Vertical Praise Beats Horizontal Living

It is surprisingly easy to go through life looking sideways.

We compare ourselves with other people. We talk about our work, our families, our hobbies, our achievements and our problems. We worry about money, the cost of living, what other people think of us, whether the car is good enough, whether the lawn will recover from the heat — and perhaps even whether Ipswich are going to stay up this season!

None of those things is necessarily wrong. They are simply part of ordinary life.

But somewhere among all that looking around, we can forget to look up.

Psalm 145 gives us a radically different perspective. David begins:

“I will exalt you, my God the King;I will praise your name for ever and ever.Every day I will praise youand extol your name for ever and ever.”— Psalm 145:1–2

David’s attention is vertical. His eyes are fixed on God.

And perhaps that gives us a question worth asking:

How much of what comes out of our mouths is actually praise?

How big is your praise wedge?

Imagine everything you talk about during an ordinary week represented as a pie chart.

There might be a wedge for work. Another for family. One for television, sport or hobbies. There might be quite a substantial section devoted to our aches, pains and medical complaints!

We recommend things we have enjoyed. We celebrate achievements. We tell stories. We talk about other people. We can spend hours discussing the things that interest us.

But how large would the God-praise wedge be?

How often do we recognise that the good things we celebrate ultimately come from God?

There is a danger that our praise becomes horizontal. We become impressed with ourselves, with possessions, success, beauty, celebrities, money or other people's approval.

Our awe becomes misplaced.

Psalm 145 redirects our attention:

“Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise;his greatness no one can fathom.”— Psalm 145:3

We will never reach the bottom of God's greatness. We can spend a lifetime discovering who He is and still find there is more to know.

The deeper we go, the more there is to discover.

One generation tells another

Then comes one of the most significant verses in the Psalm:

“One generation commends your works to another;they tell of your mighty acts.”— Psalm 145:4

That is an extraordinary description of part of the Church's calling.

Someone told us.

Perhaps it was a parent or grandparent. Perhaps a Sunday School teacher, a Christian camp leader, a pastor, an author or a friend. Perhaps it was simply somebody who loved us enough to tell us about Jesus.

Christianity has been passed from generation to generation because Christians have continued to tell of God's mighty acts.

And now it is our turn.

Whether we are Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, Generation Z or Generation Alpha, we have received something worth passing on.

This is why churches invest in children's work. It is why we gather together. It is why we put on events, open the Bible, pray, worship and tell people about Jesus.

One generation commends God's works to another.

When awe gets redirected

The problem is that we are remarkably good at forgetting.

We can worship God on Sunday and, before long, become completely absorbed again in ourselves and everything happening around us.

We develop a kind of praise amnesia.

The problem is not that we stop being people who worship. It is that our worship becomes directed towards other things.

Success.

Money.

Approval.

Beauty.

Sport.

Possessions.

Even ourselves.

That pattern goes right back to the beginning. In the Garden of Eden, Eve was surrounded by God's goodness, yet her attention shifted from what God had given to what she believed she could have.

Her awe was redirected.

And sin continues to do the same thing to us.

God made us to praise Him, but instead we repeatedly find ourselves standing in awe of the wrong things.

That is horizontal living.

God doesn't need His ego boosting

C. S. Lewis once admitted that, before becoming a Christian, he struggled with the Bible's repeated commands to praise God. To him, the idea of God continually demanding praise initially sounded rather like vanity.

Eventually, Lewis realised he had misunderstood praise.

Think about seeing a spectacular sunset.

We don't praise the sunset because the sunset desperately needs somebody to tell it how attractive it looks.

We praise it because it is beautiful.

Praise is the natural response to recognising something worthy of praise.

The same is true of God.

God does not need our praise to make Him greater.

We need to praise God because He is great.

David isn't trying to inflate God's ego in Psalm 145. He is responding to what he has seen:

“Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise.”

When our awe is rightly directed towards God, praise becomes the natural response.

The sun is still there

There are mornings when you open the curtains and the sunrise is spectacular. Light pours across the fields and praising God seems almost effortless.

Other mornings are different.

The sky is grey. The clouds are thick. You cannot see the sun at all.

But the sun hasn't disappeared.

It is still there behind the clouds.

There will be seasons of life when praising God feels natural, and others when it feels much harder. We may be tired, disappointed, worried or simply jaded by life.

But God's character has not changed.

Psalm 145 reminds us that:

“The LORD is gracious and compassionate,slow to anger and rich in love.”

He is trustworthy. He is faithful. He lifts those who are bowed down. He is near to those who call on Him.

Sometimes praise is the spontaneous response to seeing the sunrise.

At other times, praise means remembering that the sun is still there.

Our greatest reason for praise

The Bible is filled with God's mighty acts.

Creation. The burning bush. The Red Sea. Daniel in the lions' den. The birth of Jesus. The blind receiving their sight. Jesus walking on water. The dead being raised.

But ultimately Christians look towards one mighty act above all others:

the cross.

Jesus lived the life we could not live and died the death we deserved. On the third day He rose again.

Through Him, forgiveness and reconciliation with God have been made possible.

The cross is not something Christians graduate from. It isn't simply the beginning of Christianity before we move on to more interesting things.

It remains at the centre.

God's rescuing grace is infinitely greater than our horizontal living.

And when we really begin to grasp what God has done for us in Jesus, praise is not something that has to be squeezed reluctantly from us.

Awe becomes praise.

Look up — and then look out

There is another consequence.

When we become increasingly captivated by who God is and what He has done, it becomes harder to keep quiet about Him.

Perhaps one reason Christians sometimes find evangelism difficult is that our view of God has simply become too small.

We attend church. We go to Home Group. We pray. We listen to sermons about reaching our neighbours.

And then we walk straight past them.

Psalm 145 offers another way:

“One generation commends your works to another;they tell of your mighty acts.”

Someone did that for us.

Now we have the opportunity to do it for someone else.

Not because our words can force somebody into faith, but because people need the opportunity to hear the good news of Jesus.

So perhaps the challenge of Psalm 145 is remarkably simple.

Look up.

Remember who God is.

Remember what He has done.

Speak His praise.

Tell another generation.

And as our awe of God grows, may we become people with the faith, courage and strength to keep looking out towards others.

Because ultimately:

Vertical praise beats horizontal living.