Continual Praise – How?

This is the fifth of six blog posts looking at the first 3 verses of Psalm 34, and attempting to understand the idea of “continual praise”.

Series: Who? | What? | Whom? | When? | How? | Why?

I will bless the Lord at all times;
His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

My soul shall make its boast in the Lord;
The humble shall hear of it and be glad.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me,
And let us exalt His name together!

Psalm xxxiv.1-3

Having answered the questions of what it means to worship God, and when we are to do so, we now come to the question of how we are to worship continually.

5. How?

There are three ways the psalm tells us we are to worship.

With the mouth

Verse 1 tells us that David was resolved to worship with his mouth. How can we remain silent? In the face of God’s great salvation, his rescuing of us, his love, his generosity, all of who he is, our joy should overflow in words and songs of praise. Too often we use our mouths to say things that do not honor and please God. We do not head verse 13.

Keep your tongue from evil,
And your lips from speaking deceit.

Psalm xxxiv.13

If our mouths are full of evil and deceit, they will not be full of the worship of God. But if our mouth is full of his praise, there will be no room in it for evil and deceit, for prideful boasting in self, for hurtful words towards our spouses or those we love. Christian, I implore you to resolve with David to keep your mouth full of God’s praise. Don’t just think in your mind a prayer of thanks, speak it with your mouth. You will find that it becomes more real to you.

Lay hold of opportunities to speak God’s praise in the presence of others. It will strengthen your faith, and encourage them in theirs, or toward faith if they do not yet have it.

With the soul

Verse 2 tells us that David was resolved to worship with his soul. Calvin calls this the “seat of the affections”. Simply put, your soul is the essence of who you are as a person. It is your mind, your will, and your emotions all wrapped up together. It is your heart, not the physical organ beating in your chest, but the core of who you are as a person, your immaterial identity.

What David is saying is that his worship is heartfelt, it is real, it is deeply embedded at the core of his being. It is not just words. The words of his mouth would be empty and vain were his soul not behind them. Without this, your words are hypocrisy. If you tell people that God is great and greatly to be praised, but you don’t feel that down to your toes, people will sense the emptiness, and your words will be meaningless.

Set your affections on Christ. Look to him and get a taste, as David says in verse 8, of the goodness of the Lord. Let his grace and mercy overwhelm you. Don’t worry so much about getting the words right, but rather about getting the heart right in worship.

With others

Verse 3 tells us that David desired to worship with others. Worshiping together with other believers is healthy for many reasons. I’ll just point out two of them.

If we have a true sense of who God is, as we’ve discussed, and a true sense of who we are, our soul will rightly feel its own inability to adequately glorify the Lord, and will therefore crave companionship in worship. And worshiping in concert with others will reinforce these understandings.

As we come together and speak to each other the truth of God’s greatness, it encourages and builds us all up. It strengthens our faith and excites our affections both individually and as a body. It increases our joy.

Secondly, worshiping with others is a powerful apologetic for the gospel. It is our life together, lived in the worship of God, that best communicates and gives weight to the truth claims of the gospel. When a person is reconciled to God through Christ, they are joined to his body, the church. That is the people of God. Worshiping together in the stream of real life, speaks powerfully to the world.

So we see that our worship together takes two forms.

The gathering of the saints to worship in a special time set aside for the purpose, namely Sunday worship services. Which increases our joy, and shows God for how magnificent he really is.

But we are also to join with others for worship together in the cave (where David was hiding out with his men), in the stream of real life. This is where small groups serve us well. As we meet in our homes, share meals together, push deeply into each others lives to build community shaped by the gospel, we worship as David has described in these verses, continually, at all times, in the stream of real life, yet together, not alone.

This is where we are changed, where the gospel is brought to bear on our fears (v4), our troubles (v6), our want and hunger (v10), our desires (v12), our tongues (v13), our afflictions (v19). When we live in deep gospel community with others, when we speak the goodness of God to each other in times of despair or lack, when we keep watch over our speech together, when we encourage and give hope to one another by sharing the movement of God in our daily lives, then we are able to bless the Lord at all times.