A Week of Worship and ThanksgivingNäide

Keeping it Simple...

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! - Psalm 150:6

It doesn’t get much simpler than this!

This last verse of the last of the Psalms declares that if you and I are breathing, we had better get our praise on. I am pretty sure no one is exempt.

If you and I are alive now, then Lord Jesus is worthy of all our thanksgiving and worship. Think of it–His breath is what gave us life in the first place (Gen. 2:7). In return, we discover that our life’s oxygen is to worship Him with that very breath!

The tender act in the Garden of Eden–where it all began for humanity–was God sharing His very own breath of life with us. And now, those who have received Christ by faith (John 1:12) have also been filled with the life-breath power of the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). Indeed. The original Hebrew and Greek words defined Spirit in our English mean breath, to breathe, breeze, and wind.

The early church apologist, Ireneaus of Lyons, penned, the glory of God is man fully alive. We are fully alive when we worship as we intentionally press into the throne room of the Holy of Holies and allow the Holy Spirit to catch us up with the heavenly hosts. Indeed, our thanksgiving and worship are our passports into the courts of God’s presence (Ps. 100:4).

So, it is time to praise—time to direct our adoration and thanksgiving upward. Time to remember He holds our breath in His hands and owns all our ways (Dan. 5:23b). It is time to inhale a deep breath of the Holy Spirit and exhale with new words and phrases that describe our King.

It is time for us to revel in His love and not hold back. It is time for everything and everyone that has breath to praise Him.

Think of five new-to-you phrases of worship and thanksgiving and offer them to the Lord.