Praise Him!

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Well, the time is at hand;

(As by now, you must know!)

From the world of instruction

To the real world we go...

And all we've discovered,

And all we have read,

Is carefully stored up

Inside of our head.

What we've discovered

Are facts about praise;

Ways to be thankful

The rest of our days!

But beloved, that's knowledge!

And though it is true,

If we are not praising

What good did it do?

I trust you get the message. It's somewhat like an election. The campaign is over. The votes have been counted. The results are in. That's not the end of an election. That's the beginning. Now the ones who have been chosen to serve have to go out there and do what they promised they would do in the heat of the battle.

I- The Problem

You and I have spent the last seven lessons together talking about praise. We have studied why we praise; how we praise; when we praise; and what happens when we praise. After today, the series will be over, and we will go on to another topic, and you will go on to your regular day to day responsibilities. But there is a problem.

If we were to have a time of sharing, and I were to ask you "What did that series do for you?" you would possibly answer, "Well, I learned something about praise. I gained some new insights into what praise is all about. Now I know more about praising God." I would answer you. "Good. But are you praising Him morning, noon, and night? Has the essence of praise worked it's way into the fiber of your heart to such a degree that you cannot stop praising Him? '' You might answer, "No, I am not praising Him anymore than I did before, but I know more about praising Him than I did before.'' I would respond, "then you're in trouble."

You say, "why? Isn't that why we're here; to gain knowledge?'' No, that's not why we're here. We are here to gain wisdom. And just in case you've forgotten the difference, let's quickly review the principle.

Knowledge= coming to know the facts about a given matter. It is coming to know how God feels about something. For instance, suppose you are sitting here listening as the Word is being taught, and suddenly the verse is read "A lie is an abomination to the Lord"....and for the first time in your life you realize God hates lying. That's knowledge. You now know something about the mind of God you didn't know before. But that hasn't changed your life.

Then, suppose you are driving home in your car, and suddenly the Holy Spirit speaks to you and says "You are a liar. You lied to your wife this morning about paying that bill." And you respond, ''yes, Lord, I am a liar. Please forgive me.'' Now you have gained understanding. You not only know God hates lying, you know that you are a liar. Understanding, then, = the personalization of knowledge. You have personalized God's truths about lying. Now you have understanding.

But, beloved, if you go on lying, you still are not wise. Wisdom, remember, is the mind of Christ in control of the Christian. It is Christ in you set free to be... Himself! Therefore, so long as you keep lying, your knowledge only made you more accountable, and your understanding only made you more hypocritical. You have not allowed Christ, who lives in you, and who is perfect truth and who therefore cannot lie, to set you free. You have not allowed the Truth to set you free.

But, suppose instead, that you are confronted with another situation in which the normal thing for you to do would be to lie. But instead, the Holy Spirit speaks to you through the word, and just as you are tempted to lie, the Scripture comes to your mind ''a lie is an abomination to the Lord'' and you stop, humble yourself, and allow God to be God in you, and you tell the truth regardless of the consequences. Beloved, then you have begun to become... wise (where lying is concerned).

The same thing is true about every subject in the Bible, including the subject of praise. If you have learned in these past few studies something about how God feels about praise, you have gained knowledge. If you have been convicted that your life needs to be transformed in the area of praise, because you have fallen short of God's will, you have gained understanding.

But only if you leave this place and put into practice the principles of praise, will you be becoming wise.

What I am saying is, if these studies or any studies do not change the way we live, we're not any wiser than we were before. We've filled up the car and left it in the garage. We've put on our track shoes and decided not to run in the race. The issue is no longer "what is there to praise Him for?" We know what to praise Him for! The issue is "is there ever a moment when we will not be praising Him ?"

If that knowledge is not now turned into wisdom, it is worthless. In fact, it may be even less than worthless, it may be dangerous. Knowledge left to become rancid "puffs up". It swells the head, slowing down the circulation to the heart. It makes you more accountable and less usable.

Therefore, the issue in closing out this series is not ''what, if anything have you learned?'' The issue is are you different, decidedly different in how and when and where and why you praise Him? That's the reason for this wrap up. That's the reason for this final lesson. To make sure we take what we know, apply it to who we are, and then... do what we're supposed to do.

And what we are supposed to do... is praise Him!

That, then, is the title of this, our final lesson in this series. It is simply: ''Praise Him!''

And our outline will take this form:

I- The Problem

II- The Priority

III- The Progression

IV- The Process

V- The Practice

II- The Priority

As we began this series, so we must end this series by reminding ourselves that the subject of thanksgiving and the issue of praise has it's roots so deep in the heart of God's plan, that to relegate it to equality even with other practical areas of application may not do it justice. We must, as we draw the curtain for this finale, rememember that thanksgiving is at the root of obedience to the will of God.

Most of us struggle constantly to know the will of God in our lives, and yet God has told us the struggle is needless; because we begin our search to find the will of God in any area by doing the will of God in that area so far as we know it. And Paul has told us, in I Thessalonians, chapter five, that in every area of the Christian's experience, this much of the will of God has been clearly revealed: We are to rejoice evermore. We are to pray without ceasing. Our lives are to become fountains of joy, wellsprings of such inner confidence in who God is, that when the crises of life knock on our door, our joy is to be unaffected, for that crisis merely becomes a reminder to pray, and to praise. But not only are we not to recoil at life, we are to respond to life with thanksgiving. So Paul goes on, we are to in everything give thanks. In other words, the very things that Satan would use to rob us of our joy, are God's signal lights along the highway of life saying ''Praise Him!''

And Paul then engraves upon the tablets of the Word that incredible postcript that lifts this entire passage into the sunlight of God's great plan for the victorious Christian life… Paul shouts it: ''this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.'' In other words, an amazing secret to living the Christian life is somehow locked up in this incredible process called praise... this unnatural, and thus supernatural expression of godliness that manifests itself by the giving of thanks in EVERY SITUATION. What God is saying, I believe, In I Thessalonians five, is that if you want to experience the God-controlled life as it was meant to be experienced, and free the Spirit to be in you all He wants to be, you need to enter into that magnificent world of praise; you need to learn to be thankful and then give thanks so consistently; so constantly, that the giving of thanks becomes the natural response of your spirit to whatever life may hold. We need no other reason to praise God than that. God told us to. He said this is my will.

Ought we not to stop and simply, quietly, thank God that He has so clearly revealed His will to us? He has not left us with something that is hazy, or difficult-to-interpret. He said ''would you like to know the will of God for you as a Christian? Then here it is: Learn to give thanks all of the time.'' What a wonderfully clear Word we have from God. Let's just stop and thank Him for making it so plain.

''Dear Lord, we pause to thank you for the clarity of your plan. You have told us in clear, understandable language how to rejoice evermore. We are to give thanks all of the time. Lord, this is not natural. We thank you for that. If it was natural, we could do it. Dear Lord, now we know your will; and we know that only you in us can do it. We pray, Lord, that you will now grant us the grace to turn that knowledge into wisdom, and begin to actually live a life of praise. In Jesus' name, Amen.''

III- The Progression

So you and I know the will of God. It is to spend a lifetime in all situations, giving thanks...praising God. Seven lessons ago, we started on a tour of the Scriptures in an effort to find out just what it was we were to praise Him for. That journey led us to what I trust you have been able to see was a progression of thanksgiving.

It went something like this:

First of all, we were to praise Him just because He is! He IS perfect Holiness, and the more of that Holiness we come to discover from the Word, the more we ought to...praise Him. He IS perfect love; and the more of that love we come to experience, the more we ought to....praise Him. He IS perfect power; and the more of that power that we come to understand, the more we ought to praise Him. A lifetime of praise; yea, an eternity of praise, is generated simply because the Living God IS who He IS. The Psalmist said in Psalm 118:28-29:

Thou art my God; I will praise thee. Thou art my God, I will exalt thee. O give thanks unto the Lord; for HE IS! (He is good, His mercy endureth forever.)

You and I could begin today searching through the hidden treasures of the character of God, stopping along the way to praise Him for each new reflection of who He is as we go, and were there ten trillion times ten trillion years in which to praise Him, we would find that at the end of that infinity of time, we still would not have touched the surface of all He is. Just because He is... we praise Him.

The second stage of our progression took us to Calvary, where who God is had to be demonstrated once and for all in what God did. He so loved you, and He so loved me, that He gave Himself away. And as we bowed in utter humility before that Cross, as once more we visited that Hill called Golgotha, we realized that all of the accomplishments of men, and all of the triumphs of nations and armies combined were not worthy of a breath of praise, compared to the literal flow of thanksgiving that ought to pour from our lips to the ears of our God, every time our we hear the word...Calvary.

The third stage in our progression took us into the inner sanctum of the sovereignty of God and opened up a package so many of us have kept sealed in utter fear...the package marked...our past. And we learned that nothing has ever happened to us that was not in the permissive will of God, and nothing has ever happened to us that will not be used of God, if we'll but let Him. And so the very traumas we have used as a basis of bitterness, now become the chorus of a cantanta of praise, written by the hand of God on the parchment of our lives, creating a symphony no one can sing but us.

The fourth stage in the progression of our study, once we have begun praising God for who He is, and for what He did, and for what He has done even through our past, is to come to see Him and to praise Him in the all things of life as they happen. And so we took a trip into one of life's dungeons with Paul and learned how to praise from a prison.

Stage five was learning to praise God in the all things of life, not only with our lips, but even with our hearts. And we learned that to do that, we must begin to look at life through the eyes of contentment, rejecting forever the spirit of resentment; thus seeing whatever we have in this life as more than we deserve.

Stage six was coming to see that even that is but the beginning. For this life is but the basic training camp of praise, preparing us for an endless eternity through which all we have come to look forward to, and praise God for by faith, has become reality at last. We even learned that the very things that bring us such distress are only God's gentle reminders that in heaven, those things will cease to be.

The pain will be gone. The suffering will be gone. The sighing will be gone. The crying will be gone. Death will be gone. Sin will be gone. Some golden daybreak, thanksgiving will come, and with that glorious reality in mind, can we ever stop praising Him? Of course not. So the progression flows from the reality of who God is, to what God's done, to who we are because of what we've been through, to how He uses what we face, to how we view what we have, to what will one day be ours, some golden daybreak, when Jesus comes.

The sum total of it all is Praise Him! Morning, noon, and night, Praise Him! In the quiet place, where no one sees you but God, Praise Him! In the marketplace, where everyone sees you belong to God, Praise Him! In the congregation of the saints, where God's people are gathered for God's glory, Praise Him! In the sanctuary of your own home, where your family becomes the church in miniature, Praise Him! When the blessings of this life are surrounding you, and life seems to be yours for the taking, Praise Him! When the skies darken, and the storms of circumstance begin to overtake you, Praise Him! In the dungeons of life and amongst the diamonds of life, Praise Him! That is why you were born; that is why you were redeemed; and that is how you sacrifice to God, by giving to God the glory due His name. You Praise Him!

IV- The Process

So the votes are in; the election's over. The overwhelming choice for making the Christian life what God intended it to be is the people's candidate, Perfect Praise. The question now is what happens after we leave this incredibly valuable subject and press on to something else, and file our notes, either mentally or physically or both, in the archives under ''s'' for ''something I studied once'' The question is, now what are we going to do to see that we never stop praising Him! How do we make sure that knowledge gets turned into wisdom?

One way is simply to make plans today while the paint is still fresh on the signs of our lives that say ''praise Him'' to put into practice some practical steps to make it work. Once we understand the principles (that's knowledge), and we confess the need (that's understanding), must we not then create a framework for the Holy Spirit to use in our lives that will free Him to make us saints of praise? I think so. None of these will be new ideas. None of them may even appeal to you. Nonetheless, they may spark ideas of your own that will be God's grand design for you.

A- From the Rising of the Sun.

Let's call the first process ''the rising of the sun'' principle. Psalm 113:3, you remember, gives us this specific commandment:

''From the rising of the sun, to the going down of the same, the Lord's name is to be praised.''

Psalm 108:1-3 echoes this refrain:

O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise, even with my glory. Awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early. I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people: I will sing praises unto thee among the nations. For thy mercy is great above the heavens: and thy truth reacheth unto the clouds.

So the principle is to start the day even from the rising of the sun, by praising Him. Remember, the first thoughts you think set the tone for the day. Remember, the first words you say form a pattern for your conversation through the day. Remember, a song in your heart in the morning creates a melody that never stops ringing in your heart through the day.

So why not invest in a timer or a tape recorder with a timer built in, that will awaken you in the morning with something like ''How Great Thou Art'' or ''I will Praise Him'' or even the ''Hallelujah Chorus''? Why not let the first thing your ears hear be anthems of praise? Be creative. And why not tape a Psalm of praise to the mirror where you get your first glimpse of what you look like when you awaken? You need something to turn that experience into praise. Why not develop a morning praise time around the breakfast table, where each member of the family shares one quality of God or one verse of thanksgiving at the beginning of the day. If you spend time alone with God each morning, then enter His courts with thanksgiving; enter His presence with Praise. Before you start telling Him what you want, why not praise Him for who He is? Or why not make a covenant with God that before you so much as take a step in the morning, you will fall out of bed (some of us do that part automatically), and fall on your knees and read or recite a Psalm of Praise or if you are so gifted or you live by yourself, fall to your knees and begin singing a hymn of praise. If, however, you sing like I do, and you are married, make melody in your heart instead, lest you start the day for your mate on a sour note. But from the rising of the sun, Praise Him!

That's what you were created for. That's what that day is for. It is the day that the LORD hath made... rejoice... praise Him... and be glad in it.

B- Turning Mealtime to Praise time.

Another idea is to turn mealtime into praise time. For many families, the time around the dinner table is the least productive of all the hours of the day. Again and again, Jesus used mealtime as a springboard for the giving of thanks. To the Master it wasn't a legalistic ritual, but rather an occasion to take whatever had been happening, or however much or little they had, using that as an opportunity to call attention to how great His Father was. Maybe you could keep a praise list at the table, and take turns praising God for some aspect of who He is rather than just the routine ''thanks for this hamburger, Lord,'' that some of us have fallen into. Maybe, as you are eating, you can take turns sharing Psalms or hymns of praise. Deuteronomy 8 reminds us that mealtime is a time when people gather together to partake of physical food, the giving or withholding of which was given to us as a reminder that ''man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.'' If we use that time only to ''feed our faces'', we have missed making the ''spiritual switch''. Make mealtime praise time. The only limits are those you place upon yourself.

C- Learn to Develop Parables of Praise

Jesus did! To Jesus, everything in the physical realm from fig trees to sparrows were teaching tools, or patterns for finding spiritual truth. He never looked at life simply from a material perspective but rather saw that which was material as divine portraits etched by the Father in the framework of His creation, to magnify that which was spiritual. So he turned to the fishermen of his day and said ''follow me and I will make you fishers of men''. Even the lilies of the field became examples of the sovereign love of God. ''They toil not, neither do they spin'' the Master said, ''yet even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.'' Things as common as rocks were used to describe the strength of God and the stability of God. He used sand to describe the kind of foundation the world builds upon. He used weeds to describe the cares of this world that snuff out the seed of the word. He used bread and water as symbols of the Bread come down from Heaven and the Living Water. Over and over the Master built a showcase of eternity out of the building blocks of the common clay of everyday life. And not only can we learn from His parables, we can learn from His parables how to create our own.

Nowhere does this concept come to life more realistically than in the area of praise. Learn to practice the parable principle of praise. Use everything you see and everything you have as physical examples of spiritual truths, and thus as hidden wellsprings of thanksgiving that rest just beneath the surface of life waiting to erupt into fountains of praise.

For example, when you rise in the morning to start your day, and you jump in the shower, why not begin singing ''there shall be showers of blessing''? And why not meditate, as you shower, on the Scripture ''as the rain comes down and the snow from heaven and returneth not void, so shall my Word be''. When you butter your toast, why not praise Him that He is the bread of life. When you water the plants in the yard, stop to praise Him that He is the Living Water that makes us grow. When you stop to buy something in the store, why not quietly stop and praise Him that He purchased you at a price too great to even grasp. When you pass a house under construction, stop and praise Him that He is building your house on a foundation that will not fail. When it thunders, stop and praise Him for the thunder of His power. When it rains, stop and praise Him for the gentleness of His mercy. When you see an awesome tree spread it's branches, stop and praise Him that even His saints can become like trees planted by rivers of Living Water. When you look at someone you love, praise Him for His unfailing love. When you look in the mirror, praise Him for His amazing grace. Everything you see and touch and hear then becomes a parable of praise!

You can have a contest in your family and reward the children for the things they turn into parables of praise. I believe that is at least one of the meanings of such passages as Psalm 148: Listen to the Psalmist create parables of praise:

Praise ye the Lord. Praise ye the Lord from heaven: praise Him in the heights. Praise Him sun and moon; praise Him all ye stars of light; Praise Him ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord; for He commanded, and they were created. Fire and hail; snow, and vapours; stormy wind fulfilling His word: Mountains and all hills, fruitful trees, and all cedars, Let them praise the name of the Lord for his name alone is excellent; his glory is above the earth and heaven.''

Beloved, never stop praising Him. And how could we? For does not our loving God as He pulls back the curtain for each new day, but reveal as a backdrop for life itself, a panorama of parables, each of which is but the orchestration from which the heart breaks forth into songs of praise. Psalm 145:10 says it best:

All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord; and thy saints shall bless thee. They shall speak of the glory of thy Kingdom and talk of thy power.

Learn to develop parables of praise. Your entire perspective will change.

D- Living Letters to the Lord

Another idea that I don't believe we use often enough is the concept of writing down on a piece of paper how we feel about Jesus, or writing letters to the Lord Himself, praising Him for who He is. David spent his life doing that. David constantly, in the midst of life's battles, both those he won and those he lost, found time to stop and etch his heart into the tablets of life. Sometimes he wrote about God to man, and sometimes he wrote to God for man, but always he wrote it down. And not only did it please God, and change David, it left a living legend of literature for those of us who later would walk in his footprints through the sands of time. Learn to write your heart on paper to God. As you do, it will change you, honor God, and leave for those who follow a portrait of praise to use as a basis for their own living letters. Teach your children to write letters to God and keep them in a notebook so they can see how their praise for who God is freed God to manifest those very qualities in their lives as well. For instance, they can see how praising God for His mercy freed Him to bring about circumstances in their lives through which His mercy became theirs. Living letters of praise...another way to magnify His name and make every day of your life... thanksgiving!

E- Learn to make melody in your heart to the LORD.

Ephesians 5:19, a verse we discussed a few lessons ago, pictures the Spirit-filled Christian as one who spends his days

…speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things.

God's child has God's song in his heart morning noon and night. Therefore, with his heart filled with the music of heaven, his lips just naturally overflow with praise and thanksgiving all the time in all situations. He gives thanks because he is thankful. He is thankful because he has spent his life directing the internal choir of his spirit in a musical presentation of praise to His God.

The neat thing about it is you don't have to be able to sing to make melody in your heart. Boy, that's a relief to some of us. You only have to be able to allow the Spirit of God in you to take the Word of God or the principles of God that have been set to music, and let that music flow through you back to God in praise.

Make the most of music; particularly music that is the Scripture set to melody. It is God's way of taking the Word and infusing it into the soul in such a way that it expresses the message experientially. Make the most of music. Use it as background music to quietly inscribe the message of the Word into the subconscious. Use it in family worship; the words will remain in your minds and repeat themselves over and over through the day. You can sing a chorus that is nothing but Scripture set to music three times and you will leave humming it and remembering every word. Music is the cement that binds the Word to the soul.

But be careful....not all ''Christian'' music will accomplish what we are describing. Ask yourself: Is the music a source of agitation or peace? Does the music reflect harmony or disharmony? Satan is the author of disharmony. His desire is for music to be distracting, disjointed, discomforting. God is the author of that which is settling, calming, uplifting, and edifying. Secondly, does the performance exalt the singer, the author, or the Creator? God's music exalts God. Period. Thirdly, can you tell, simply by it's composition any difference between it and the world's music? Fourthly, do the words exalt God as King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Fifthly, is there anything in the words that is Scripturally incompatible? Remember, the music will take the words into your heart. Be sure they are words that come from the Word.

So make sure that the music is God-exalting, but once you have done that, saturate yourself with it...it is a God-ordained vehicle to place the Word in your life. Some additional things you can do are to have family songfests; to encourage your children to write hymns of praise using the Scriptures; to sing choruses before or after meals; to study the stories behind the great hymns of the faith; to discuss the words to the hymns you sang in church on the way home; and to take a hymn a day or a hymn a week and make it a family song for that period of time, the whole family agreeing to make melody in their hearts whenever their minds are free, and then sing it together and discuss it together until that message and that melody have become a part of your family's life. A final suggestion would be to select a family hymn that your family uses as it's ''theme song'' or ''life message'' as the children are growing up. Pick it carefully, and make it ''your song'', because remember, both the message and the melody will be there long after the children are grown and gone.

F- Finally, Why Not Make a Personal Praise Notebook?

A personal praise notebook would be a book that incorporates the passages and the principles we have been studying into a place for you to write them down and review them and refer to them and use them as a springboard for praise for the rest of your life.

One way to do it would be to divide a notebook into sections utilizing the concepts we have been studying these past eight lessons. One section might be entitled: ''Just Because He Is'' with sub-sections for each of the character qualities of God and a place to claim scriptures by each one. The second section might be entitled;''When last did you visit the hill?'' or just ''Calvary'' and might include pages of praise and passages of praise that take us back to that Cross to worship. Then a chapter called ''Praise for the planner; praise for the plan'' would outline the things in our past for which we are stopping to praise God. And then on to a chapter on ''life's prisons''; a section on ''contentment'' and finally a part set aside just to record worship passages that deal with those promises that will be ours ''Some Golden Daybreak'' when thanksgiving really comes. A final chapter might be your ''personal praise chapter'' where you can record those special times when God has comforted you and encouraged you and delivered you, so that like that Psalmist, over and over and over again, you can stop, reflect on His goodness, and... praise Him.

Perhaps none of those ideas appeals to you. That's fine. They are just man's concepts on how take God's precepts and turn them into anthems of praise. How you do it is incidental. If you do it is not. It is the will of God for you to spend your life praising God. The purpose of this series has been to see that if we are going to live a life of victory, then we must begin to live a life of praise. If we are going to become men and women who always seek to do the will of God, then we are going to have to become men and women who learn to in everything give thanks. Because, beloved, God designed the Christian life to be one continuous thanksgiving service; a life that overflows from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same... with a Christ-filled chorus of praise; a life that gives itself day and night to speaking to itself in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in the heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things... until some golden daybreak, that life that has been so characterized by praise, dissolves into a totally new life of praise; a life that will go on through the endless realms of eternity... just praising Him!

V- The Practice

That is why we have had this study. And by God's grace, may it be to God's glory.

We must not end this series, however, talking about praise. We have talked about praise enough. Let us simply close this lesson and this series doing what we've talked about.

Let's just praise Him!

I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord: the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad. O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt His name together.'' (Psalms 34:1-3)

''O come let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with Psalms. For the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. In His hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is His also. The sea is His, and he made it: and His hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our maker; for He is our God; and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand.'' (Psalms 96:1-7a)

''I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify Him with thanksgiving. This also shall please the Lord better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs.'' (Psalms 69:30,31)

...'' I will sing of thy power; yea I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning, for thou hast been my defence and refuge in the day of my trouble. Unto thee, O my strength, will I sing: for God is my defence, and the God of my mercy.'' (Psalms 59:16-17)

O give thanks unto Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth forever. O give thanks unto the God of gods; for His mercy endureth forever. O give thanks to the Lord of Lords, for His mercy endureth forever. To Him who alone doeth great wonders: for His mercy endureth forever. To Him that by wisdom made the heavens: for His mercy endureth forever. To Him that stretched out the earth above the waters: for His mercy endureth forever. To Him that made great lights, for His mercy endureth forever. The sun to rule by day: for His mercy endureth forever. The moon and stars to rule by night: for His mercy endureth forever. O give thanks unto the God of heaven: for His mercy endureth forever.'' (Psalms 136:1-9, 26)

''O give thanks unto the Lord; call upon His name; make known His deeds among the people. Sing unto Him, sing Psalms unto Him: talk ye of all His wondrous works. Glory ye in His holy name; let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord.'' (Psalms 105:1-3)

''I will extol thee, my God, O King; and I will bless thy name forever and ever. Every day will I bless thee: and I will praise thy name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised: and His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts. I will speak of the glorious honour of thy majesty, and of thy wondrous works.'' (Psalms 145:1-5)

''So we thy people, and the sheep of thy pasture will give thee thanks forever; we will shew forth thy praise to all generations.'' (Psalms 79:13)

''Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting; and let all the people say, Amen. Praise ye the Lord.'' (Psalms 106:48)

And all the people said... ''Amen''