His Word, His promise, this is to be the ground of all our faith; resting in it, we can praise in the midst of our struggles. Because, in His Word, we see all His promises brought to yes and amen in Jesus Christ.

The Christian life cannot and must not be lived based on mere feeling. We all have times when we don’t ‘feel it’ when following the Lord. I think of our brothers and sisters of whom we so often like to feel superior, thinking, “I would never have acted like that.” You know them: the Israelites. Imagine it: you have been promised deliverance by Jehovah, and yet you see the plagues and hear the threats of Pharaoh. God said it, and so it was as good as accomplished, but they sure didn’t feel delivered. Then, there they were with their backs against the sea and it hadn’t opened yet, and Pharaoh and his army were barreling down upon them; I am certain they didn’t feel it then. Then, they go a little way into the wilderness and they don’t have water—they didn’t feel delivered, they felt as good as dead. As a matter of fact, they were ready to walk back into Egypt based upon their feelings. So, we should see that we cannot live life based upon our feelings of any given moment. We will endure many hardships and difficulties and trials in this life. That, too, has been promised.

So, how do we walk by faith and not by sight in the Christian life? How do we go against the grain of our feelings, and follow Him in the midst of trial? How do we praise Him in the midst of hurt that we encounter—not just any hurt, but the kind of hurt that has you questioning His goodness, shakes you to your core, and puts you in the middle of a fight for your faith?

We cannot be certain of what His deliverance for us in any given circumstance may look like, or through what means it may come, and so we are to live our lives  grounded upon God’s character and promise as we see it revealed in His Word. Which brings us to this article.

There will be times we don’t feel like doing something that we know is right and yet we are called to do it. There will be times when we know we are to know we are to call on Him in worship, and to be with His people, and yet, for whatever reason, life has been hard, and we almost can’t bring ourselves to do it. How do we?

Psalm 103 gives us some instruction. Though we could spend a lot of time considering the richness of this Psalm and really look into for a lifetime (for instance, we could consider His compassion as a father; or the marvelous grace of the forgiveness of sin; etc.), we are going to focus on this Psalm based on the matter outlined above, not dealing with it in its entirety. We don’t know what occasioned this Psalm; it could be that David is rejoicing or that he has been brought low and is stirring himself up to praise. In any case, it’s no accident that it follows Psalm 102 (see particularly  verses 3-7, 9-11) and the woe faced there (much like Psalm 90 follows the hard questions of Psalm 89). Whatever the circumstance, this Psalm is great for helping us work through the issue.

So how can we be brought to praise when we’re struggling?

We are Taught Here to Prod Our Souls to Praise the Lord

Three times this Psalm calls us to stir up our souls to praise. (See verses 1, 2, and 22.) The hard reality of life is that there are times when we must say to ourselves, “I know that praise is right and I need it, and in the face of this hardship and trial and struggle, I must stir up what I know is right and best, in light of who God is and what He has promised as revealed in His Word.” When my flesh and eyes fail me, I have to stir myself up in faith, grounded in that Word, on that promise and upon His character.

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