How many times today did you hear someone ask the Lord to bless us? We often ask the Lord to bless us in our worship, bless our families, bless the sick, bless those who have lost loved ones, bless our food, bless our children, and numerous other requests for God’s blessings.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with any of these. Our Lord certainly desires that we come to Him with requests from our hearts. As well, we have Biblical examples and even admonitions concerning prayer.
My question for us to consider is, do we ever think about our need to bless the Lord. We often think about blessing someone as being associated with what can be offered to the one who is to be blessed? One might wonder, how in the world can we bless the Lord?
Close friend of Jesus, and our brother Peter reminds us of the fact that we are a part of a chosen nation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and a people for God’s own possession. He tells us that this is true so that we might declare the excellencies of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9-10) Another way to say we are to declare His excellencies is to say we are to praise Him or bless Him.
If that’s not enough, David wrote an entire Psalm about it. He began and concluded Psalm 103 with the words, “Bless the Lord, O my soul.”
In the midst of his own struggles, King David was willing and able to say, “Bless the Lord.” He further explained in this great psalm how and why we are able to accomplish this.
May I challenge all of us who have proclaimed the excellencies of our God today to remember throughout this week, even in the midst of trials, tribulations, problems heartaches, and headaches, to let these words flow forth from our hearts. “Bless the Lord, O my soul.”
