Praise ye the Lord. But why?

The Leonardo museum in Salt Lake City currently has a display on the Dead Sea Scrolls. In addition to hundreds of period artifacts and many fragments of the scrolls themselves, the exhibit boasts of a boulder some 2000 years old from the Western Wall in Jerusalem. As I stood next to this three-ton stone, writing my prayer for peace to stick into a crevice of the replica wall before me, I heard some children talking among themselves.

“Now, do you remember what you say in a prayer?” An older sister of 10 or 12 coached her younger siblings through the process of writing their prayers on the little scraps of paper provided.

I heard a muffled exclamation of “thankful,” and some more murmuring and rustling as the prayers began to take shape in children’s scrawled letters.

After a pause the older sister inquired, “What did you write in your prayers?”

I smiled at the tender scene, touched at how seriously they were taking this prayer.

“I wrote, ‘You’re the bestest God ever!’” came the reply from a girl who could not be older than five.

Surprised, I couldn’t restrain the grin that spread across my face. I definitely hadn’t expected that. She had asked for nothing. She hadn’t even expressed gratitude directly. She had just poured her heart out in praise in the highest way her five-year-old self knew how.

And then my thoughts turned to all the people I’ve interacted with who wouldn’t agree with that girl—to those who are angry at God and who question how He could let suffering into the world. I reflected on the many people I talked to as a missionary who were struggling with pain greater than I have ever known, who had let that pain and loss tear them away from God. I thought of my friends who unjustly attribute the suffering and sin in the world to God and thus turn away in disillusioned anger. I don’t know how many times I’ve been posed the question, “If there is a God and if He loves us, how could he let my husband die? Or my child die? Or my family suffer from want? Or my father be killed in war? How could a loving God create this world of suffering?” And as I look into their hopeless, often angry, eyes in those moments my heart aches, for they don’t understand. And I am powerless to do anything but testify of a loving God, of a God who is not the source of evil and suffering, but rather the source of joy and hope and deliverance and endurance. And yet, they will not believe me, having felt too much pain, as they see it, to trust in my childlike, faith-filled words. And I don’t deny the existence of pain in the world, nor am I ignorant of war, suffering, abuse, and want. But I still cling to my faith that there is a God who loves us. And while I can convince no one of that, it is a truth to which I will always adhere.

And then I thought of the praise of her words: “You’re the bestest God ever.” In a five-year-old’s terms, that’s equivalent to the Psalmist’s “For thou, Lord, art high above all the earth: thou art exalted far above all gods” (Psalms  97:9).

I’ll admit, I haven’t always understood the whole concept of praising the Lord. The oft-repeated invitation in Psalms to “praise ye the Lord” puzzled me. Praise I understand. In fact, it is a personal aspiration of mine to render to others the praise that they deserve—to build them up and let them know the good that I see in them. But why? It’s because we as mortals need that. We need to positive reinforcement that comes from other people telling us what we are doing right. We are, to some degree, dependent upon other people for our security and happiness. We all crave feelings of acceptance, to know that we are doing things to please others, to know that we are loved and valued. But God—does He need that praise? He ought to be secure with himself. He is not dependent upon man for his self-worth. He already knows that he is perfect and that all things submit to him. Why would we need to render praise to him?

But as I’ve learned and studied more, I’ve come to realize that it’s not for his sake that we praise him. He really doesn’t need our encouragement or positive reinforcement. He would continue to be God whether we acknowledged his greatness or not. But we need to praise Him for our own sakes. But before we can explore why that is, I think we need to discuss a little more exactly what it means to praise the Lord.

Praise is extolling the good qualities of someone or something. In the case of God, praising him means speaking of his wondrous works and qualities, either directly to him in prayer, or speaking of him in love and testimony to our fellow men.

I think the reason that I used to feel uneasy praising the Lord, was that I regarded it as superfluous. I thought that praising the Lord meant saying in prayer, “Lord thou art mighty above all the earth. Thy works are great and yet thou knowest us. Thou hast all power and knowledge. Thou preparest a way for the children of men to return to thee.” And I used to feel that my time in my prayers was better spent thanking him or discussing with him my day or pleading for blessings. But is not this type of praise pleasing to the Lord? Of course! In those words we are worshipping God, we are expressing adoration and love and veneration and humility. We are recognizing the greatness of the Lord and exalting him. Such prayers are pleasing to the Lord and they invite the Spirit into our hearts. And I have since learned to love this form of praise and worship and have found great joy in applying it in my prayers. The Bible is replete with examples of praising God directly in prayer, including the beautiful 139^th Psalm.

O Lord, thou has searched me and known me

Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising,

Thou understandest my thought afar off.

If I take the wings of the morning

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

Even there shall thy hand lead me,

And thy right hand shall hold me.

I will praise thee;

For I am fearfully and wonderfully made:

Marvelous are thy works;

And that my soul knoweth right well.

But as beautiful and inspiring as these words are, I’ve come to learn that this is not the only way to praise the Lord.

What about gratitude itself? Is not that a form of praise? Do we not, by acknowledging the hand of the Giver also praise him in his goodness for giving that to us, in his might for being able to give it to us? Every time we kneel down to tell the Lord the things for which we are grateful, we are praising him. We are recognizing our dependence on him. We are acknowledging him as the source of the blessings.

In its purest form, bearing testimony is also praise. As we share with one another what we know, we are bearing witness to the supreme goodness of the God of the universe. One of the most beautiful examples of this in all of holy writ is found in Alma 26 as Ammon shares with his brethren the miracles that the Lord has worked in their lives and in the lives of those they served while missionaries. Ammon powerfully expresses his deep love and veneration for the God of the universe who blessed them with such a bounteous harvest: “Now have we not reason to rejoice? . . . My God has all power, all wisdom, and all understanding; he comprehendeth all things, and he is a merciful Being, even unto salvation, to those who will repent and believe on his name.” Ammon testifies of the great acts of God in his life. He is bearing witness to the goodness and mercy and greatness of God. And by so doing he is praising God.

Just as in Ammon’s example, the scriptures illustrate that praise is most often rendered in connection with some manifestation of the Lord’s power, whether that manifestation be the healing of a lame man or the quiet whisperings of the Holy Ghost confirming testimony. In Acts 3 we see the lame man healed by Peter leaping up and praising God. 3 Nephi 11 shows us the Nephites praising the God who had come and saved them; they had just felt His wounds and knew it was He and now were praising Him. And we have that incredible account of the Jaredites, being driven in their barges for a year, and continually they praised the Lord: “They did sing praises unto the Lord; yea, the brother of Jared did sing praises unto the Lord, and he did thank and praise the Lord all the day long; and when the night came, they did not cease to praise the Lord.” They felt gratitude to the Lord for leading them along as they traveled across the ocean. These people all felt the power of God at work in their lives and they praised him for it.

And of course there is what is likely the best-known, most-sung praise to God, first uttered by angels to humble shepherds so long ago: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good will toward men.” What greater manifestation of the Lord’s love and power do we have than that of him giving his only begotten Son for us? In fact, that is the reason that I have faith in God. It is because Christ came that I have hope. It is because of my Savior that I can believe in God while still studying the wars, genocides, oppressions, abuses, and natural travesties that go on in this world. Truly our God is worthy of all praise and adoration because he sent his beloved Son to ransom us—to save us from death, sin, hell, ourselves, and all the trials of this life. Because Christ came, one day all that is wrong will be made right. Through the atonement hearts and nations will be healed. Because of him there truly is cause for praise and rejoicing in this world.

That brings us back to our former question. Why do we need to praise God? What does all this gratitude giving and testimony sharing do for us? Think of all the examples of praise we just discussed. What did they evoke? Love, joy, trust, humility, hope, contentment. As we praise the Lord, we feel these things—our hearts are softened and we turn to him. Praise binds us to him in love, for we begin to see how much he has done for us and how much he loves us. As we humbly acknowledge our dependence upon the Lord, we are giving the glory where it is due. We begin to see who we truly are in relation to God. We are recognizing that God is the source of all that is good in our lives. And this helps us to be humble and thus submit to the God that we have come to love. And through this obedience we are able to draw even closer to God and receive his love and forgiveness.

And aside from the blessings we receive from praising the Lord, it is a necessary and natural human instinct, springing from our childlike love for and trust in the God of the universe. We want to praise him whom we love so much. As we come to love him more, we want to praise him more. And by praising him, our love is increased and thus our desire and capacity to praise him increases, in a continual upward spiral until that day when we will receive eternal life through the gift of God’s Son.

So we ought to praise the Lord a little more. We ought to express to God a little more of our love and veneration and gratitude as we pray. And we ought to praise the Lord as we meet together as his children. We ought to share one with another the miracles he has wrought in our lives. We ought to testify to his love and speak of what great things he has done for us.

For truly ours is the bestest God.