3.244 Forget Not the Benefits of the Lord

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as Savory Salt.

Hello, my friends. It's a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom you will serve.

As we've been into Psalms now for several weeks, I hope at this stage the concept of Psalms as praises is starting to sink into your heart. But one of the questions I have in today's episode is, what does it look like for you to praise the Lord? And how do you do it in your everyday life?

We are reading this week's Psalms, 102 through 150. Good chunk there. And inside of it, I noticed that several of the episodes I've done inside of Psalms, I don't get past the first few verses of the Psalm.

And I think that's because the front end of the Psalm in many cases is the pleading part to the Lord or the gracious part to the Lord or the gratitude to the Lord. Psalm 103, and I'm going to look at it through a couple of different translations. First, I do the King James Version, which is the one that we've been using most often here.

Psalm 103, verse 2 says, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits." So that's kind of a cool one. Let's not forget the benefits of the Lord. We're going to get into that in just a second.

Now, look here at the different terminology used, the different choice of words in Psalm 103, verse 2, in the NIV version here. "Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits." So we've switched from bless to praise. I wanted to do a little bit more study inside of there in terms of understanding from original translations. The translation here that is "Barak," B-A-R-A-K.

Now "Barak" is interesting. It's used in both cases of "bless the Lord," but the way that it's used made sense to me. I wanted to share it with you.

It says this root idea of "Barak" is to kneel, but when God "Baraks" people, he stoops to give good. So he kneels down, kind of, to—if you can imagine this figure of kneeling down to reach down to help other people, right? So this is what happens when God does that verb.

But when people "Barak" God, so when it switches, they kneel in praise and thanks. We add nothing to him; we just acknowledge who he already is. So I love this imagery here between the two interplays.

The Bible says that the Lord is kneeling down to us. Do you do it through song, whether that's through your vocal song or whether it's through instrumental song play? Do you do it in sharing your testimony in other ways and fashions?

One of mine, as I've mentioned before, is Savory Salt. It's a place for me to bear testimony. My friends, I want you to consider today the ways that you praise the Lord and consider the ways that you bless the Lord.

Consider His benefits in your life and the benefit it is to have a testimony of the Lord in your life that will only increase the light that you have and the light that you share with others. That is all for today, my friends. You and I have come here for such a time as this.

Step forward in faith, and let's be Savory Salt. We will be here tomorrow, and we hope you are too.