Mensa Otabil - Choose to Praise the Lord
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We return to our study of the Psalms. As you know, we have been studying the Psalms from Psalm 1 onwards, and so today we go to Psalm 9. We will be examining selected verses from Psalm 9. We start with verses 1 and 2: I will praise you, O Lord; with my whole heart, I will tell of all your marvelous works. I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High. Psalm 9 is a Psalm of David, and it intersperses Thanksgiving with hope for deliverance. As is usual in David’s encounters with God, he sees God in the midst of his enemies and all the things that come against him. In the midst of that, he speaks to us about God. One of the things we learn from the opening verses of this Psalm is the way David uses the phrase " I will.» There are four " I wills» in this passage that we will explore.
The first one he starts with is, «I will praise you.» That is a statement of intention and a statement of choice. Praising God is something we choose to do. David doesn’t specify the situation he is in, but he declares that whatever it is, he will praise you. It is by our will, by our choice, that we praise God. So that’s the first «I will» that we see from David. He then continues by saying, «I will tell of your marvelous works.» David is demonstrating how to praise God. When we praise God, we recount His marvelous works. We remember what He has done, and we rehearse it; we speak it out. The songwriter says you count your blessings and name them one by one. When you forget what God has done, you cannot praise Him; you can only complain about where you are. But when you remember what He has done-what He did last year, what He did ten years ago, what He did yesterday-then you can praise Him, even though you are not in the best of conditions.
So he says, «I will praise you; I will tell of your marvelous works.» Then, I like the third one: he says, «I will be glad and rejoice in you.» There is something to note about David; he says, «I will do that.» In other words, I’m choosing to be glad and rejoice in you. What does it mean? It means I’m not in a joyful place at this moment; I’m not in a happy place. Life is not going well for me, but I will. I choose to rejoice and be glad. We have the choice to complain, to murmur, to be sad, to be defeated by our struggles, or to praise God, even though we are not in a pretty place. So many things can surround us, and they may not be good things. Life has its own way of throwing all kinds of challenges against us, but we will rejoice and be glad. I want to encourage you to choose to be joyful, choose to be glad, choose to rejoice, and choose to remember what God has done for you, because that is how we win our battles.
Finally, David says, " I will sing of your name.» In all this praise I’m talking about who the Lord is. I will magnify Him, I will remember His works, and I will praise His holy name. So that’s how we start our week. Choose this week to praise the Lord, to thank Him for your life, to thank Him for what He has done for you, and choose to be glad, even though there is some pain in your life. You choose to rejoice in the Lord. That’s how we start the first day of this week. It’s going to be a marvelous week. Let us pray. Say with me, «Heavenly Father, thank you for your marvelous works in my life. I choose to praise you continually. In Jesus' name, amen and amen.»