“I will bless you every day;
I will praise your name forever and ever.”
(Psalm 145:2 CSB)
Do you read that and think “Booyah! Yes! Praise the Lord. It’s been a great week! There are plenty of reasons to praise!”
Or do you read that and feel numb? Numb because that verse sounds like every day must be a happy day where you bubble over with blessings and songs, and that’s just not reality. You can’t live up to that sort of positivity.
The Christian Life Doesn’t Require Perpetual Positivity
Rest assured; God doesn’t ask you to. Christians don’t live in an alternate reality from other humans. It’s not as though you put faith in Jesus, you “know the Lord,” and suddenly your inner life floods with inextinguishable sunshine. Life with Christ doesn’t mean your mood will morph into perpetual summertime.
The Bible says that when your life is hidden in Christ, you’re given a lamp in the darkness (Psalm 119:105), an anchor for the storm (Hebrews 6:19), a hand to hold when life feels unfair (Psalm 73:21-24), and a fortress to flee to as the battle rages on (Psalm 18:2). It says that the way to life is to submit to death (John 12:24). It says our Good Shepherd leads us into the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4).
We don’t bless God or praise his name for the sake of arbitrary positivity. Also, praise doesn’t mean perky positivity. To bless the Lord isn’t to lift our hands and smile. Biblical faith is much deeper than that.
What It Means to Bless the Lord
Let me prove it to you from the Bible:
Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:20-21 ESV)
Job just lost all his kids. Did you hear that? All his kids died in one day. How did he respond? We often think Bible-people were not real people, but they were. They were like you and me. They had tear ducts and they ugly-cried. Job responded to his grief covered in dust, churning with anguish, exhausted—yet we read that he blessed the Lord.
Two facts about the word bless. The word for bless means “to kneel.” It’s also the opposite of the word curse. So what does it mean to bless the Lord? To speak well of him, and to honor him.
Two facts about the word bless. The word for bless also means “to kneel.” It’s also the opposite of the word curse. So what does it mean to bless the Lord? To speak well of him, and to honor him.
You can speak well of God and honor him with a heavy heart and tear-filled eyes (2 Corinthians 6:10). You can bless the Lord without a smile, when your soul feels like winter.
We all feel pain. Those who don’t know the Lord wrestle with darkness, storm, and war, and they curse God—they raise their fist to heaven. Christians speak well of God, even in their pain. Rather than an upraised fist and curse under their breath, they bow before God saying, “This hurts really badly. I don’t understand; but he’s still my God and I know he’s good.”
We Can Bless the Lord Every Day
The psalmist says that he will bless the Lord every day, forever (Psalm 145:2). Unrealistic? Not if you know the God he knows.
What kind of world does this psalmist live in? A world that needs grace and mercy (Psalm 145:8), that is liable to experience God’s anger (Psalm 145:8), a world of people who fall discouraged (Psalm 145:14), a world of needy people, whose hearts ache with longing (Psalm 145:15-16), a world where we expect unrighteousness and unkindness (Psalm 145:17), a world where people cry for help, and a world where wicked people roam (Psalm 145:19-20). In that world, the psalmist blesses the Lord, because the Lord is and always will be good and kind, despite the unkindness of our circumstances or the world around.
“I will bless you every day…forever,” the psalmist says (Psalm 145:2 CSB).
Will you? Will you bless the Lord today—either from the overflow of his joy or from the bottom of your broken heart?