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A Trickle or a Gusher?

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  1 I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. 2  I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.           Psalm 9:1-2

Our hope and goal as believers in Jesus Christ is to give God whole hearted praise.  To have true and full thanksgiving come from our hearts to God i praise.  To be truly glad and exult in God and sing praise to His name.  I hope that is your experience not only on Sunday mornings as you gather to worship God, but every day of your existence on this earth.  

But what if that isn't your heart on Sundays or Anydays? What if you find that your thankfulness seems to have the same problems as the old galvanized pipes in your chlildhood home?  What if the water pressure of your praise has been reduced to a small trickle? If we have been walking with Christ for any length of time, we have found our praise lacking, our gratitude dried up, and and gladness and exulting in God reduced to a mere drips in comparison to what it really should be.  

So what do we do?  Let ourselves off the hook? Think that it is ok to only have half hearted praise?  The Scriptures, and the Lord do not let us off the hook so easily.  This is a time to battle our sinful, unthankful and half hearts.  This is a time to take action instead of letting the mediocre devotion to God that would normally typify us win out the day.  This is the time to do something about our cold heart by God's strength.  And that is exactly what David does in the beginning of Psalm 9.  

I will.  That is what David, knowing his own shortcomings in his heart says.  I will. I will give thanks to the Lord, I will do it with a full heart, I will be glad, I will exult and sing and praise.  Notice, David doesn't write, Since I don't feel like singing or having a full heart, I won't.  He knows that if he waits for his heart to be full of praise he will miss an opportunity to praise God as he deserves right now.  We must learn to know that even though our hearts don't feel like doing something, they still need to do it.  That is how we train our hearts to love God.  We say, though I do not feel like singing or serving or going to church or giving or praying, I know that God is still worthy of all those things and I WILL do them.  This is called faithfulness and self control, the fruit of the Spirit that enables our effort.

So this can't be all self will, We must rely on the Spirit's empowerment.  That may be whispering a short prayer for God's help to do the thing that our half heart seems dead and incapable of doing right now. But we are also given another help when our hearts are not full.  A way to fill them up again.  Notice vs 1 again. "I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.  I think David is showing us here, at least partly, how this whole and full heart of praise is acheived by the Spirit's enabling. What is our task to follow through on? 

Recount all of God's wonderful deeds. Recount, more than just try hard to remember, the idea is to relist, write down or even speak out loud all that God in his glory and power has done.  To be overwhelmed by the very renumbering of all that God has so wonderously done. We will never be short on material to do this, in fact, this is the activity that we will joyously spend most of our eternity doing, Why not get a head start? Recount God's power and might and justice and love as shown in all that He has done, especially in and through Jesus Christ.  

God deserves all of our heart.  How do we let him have our full praise? A Spirit enabled determination to sing and praise and do all tat would bring him true and whole hearted praise.  And the way we would accomplish that is to recount, re-number, relist and remember all that God has done in our sight and in Christ. Here's to a whole heart, a gusher rather than a trickle, and the God who can produce it. 


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