Exhorting Yourself About Wholehearted Blessing

God is infinitely blessed. There is no one like Him in all the earth. In fact, we would do well to ask this question raised by God Himself:

"To whom then will you liken Me That I would be his equal?" says the Holy One. (Isaiah 40:25)

We would also do well to remember that God is worthy of all praise and glory:

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!  34 For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS COUNSELOR?  35 Or WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN?  36 For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen (Romans 11:33-36).

In keeping with Psalm 103 we could say it this way: God is worthy to be blessed because He is infinitely blessed. Last week we considered the fact that Psalm 103 is designed to teach us to recount God’s characteristic benefits for the purpose of blessing Him. In other words, since God is blessedly good we ought to recount His benefits in order to call attention to God’s intrinsic goodness that is worthy of all praise.

If you are convinced that God is infinitely good and worthy of praise and blessing then there ought to be a burning question in your soul: How should I bless the Lord?

The point of Psalm 103:1-5

Psalm 103 answers that question first of all by saying we ought to bless the Lord for His personal benefits. We ought to consider all that God has done for us personally in order to use that as a basis upon which to bless Him in praise for who He is.

Talking to Yourself about Blessing the Lord

Before we can recount the personal benefits that the Lord has showered upon us, we must first be able to talk to ourselves about this. Notice what the Psalmist does 

in verse 1:

Bless the LORD, O my soul, And all that is within me, bless His holy name. (Psalm 103:1)

Who is speaking in this verse and who is that person talking to? These two questions have one answer: David! David is talking to himself about blessing the LORD. Did you know that you are constantly talking to yourself? You may say “not me! I am not like those people who talk to themselves!” You may not talk audibly to yourself, but you have a constant dialog going on in your heart. You are constantly interpreting things and responding to stimuli around you. The question is what track is your inner dialog running on? Is it the “I must be in control” track? Or the “that is not fair” track? Or the “when will things start going my way” track? Or is your mind on the “I deserve nothing but eternal judgment for my sin, but God has been so kind to me” track?

What we need to take away from David’s example is that he talked to himself about this practice. You could say David exhorted himself to consciously recount all that God had done for him personally. Often you will hear that we ought to tell ourselves to think positively. The example of David here is not about “thinking positively.” The example we have here is David thinking realistically about all of the benefits that he had received from God. We are always talking to ourselves, what we learn from Psalm 103:1 is we need to spend much more time talking to ourselves about all that God has done for us because of Who He is.

In Your Blessing Match His Blessedness

If God is infinitely blessed and we are to bless His infinite blessedness, then our blessing of Him ought to match His blessing! We all recognize when someone is doing something important but is doing it in a half-hearted way. There is nothing more important than to call attention to the Lord’s blessedness, therefore our blessing of God ought to match that infinite blessedness. In light of the infinite blessedness of the Lord how ought we to bless Him? David says with “all that is within me, bless His holy name.”

There is a way to bless the Lord each week even each day in a halfhearted way.

Then the Lord said, "Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote, (Isaiah 29:13).

Here is the point, this Psalm is calling us to a blessing of the Lord that goes beyond ritual or habit, but is a whole-hearted blessing of the Lord. We are to bless the Lord with our whole person: Often we are like the man in James even in our blessing of the Lord: a double minded man, unstable in all his ways (James 1:8).

We must not forget that we are blessing the holy name of our God. His name is high and set apart, it is holy. If we are to bless the name of the Lord we will be blessing His character.

The Foundation for Blessing

If we are to recount the benefits of the Lord for the purpose of calling attention to His intrinsic goodness, we must know who He is. Foundational to blessing the Lord for His personal benefits is have a growing experiential knowledge of who God is. Experiential knowledge of God means drinking deeply from the Word of God and then living out that Word and walking with God on the basis of His revelation. The more a person experimentally knows God, the larger the capacity that person has to genuinely bless God. If you want to grow in blessing the Lord for His personal benefits you will need to grow in your knowledge of God.

Sitting at the Feet of Jesus so that we Might Bless God

If we are to enter into and grow in this personal recounting of the Lord’s blessedness, we must sit at the feet of Jesus. In the wording of Luke 10:42 we must choose the good part of communing with Jesus which will not be take away from us. Today we sit at the feet of Jesus by reading God’s Word the Bible which so clearly proclaims Jesus to us.

Do you want to grow in worshipping the Lord by drawing attention to the Lord’s intrinsic goodness? Then Psalm 103:1 gives you three foundational aspects for doing so:

First, exhort yourself about the importance of blessing the Lord.

Second, enter into this blessing of the Lord with your whole heart.

Third, seek to grow in experiential knowledge of the holy God that you are blessing through giving more attention to His Word.

Bless the LORD, O my soul, And all that is within me, bless His holy name. (Psalm 103:1)