Acknowledge Him

Psalm 95  ¹ Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. ² Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. ³ For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods. ⁴ In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. ⁵ The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. ⁶ Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; ⁷ for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. Today, if you hear his voice, ⁸ do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert, ⁹ where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did. ¹⁰ For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways." ¹¹ So I declared on oath in my anger, "They shall never enter my rest."

In order to worship God we must first acknowledge, or, in many cases, remember who He is.

The act of worship is a powerful thing. It shows that the object of our worship is greater than us. When we get too full of ourselves, than our worship suffers. The psalmist here is reminding the reader/hearer exactly who God is. He is the greatest of all gods; the One who created and controls the natural world. It is only after stating those things is the concept of worship mentioned. We worship Him because He is our God, and we are under His care.

The psalmist then puts in a warning encouraging us not to be like those in the past who have hardened their hearts. He brings out a rather popular story from Jewish history found in Exodus 17:1-7 in which the people grumbled and complained due to the lack of water. They lost sight of the fact that God is in charge of the natural world, and the fact that He loved them enough to provide for their physical needs. The psalmist makes a direct correlation with this attitude and the fact that this complaining generation did not enter the rest of the Promised Land.

Help me Lord to truly and consistently acknowledge Who You are, and who I am, so that I may have an attitude of worship and not one of complaining.