Whole heart

DEVOTION

PSALMS

WHOLE HEART

Ps 9:1-2

I will praise you, O LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders. 2 I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.  

NIV

We always have to remember these psalms are not just the words of a man, but words that are inspired by God written down by a man. They are an inspiration which is derived from God. We are told that all scripture is God-breathed, therefore we read words God desires us to and understand because the Spirit leads us into all the truth. God does write in riddles to hide the truth from us. Here we see praise is to be with our whole heart. This is so clear that we cannot praise God with a divided heart, or half-hearted. This takes all we are, all we have to praise him. Sometimes it seems that many of our fellow believers are not giving it all in the praise or worship portion of the Sunday service. In fact, there are times we are not fully engaged with all our heart. Why is that? We are so easily distracted by the things of life, or by someone else in the service, what they are doing or not doing, by children that are whispering and not singing, by parents paying no attention to what they children are doing, or someone who isn’t even singing at all. Maybe it is someone in the choir or on the worship team that draws our attention.  But here we are looking around instead of praising our Lord with our whole heart. What is with that? No, we have to be fully engaged one hundred percent in worship, it is simply just between us and God. What about the applause thing when the choir or worship team sing a special? Who are people applauding, the singers, or God? If the singers than were we just entertained? If God, why are we not applauding the pastor after he brings the word to us, for that was from God? What about his prayer? That too was from God. Maybe we are just applauding God in our hearts. The other question is, do we tell of his wonders? Are we always telling of his wonders? Do we know his wonders? Are we experiencing his wonders? Sometimes life brings us as many downs as there are ups, but does that interfere with his wonders? The Hebrew word means marvelous works, wonderful. We just have to look around or even look in the mirror and we see his marvelous works.

Ps 139:14

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

NIV

We will get to the rest of all that sometime later, but for now we only have to understand that we are the works of his hands. He has wonderfully made us. We are one of his wonders. Do we tell of his wonders? Do we explain how God designed the universe, how he formed everything simply by the words of his mouth, except when it came to us. When he formed us, God got down on his knees and got his hands dirty as he spit into the dirt to made mud, or clay and formed our being, then leaned over and breathed his very breathe into our lungs. With each breathe we inhale the very breathe God gave us. How wonderful is that? Each morning we arise to see the sun bringing us light to warm us, illuminate our day and we can hear the birds singing praise to our God. In the spring we see all the plants bursting forth with buds and the green appears soon after, life is back in their limbs as they soak up the rays from the sun. He has made this place a paradise for us to enjoy. Sure we are not in the Garden of Eden and we have to toil all the days of our lives, and by the sweat of our brow we labor for our sustenance, but we still are his handiwork and we should be praising him with our whole heart. We are glad and we rejoice, we sing his praises with our whole heart.