometimes lacking, and sometimes that can get in the way of really worshipping Him…
I know I’ll never have it all together. But, the idea of taking everything inside of me, all of me down to my very bones, and using it to praise God because I am genuinely in awe of Him? I like that idea. I want to be that kind of Christian. And that’s why I write the phrase on my hand, because I want to be reminded every time I happen to glance down, or reach for a cup from the cupboard, or tear off a leaf from a tree as I pass by, that right then, in that moment, I want to praise God with everything I have.
Praising God doesn’t have to be a tiring thing. Sometimes we make it out to be a big deal, or a show, or something absolutely exhausting… but it isn’t. If praise were supposed to be a big, tiring deal, then we wouldn’t have everyday life.
God put us on this earth for His glory. If we couldn’t truly glorify Him in everyday life, then I don’t think we would have it. But we can glorify Him in our mundane, everyday existence! We really can. And I’ve found that the more I focus on praising Him in everyday life, the more I find to praise Him for! It’s gone from thanking Him for “the biggies”, the obvious things, (family, friends…) to where now, the ordinary things begin to sparkle with the possibility of praise. They’ve become… alive! And I’ve found that my life is full of little gifts from God that make it… so wonderful to live!
And I think that the more we find to thank Him for, the easier it is to really worship Him; because the more we thank Him for, the less complaints we have, the less complaints we have, the less of us being distracted by those complaints, which means more of us can be focused on Him…
I think that when we really are focused on Him, and we really are content with where He has placed us in life, we really can be joyful, and we can really praise Him with absolutely everything we have…
