In the Bible study that I attend, before we begin our time of sharing, we kneel before God and spend time in prayer. We use the acronym “ACTS” to guide this prayer time, spending time in Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. We are encouraged to use the time of adoration to adore God for who he is using attributes that God has independent of anything he has done for us. Thanksgiving is the time for thanking God for deeds done on our behalf.
God is to be praised for who he is:
“Shout with joy to God, all the earth!
Sing the glory of his name;
Say to God, ‘How awesome are your deeds!
So great is your power that your enemies cringe before you’” (vv. 1-3)
God is to be thanked for what he has done:
“Come and see what God has done,
how awesome his works in man’s behalf… (v. 5)
Come and listen, all you who fear God;
let me tell you what he has done for me…” (v. 16)
The psalmist praises God and wants the entire creation to do so too, but, so far as he is concerned, a major reason for this is what God has done for him personally. He is thankful for it. There is as sense in which there is to be a balance between our praise of God and thanksgiving. Marvin E. Tate has some thoughts about this combination that can help us in our prayer time.
The structure of the psalm reminds us that thanksgiving should be set in a theological context larger than that of purely personal concerns…”thanks” can become a self-centered and even commercialized expression with little of the spontaneity of real praise. Praise requires concentration on the thing, person, or deity being praised. Thanks tend to be focused on what the speaker has received, and thus may become rather narrow and perfunctory. In the expression of thanksgiving the self may become the primary subject, but this is much less likely to happen in praise…On the other hand, praise without thanksgiving moves toward a sterile religious experience in which the praise becomes purely ritualistic. Why should anyone sing the praise to God when there is nothing for which to be thankful?
Lord, help us to praise you for who you are as well as for what you have done in our lives!
Marvin E. Tate, Psalms 51-100, vol. 20 in the Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, 1990), 151-52
2 comments:
ACTS--that is a good one to remember--thank you. I like your reminder of the necessity of balance between praise and thanksgiving. Thank you for your post.
I like how you explained the difference between praying to the LORD in "adoration" and in "thanksgiving". Adoration is not connected to our circumstances. It is spending time in awe of who He is :) This psalm reminded me of this song by David Crowder Band
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUxF3LULDG4
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