Let Your Gratitude Lead to Praise  

Last Sunday we were singing the old hymn All Creatures of our God and King during our worship service. If you are not familiar with the song, it encourages all of creation to lift up its voice in praise of God. It makes reference to various parts of nature, including the sun, moon, clouds, wind, water, and fire. It encourages humanity to join the rest of God’s creatures in singing “Alleluia” and worshiping our Creator. Appropriately, and as if on cue, as we were finishing singing, a deer could be seen outside the sanctuary windows as it wandered beside our building over the blanket of colorful fallen leaves and into the nearby woods. Nature was surely joining us, or maybe we were joining it, in praising our God and King.

 This coming week many of us will be focusing on the idea of giving thanks. Hopefully we will be practicing such gratitude not only in relation to other people, but primarily in relation to God, the Giver of all good things and the Fount of every blessing in our lives. While thanksgiving is a proper and too-often neglected response to everything God has done for us, I would encourage you to join me in seeking to take it a step further this week. Yes, let’s express our gratitude to the Lord both through our words and our actions. However, let’s also make it a point not to stop there. Let’s allow our thanksgiving to become praise and worship as well.

In one of the most familiar psalms we associate with this occasion, Psalm 100, it doesn’t just promote the giving of thanks but also the praise and worship of the Lord. After it reminds us that God is our Creator, it says, “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name” (Psalm 100:4). We see both thanksgiving and praise being encouraged. What is the difference between them? We give thanks to God for what He has done for us. But we give Him praise and bless Him simply because of who He is. As that psalm goes on to declare, we do it “for the Lord is good” (v.5). No matter what blessings we may have received from God, or even if other desired blessings were withheld, He is worthy of our praise and worship simply because of who He is – a good, loving, just, and merciful God.

Don’t misunderstand. I am not discounting the giving of thanks at all. I am just encouraging us not only to express our gratitude to God but to let that spirit progress even further into an attitude of praise and worship. And I am not talking only about singing. I am concerned that in many of our Christian circles these days the concept of “praise and worship” is automatically connected to singing, and sometimes to singing particular types of songs. Certainly, lifting up our voices in song is one wonderful way to praise God and to worship Him. This same psalm tells us to “come before His presence with singing” (v.2). However, that isn’t the only way we can express our praise or worship our God. We can do it with making “a joyful shout to the Lord” (v.1), or we can do it silently in our own hearts. We can worship Him as we “serve the Lord with gladness” (v.2) and as we serve others in His name. All that we do, if done in the right spirit, can be expressions of praise to our Creator and acts of worship.  

So, as we offer our gratitude to the Lord this week, let’s also join the rest of creation in praising Him and humbly worshiping Him as the good Creator and great King that He is.