Employing Psalm 103, Julian Hardyman encourages us to talk to ourselves when we are struggling to praise God
I have two main problems in going to church services.
The first is when I am thinking about leaving the house (or am on my way) and I find myself wishing I was going to do something else instead – like staying at home to watch TV or browse a few websites. The second is when I am actually in the building and the service has started but I find singing the words in a heartfelt way difficult. My mind is distracted. Or simply lethargic.
This makes me feel conflicted and sometimes quite embarrassed, especially as I’m the pastor. ‘I am glad they don’t know that the man who is going to lead feels so ambivalent about even being there’, I think rather guiltily as I cycle to church.
One Sunday evening I thought I would begin the sermon with a confession along the lines of the previous two paragraphs. The nods of recognition and the knowing laughs around the congregation came as a bit of a relief. I discovered that (as with so many things I struggle with) my fears of being the only one like this were completely wrong. I am not alone in my own church and probably not in most others either.
David’s directive
Psalm 103 helps with those problems, which affect our personal prayers just as much as our difficulties with church services. In fact this psalm can really transform them. It is a piece of divinely inspired poetry which is designed to rekindle praise in our hearts. The way it works is to put words in our mouths through which we address ourselves and rouse ourselves to praise. Why not try this by saying the opening line: ‘Praise the LORD, my soul’.
This is an instruction and a command to praise. We praise a person: the Lord – the one and only true God. He lives for ever and is before all time and outside all time, yet created us, revealed Himself to us and relates to us as Master and Father. He is the one who deserves praise because of who He is in the incomparable greatness of His being, and because He has been so generous and kind to us in nature and in grace.
The command has a specific content: ‘praise his holy name’ (verse 1, my italics). Immediately we are into an area which is rarified: holiness. Our God is different. He has no dark corners or flaws. He simply is pure and upright. So biblical praise is about recognising His reality – as opposed to singing doubtfully about a God we aren’t sure about. It is about specific recognition of His specific identity – as opposed to a God we are vague about or have decided must be like this or that, according to our own personal preferences. It is about awe for His holiness, His unlikeness to us in so many ways.
Talking to yourself
But the command to self is not enough. The psalmist repeats it in the next line: ‘Praise the LORD, my soul’ (v.2). The self is examined; it is not praising God. The self is diagnosed: it needs impetus. The self realises that he is the one to give this to himself so the self is directed.
The old Bible commentator Matthew Henry says: ‘David is talking to himself and he is no fool that thus talks to himself and excites his own soul to that which is good.’1
I wonder if in Matthew Henry’s day talking to yourself was said to be a sign of madness as it is often in ours. Perhaps that is part of the background to his saying: ‘He is no fool that thus talks to himself ’. Or perhaps it is a way of saying: ‘It is a mark of great wisdom to talk like this to yourself.’ But we shouldn’t get too caught up with those relatively minor considerations. The gold here is in the last phrase: ‘He is no fool that … excites his own soul to that which is good.’
Emotional embers
Do you need to reignite the fires of praise and rekindle the glow of worship? Our fires go out or burn low. Our enthusiasm dims. And it doesn’t naturally come welling up from within. But we can do something about this. We are not stuck in the mediocrity of halfheartedness. We can rouse ourselves. David invites us to engage in an inner dialogue in which we use our mind and our memory to rouse our emotions.
In all areas of life we can get used to having something – perhaps a pay rise or the return to health after an injury or an illness – and start to take it for granted.
Thomas Hardy, the well-known novelist, also wrote poetry. (Some people think his poems are better than his novels.) His Poems of 1912–13 were written after his wife, Emma, died. Their marriage had failed to excite Hardy very much for years. Then she died. And only then did he realise how much he had loved her. The poems express the loss of what he hadn’t appreciated at the time.
We can stop appreciating the Lord. We can forget all the good things he has done for us. That must have been true for David because he says rather firmly to himself: ‘Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits’ (Ps. 103:2).
This kind of inner self-talk is precisely what many of us need. Our problem is not that we don’t have an inner dialogue; it’s that we have a different one going on in which we listen to ourselves instead of talking to ourselves.2
The inner feelings and thoughts we listen to are the ones that stop praise coming. If we just pay attention to them, we will very often find an excuse not to go to church – or when we get there, will take part in a detached way.
It may well mean we spend our time at church critical of others (or perhaps ourselves). And then we fail to praise God as we might. In any situation there is always something for a Christian to praise God.
When you don’t feel much
Of course there are times when this is harder than ever to do. My father died on Christmas Eve a few years ago and I was quite subdued in the service on Christmas Day. But God still enabled me to sing praise to Christ with authenticity – my dad’s death was sad, but God was still God and worthy of praise. In those situations it is amazing how the right kind of gospel self-talk enables praise.
When you don’t feel like coming to church, could you talk to yourself this way? Or when you are at church and a hymn is announced but you don’t feel very much inside, could you talk to yourself this way? Do so using the words of Psalm 103. This is the genius of the psalm: all you have to do is read it out loud. But, as you read it, you will find yourself talking to yourself. It will put words into your mouth which, as you say them, cause something to happen: gospel self-talk! Here’s an experiment you might want to try. Why not read Psalm 103 out loud on your own every day this week? It doesn’t take very long.
Two-minute task
The last time I tried was one afternoon when I was probably a bit sleepy. It took me 1 minute 45 seconds. So if you could find two minutes in your daily schedule, I invite you to try this – and to savour the benefits. If you think two minutes is too long, how about just the first five verses? That takes no more than a few seconds! As you do, you’ll be drawn into practising biblical self-talk about dryness in worship. I am confident that your worship will therefore be different.
David not only starts Psalm 103 with ‘Praise the LORD, my soul’; he ends on the same note. This is the beginning, not the end, of praise which is never-ending.
As Matthew Henry puts it: ‘When we have done ever so much in the service of God, yet still we must stir ourselves up to do more. God’s praise is a subject that will never be exhausted, and therefore we must never think that this work is done till we come to heaven when it will be forever.’3
This article is an extract from Fresh Pathways in Prayer by Julian Hardyman, recently published by 10Publishing ISBN 978 1 912 373 666 price £5.99 and is used here with permission.
