Continual Praise – When?

This is the fourth 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

4. Continual Praise – When?

In this post I’d like to look at the question of when we are to worship God in the ways we talked about in the previous posts. David tells us in verse 1.

“at all times…continually”

I don’t think he is vowing to think or speak of nothing else, but to constantly walk around saying, “Praise God!” or “Bless the Lord!” anytime someone tries to engage him in conversation. I don’t think that’s his intent. So what then, how is this to work?

Continual Praise in Real Life

As I pondered this, I asked the question, “How should this work in real life?” and then I remembered the use of that phrase “real life” in C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, so I got my copy off the shelf and it was right there in letter one.

As the older demon, Screwtape, mentors his young nephew demon, Wormwood, he tells him in the first letter not to let the human he is responsible for engage in any kind of analytical thought, debate, or argument about the truthfulness of ideas and philosophies.

Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favor, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it ‘real life’ and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real’.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, p.2

Now I don’t know what Lewis intended here. He states in the preface that Screwtape is wrong about some things, and I think this is one of them. Sure, when our focus is on the immediate and we’ve lost sight of God, then we are lost in that stream of ‘real life’. But on the other hand, our goal is not to ignore it. We live in the world. Had God’s intention been for us to worship him purely in spirit, he would take us out of the world at the moment of conversion. He doesn’t do that though. He leaves his people in the world, so we can worship him in the stream of ‘real life’ and show the world the glories of God.

You see, all of life is lived in the body. Scripture tells us our bodies are temples. A temple is a place of worship. So all of life, even the stream of ordinary, ‘real life’ is to be filled with the worship of our creator. That’s why we’re here!

Sunday mornings are great. We come together and worship together, but these regularly scheduled times of worship are meant to prepare us for spontaneous continual worship throughout the week.

Matthew Henry commenting on this verse said that the psalmist had resolved:

“to lay hold of all opportunities for it [that is, worship], and to renew his praises upon every fresh occurrence that furnished him with matter.” 

So as you go through the stream of real life wearing your temple, your place of worship, look for every fresh occurrence that furnishes you matter for worshiping God. And remember that he works all things for good for those who love him. Even when Joseph’s brothers stripped him, and sold him as a slave into Egypt, God meant it for good. Joseph, maybe not in the moment, but for sure later in his life was able to look at that moment, that circumstance that was so cruel, unjust, terrifying, and evil, and it became the substance and matter of worship for Joseph.

David, when King Saul seeks to kill him, when he must pretend to be a madman to escape his enemies, when he is living in a cave, uses that situation as matter, as the building blocks for worship, and he writes this psalm.

Repeatedly and often, scheduled and spontaneous. All of life is lived in a temple. It is our eternal task. Bring heaven to earth, and worship in real life!