A Liturgy for Unrestrained Praise

Devotional

Most of us praise God the way we clap at a nice restaurant.

Politely. Within reason. Enough to be sincere, not enough to be noticed. We'll thank him. We'll acknowledge that it was him. But some part of us stays back and keeps an eye on how we look doing it. Am I being weird about this? Is this too much?

Psalm 150 has no interest in that question.

"Praise the LORD! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens!" Start with the scope. The sanctuary, which is the room where God meets his people, and the heavens, which is everything else. That covers all available space. There is no location where the appropriate response to God is a dignified nod.

Then look at the grounds. He doesn't say praise him because things are going well. He says, "Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness." That's the object. Not your circumstances. Him.

And that difference will save your worship life, because praise tied to circumstances is fragile. One bad scan, one hard conversation, one prayer that doesn't get answered, and it's gone. Praise anchored in who God is can survive things it can't explain.

Then the psalm brings the whole band out. Trumpet. Lute. Harp. Tambourine. Dance. Strings. Pipe. Cymbals. And then, because apparently regular cymbals weren't sufficient, "loud clashing cymbals."

That's not a menu of worship styles. That's a theological statement. Nothing in creation is too loud for this. Nothing is too physical. Praise here isn't a thought you have. It's got a body attached to it. It makes noise. It moves.

And I want to name why we resist that, because I don't think it's mostly about music preference.

We hold back because we're managing our image. Unrestrained praise isn't threatening because of what it costs your voice. It's threatening because of what it costs your pride. To praise God with everything you've got is to publicly concede you're not the center of the room. That's the real hesitation, and every one of us has it.

Psalm 95 tells you why the noise is warranted. "Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation." Not a joyful noise to a nice deity. To the rock of our salvation. This is the sound rescued people make. And rescued people sound different from impressed people. Impressed people applaud. Rescued people lose it a little.

And here's the deed under all the deeds.

Every rescue in the Old Testament was a preview. The sea, the exile, the return, all of it pointing at one Friday and one Sunday. God didn't stand at a distance and accept our compliments. He came into the ruin, took the judgment that belonged to us, and walked out of a grave. That is the mighty deed. If that doesn't get the cymbals out, nothing will.

Then the last verse. "Let everything that has breath praise the LORD." Breath. That's the qualification. Not talent. Not a good voice. Not a good week. If you're breathing, you're on the list, and the breath you'd use is his in the first place.

So what does this look like on a Tuesday when you're tired?

It looks like singing in the car with nobody listening. It looks like praising before the feeling shows up, because the object doesn't depend on the feeling. It looks like telling your kids what God has done, because "one generation shall commend your works to another." It looks like letting his greatness take up more room in you than your anxieties do.

"His greatness is unsearchable." Which means you'll never get to the bottom of it, and you'll never praise him enough, and that's not a burden. That's freedom. The restrained soul is always calculating whether it gave too much. The unrestrained soul quit counting.

Give the breath back to the one who gave it.

Not carefully. Now.