The praise of our God is not a mood that we create. It’s not an environment that we set. It’s not a context or culture we can create. It’s not an atmosphere that we muster up with our music and our singing. It’s not a spot where we make it holy through our prayers, decorations, our actions. The praise of our God is a reaction to experiencing who God is and what he’s done. 

Psalm 63

David was most likely in tough circumstances when he wrote Psalm 63. His situation wasn’t one to put him in a really happy, peppy sort of mood. He was in the desert and was in the midst of some of the worst possible circumstances that he would ever go through. And this was a man who fought a giant. This was a man who had the king, the government, his father-in-law sign a death warrant for him. This is a man who, at one point in time, had to go to his foreign enemy and ask for aid, the government of the people of the giant whom he had killed a few years earlier. This is a man who went through a lot. And it’s not in his happiest of moments that he wrote a psalm that provides encouragement for himself and encourages God’s people to praise.

We sometimes might be tricked into or might be told the lie that praise is a result of our mood, that we somehow need to conjure up the right mood or the right attitude to enter into God’s presence to worship. As if we can only meet with God “if I get eight hours of sleep, if none of the kids are fighting, if there are no disagreements with my spouse if I’ve had two and a half cups of caffeinated coffee from Starbucks, then I will be in the right mood to offer praise to my God”. Sometimes, we believe that it is our music and our performance of music that is acceptable in God’s sight. Sometimes we think maybe the sermon’s too long and God might not accept that or it’s too short and God might not accept it. It’s got to be just right. Or maybe it just plain stinks. 

Our praise of our God is not mood-dependent. Psalm 63 points to this reality. The praise of our God is dependent on two things: who God is and what he’s done. That’s it. It is through an experience of who God is, a relationship with God is, and what he’s done that leads us into praise. 

The God of the Bible loves his people and empowers us to praise him regardless of our mood or circumstance. Your praise and evangelism of who Jesus is and why he matters is based on who God is and what he’s done. It’s not based on you or your emotions or circumstances. It’s based on him.

Psalm 63:1

“You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you,     

my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.”

David was being pursued by people who wanted to kill him. We might want to read this as David earnestly seeking a safe place and seeking some reinforcements. We might read this and think that David should instead be asking for water to quench his thirst and troops to save him. Maybe even asking God to stop his son from trying to kill him, but no. No, David says, earnestly, I seek you.

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