Psalm 111:1
Praise the LORD!
I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart,
in the company of the upright, in the congregation.
Psalm 111 begins with an imperative, a command: praise the Lord. The very fact that God commands praise means it must be a matter of decision, of commitment, not merely a response to pleasant circumstances. We are called to be people who choose praise. We are called to “give thanks with your whole heart,” which means to have a single object of thanks and praise. This is not as much about our intensity or fervor as it is about the recipient of our praise and thanks. We turn our hearts to God who, as we will see, is the very reason we praise and thank at all.
And this is a corporate command, not just something each of us does individually. We praise and give thanks together. We need each other to do this. My rejoicing runs out and dries up if I do not share it. I miss so many reasons to rejoice if you do not share things I wouldn’t see otherwise. We must know one another, hear one another, see the Lord’s work in and through one another so that we can give thanks with our whole hearts in the congregation. This is part of the reason why isolation is so dangerous and why God designed us to be in Christian community. We need to hear the thankfulness and rejoicing of others and to share our own for the sake of collective joy and encouragement and for the sake of honoring our Lord.
I originally wrote this post for my church, Immanuel Nashville, in our Daily Pulse email. If you want encouragement from God’s word delivered Monday thru Friday to your inbox, I encourage you to subscribe.