Praises to God

Psalm 138:1-3 [NLT)
1 I give you thanks, O Lord, with all my heart; I will sing your praises before the gods. 2 I bow before your holy Temple as I worship. I praise your name for your unfailing love and faithfulness; for your promises are backed by all the honor of your name. 3 As soon as I pray, you answer me; you encourage me by giving me strength.

In this Psalm David reflects back on God with thankfulness upon the experiences he had of God’s goodness to him. David not only gives thanks to God, but praises God above all other gods’ man created and the tales man created to go with them. For David knows God is the one and only true God, the creator of the universe and creator of man. David praises God for his unfailing love and that God’s promises always come true because of God’s honor. David expresses that as soon as he prays an answer starts to unfold and in the interim God provides him strength to see him through to the answer is revealed.

 

 

It is fitting and right to sing of you, to praise you, to thank you, to adore you in all places of your dominion. For you are the ineffable God, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, existing forever and yet ever the same, you and your only-begotten Son and your Holy Spirit. You brought us into being out of nothingness, and when we had fallen, you raised us up again. You have not ceased doing everything to lead us to heaven and to bestow upon us your future kingdom. For all this do we thank you and your only-begotten Son and your Holy Spirit - for all the benefits of which we know and those of which we are ignorant, for those that are manifest to us and those that lie concealed.

We thank you also for this sacrifice, which you are pleased to receive from our hands, even though there stand before you thousands of archangels and myriads of angels, Cherubim and Seraphim, six-winged and many-eyed, borne aloft on their wings who sing, proclaim, cry out, and chant the triumphal hymn:

Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Hosts! Heaven and earth are filled with your glory. Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!  [John Chrysostom, Christian History, no. 44.]

 

All the hosts of heaven cry out praises to God, yet God hears our praise and is pleased with us. God takes pleasure in us and finds us precious in His sight. God loves us more than we can imagine and is always waiting to respond to our prayers and God provides us strength to see us through whatever His response might be.