Praiseworthy Music and Thankful Songs

This post is part of the series, Songs of Thanksgiving. Find the whole series here.

My wife and I were talking recently about how easy it is to fall into the pattern of praying about and thanking God for physical needs more than we pray about and thank God for the spiritual needs he graciously provides.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s good and right for us to ask God to provide for our physical needs. And as our heavenly Father, God loves doing just that for us! It’s also good and right for us to thank God for all of the physical blessings he bestows on us in abundance.

Problems arise when we focus so much on our physical needs and the physical blessings God gives (or when we grumble about the lack of them), that we ignore the spiritual altogether. We might not forget about our God providing for our spiritual needs; we just fall into the dangerous mindset of taking those needs being met for granted. When we do that, we begin to lose sight of such an undeserved gift’s precious worth.

Dear Christian, let’s remember to pray about and thank God for providing for our spiritual needs too. Perhaps even more so than for our physical needs and blessings. After all, physical needs and blessings come and go. They’re important, but not all–important. As Job said so well, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised” (Job 1:21). But spiritual needs and blessings . . . those are eternally important. They have an everlasting impact.

That’s why I love the beautiful words of Psalm 95. The psalmist gives us incredible reasons to thank and praise God:

• “The Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods” (verse 3)
• “In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him” (verse 4)
• “The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land” (verse 5)
• “He is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care” (verse 7)

But, before all of those awesome reasons, the psalmist puts salvation right at the forefront of why we praise God. We’re singing for joy and shouting aloud to the “Rock of our salvation.”

Dear Christian, God has delivered us from our spiritual enemies of sin, death, and the devil through the perfect work of Jesus on our behalf. He daily provides for all of our needs—physical and spiritual. Our sins have all been forgiven. We are perfect and holy in God’s sight! Thanks to Jesus, we always have a reason to give thanks! Thanks to Jesus, we can come before our perfect and holy God with thanksgiving. We can stand before our King and praise him with music and song.

Now our entire lives are made up of opportunities for praiseworthy music and thankful songs to our God. We live for him and give thanks to him—now and forever.

“Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song” (Psalm 95:1-2).

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