Daily Double: Psalm Seriesनमूना

WHY PSALM 103?

Psalm 103 is one of many praise psalms in the Book of Psalms. Praise psalms encourages us to turn our attention onto God and give Him glory for His work – both in us, in creation and in history.

There’s a focus on ‘totally praising’ God. “Let all that I am” points to a full surrender to God and the verses cover a huge range of reasons why we should fully praise God.

We should finish reading this psalm and feel very small. We are reminded that we are not the only ones and that God is ultimately so much more powerful than us. We also leave with a feeling of gratefulness because God includes us.

VITAL VERSE

Verse 22 - Praise the Lord, everything he has created, everything in all his kingdom. Let all that I am praise the Lord.

We learn the response and the reason for the response. We praise God because of His Creation and His Kingdom.

SUB SKILL: WORK OUT HOW YOU FIT IN THE PASSAGE

A common mistake is to read yourself into passages that are clearly about someone else. The Bible is about God and God’s interactions with human beings in history. There are a lot of things we learn about ourselves in the Bible, but the focus is always on God.

Keeping all that in mind, there’s still the opportunity to see what God is communicating to us in every passage. There’s always something to learn even if the passage is not directly related to us.

SOLO GO: FIND HOW YOU FIT IN PSALM 103

Psalm 103 is focused on God and God’s Work. It’s not about us. But there are many elements of the psalm that show what God has done for us (eg. Verses 3 & 4 would be an experience that most Christians would understand).

Take time to go through the psalm both as a whole and in smaller chunks and prayerfully ask God the question: Where am I in this psalm? What do you want me to see about myself?

HINT: It’s all focused around praise. This psalm encourages a response of praise to God. But our reasons for praise might be different from others based on our life experience.

PRAISE PRAYERS

Praise prayers focus all of our attention on God. These are not prayers about us. They focus entirely on God and what he has done.

It’s a great practice to pray prayers that aren’t just focused on our needs, our feelings or our desires.

Our walk with God is not solely about us. Our faith in God should develop an others-focused heart – and praise is the number #1 way to start an others-focused life by focusing our hearts on God.