Seven Ways to Praise

Psalm 119:164 Seven times a day I praise You, Because of Your righteous judgments.

I have been meditating on Psalm 119 over the last several months, and have read this verse over 200 times during that period, but I only truly noticed it yesterday. Is God’s Word not amazing? No matter how many times we reach into it, it never runs dry! Since this verse gripped me and won’t let go, I figured I’d better try it out. Naturally, I started by doing a bit of math: 

Between 6:30 in the morning and 11:00 at night there are sixteen and a half hours. Divide that into seven equal sections, and each one is two hours and forty-five minutes. With an iPhone timer set, I’m in less danger of losing track of time. 

Praise is an important part of prayer, and one that is often neglected. The Hebrew word for praise in this verse is the one from which we get “Hallelujah” (praise the Lord). It means to boast or exult, so basically just telling God (and others) how wonderful we think He is. There are many ways to incorporate praise into prayer, and I’ve made a list of some I use:

1. Praise God for Who He is. Obvious, and all over the Bible. Think about God’s attributes: mercy, love, strength, righteousness. How can we not boast about our incredible God?

Psalm 7:17  I will praise the LORD according to His righteousness,  And will sing praise to the name of the LORD Most High.

2. Praise God for what He has done in your own life. He saved you, keeps you, and gives you everything you need each day.

Psalm 71:6  By You I have been upheld from birth;  You are He who took me out of my mother’s womb.  My praise shall be continually of You.

3. Praise God for what He has done throughout history. Creating the heavens and the earth, sending His Son as a sufficient sacrifice for all the world, sustaining life and withholding His wrath.

Psalm 148:1-5 Praise the LORD!  

Praise the LORD from the heavens;  Praise Him in the heights! 

Praise Him, all His angels;  Praise Him, all His hosts!

Praise Him, sun and moon;  Praise Him, all you stars of light!

Praise Him, you heavens of heavens,  And you waters above the heavens!

Let them praise the name of the LORD,  For He commanded and they were created.

4. Praise God to other people. Whether in a blog post (cough), on FaceBook, through a text message, but most especially in real life, face-to-face conversations, tell your friends why you think God is so awesome.

Psalm 108:3  I will praise You, O LORD, among the peoples,  And I will sing praises to You among the nations.

5. Praise the Lord using songs and psalms. We have many hymns which express praise to God, and the psalms are also full of verses of praise. If you are struggling to come up with your own words of praise, use the words of these faithful men as a starting point.

• Psalm 145: A Praise of David
• O Worship the King
• How Great Thou Art
• I Sing the Mighty Power of God

Psalm 47:6  Sing praises to God, sing praises!  Sing praises to our King, sing praises!

6. Praise the Lord over and over for the same thing. Repetition is a powerful tool, if used with focus and purpose. 

Psalm 34:1    I will bless the LORD at all times;  His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

7. Praise the Bible, the Word of God. 

Psalm 56:10  In God (I will praise His word),  

In the LORD (I will praise His word),

11  In God I have put my trust; 

See, with a list like that it's not so hard to praise the Lord seven times in one day. Just a couple minutes to focus on God is all it takes. I found it to be a fun exercise, something different from my usual Bible time routine. 

Large Family Idiosyncrasies #5: Saved by the Bell

When there are twelve people living on ten acres, one does not want to always be shouting to get the attention of children who might be playing in the field, on the volleyball court, basketball court, all the way out in the woods, or picking apples or blackberries in the orchard. We did not get quite as creative as the Von Trapp family, but we have come up with a system to communicate without damaging our vocal chords.

An old Navy bell hangs on our back porch, and we ring it to send certain messages to any within earshot:

One ring. If we need a certain child, ring the bell once and then call out the name of whoever is needed. The bell gets everyone's attention so that they can hear the shouted name, rather than it being drowned out by other shouting that might (possibly) be going on at the time.

Two rings. There is fresh coffee in the house available to the first comers.

Three rings. Mom and Dad need to come back to the house. They often walk up and down the road in the afternoon, and often a conflict comes up back at the house that requires their attention before their walk is finished.

Four rings. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. We also call this "All hands on deck". Everyone is to come back to the house as quickly as they can. Usually used for lunch/dinner calls, as well as picking up the house, and time for church/getting ready for church.

Frenetic ringing of any number over four: major emergency, imminent danger, or (if Mom and Dad are absent) catastrophic personality clash.

There are two drawbacks to this generally excellent system: if friends and relations are standing nearby we try to warn them before ringing, as it is quite startling if heard unexpectedly at close quarters, and sometimes when visitors come to the house for the first time they are confused, and try to use it as a doorbell.
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Large Family Idiosyncrasies #4: Colour Codes

How many toothbrushes are in your bathroom?

Most people have two or three, and they're easy enough to keep track of. In a big family, however, you are most likely looking at five or more toothbrushes, all from the same seller, and alarmingly similar. Add a couple (or ten) germaphobic kids, who are terrified at the thought of accidentally using someone else's brush, and the problem is magnified.

Another example: if you ever come to our house, you would probably see twelve cups on the counter. This may seem like a lot, but we are actually rigorous to keep it down to this number, since we can easily accumulate 16 used mugs and 36 glasses in one day. Here's how it happens:

A child, being thirsty, goes into the kitchen, fills a glass with water, drinks it, sets it down on the counter, and walks off. Soon another child comes in. He sees twelve glasses in a group, which were used at lunch. If he chooses a glass from the lunch group, he has a one in twelve chance of it being his glass, and thus not having anyone else's germs on it. However, another child has been in the kitchen before him, and chose a glass at random, so there is a one in twelve chance that his glass has been contaminated.

Okay, this is not a math problem, so I won't ask you to calculate the odds of randomly picking out your own glass from a group of twelve and it remaining uncontaminated, but it's a poor probability to start with, and gets even smaller as the afternoon progresses. So what does the child do? He takes a clean glass from the cupboard, drinks from it, and adds it to the group on the counter, thus giving future children even worse odds of picking their own cup. Obviously, in the toothbrush scenario, even this option is not available, since you can't use a new toothbrush every night.

Our family has come up with a clever solution to this conundrum: the Colour Code.

Every child is assigned a colour at birth (or at least as soon as they start drinking out of a cup), and we have rubber bands in that colour to put around our glasses: green, white, purple, yellow, red, blue, pink, orange, light blue, and light green. Girly colours are assigned to the girls, and boyish colours to the boys. Originally, the cups themselves were coloured, but as the family grew this became hard to keep up with. Now, we also have a row of labels on the counter to place our glasses on, to be further organized. One advantage of colours over words is that children learn to recognize colours before they learn to read.

The same concept works for toothbrushes, socks, and any other easily mixed up possessions. As the kids get older, they learn to keep better track of their stuff and it is not as necessary.