Psalm 9 (Part 2)

Psalm 9:1-2 - Here David sets the tone for Psalm 9.

There’s 4 key phases and elements to praise in these first two verses that deserves our attention.

First, it begins in our heart. vs.1a

• Praise always starts internally.  And this is usually where praise stops.  We feel it, we think it and we move on.
• I think that this would be defined as partial heart praise as opposed to whole heart as David prescribes here.
• Partial heart praise is fleeting because it’s an insufficient response to the ebb and flow of our ever changing circumstances.
• I believe that this is why praise most often dies out in us internally before it moves on to the next progressive step of praise which we’ll address in a moment.
• You have to allow praise to consume you, even in the hardest of times.
• More often than not this demands perspective.  This is why, the placement of this Psalm is so appropriate because Psalm 8 is all about perspective.

When you have a heart that, with the right perspective, is consumed with praise what naturally happens is phase two, vs.1b

• The next phase affects your words in relationship to the people around you.
• When was the last time that you couldn’t wait to tell someone something good that had happened to you?
• Understand that what David is saying here is that he’s so consumed with God’s goodness that he can’t help but express God’s goodness to the people around him.
• How does this work?  Do you just walk around and prattle on, putting a positive spin on everything you see?  That would be annoying and unrealistic.
• But think about the course of your day.  How many times do you either hear someone else bicker about their circumstance or do you yourself have the opportunity to bicker to someone else about your circumstances?
• What if, instead of just airing your grievances you began with praise?  What if your immediate response to any set of circumstances was praise first and then whatever else you might be thinking or feeling?
• Do you think that your conversations might change?  Is it possible that your outlook on circumstances would become inherently more positive?

The next phase that David takes us through in whole heart worship of God has to do with this very possibility . . . the idea that a change in our perspective and words will bring about a change in our attitude. vs.2a

• One of the things that I believe frustrates so many believers with some of the challenges that Paul brings forth in the New Testament is that many of Paul’s instructions (here namely, “Rejoice in the Lord always.”) are byproducts of doing 4 other things first.
• Prayer without ceasing, being a joyful giver, having a peace that passes human understanding... all of these things require that multiple smaller steps in other aspects of a persons life are taken.
• Do you want to be able to grasp, in this life, the reality of being about to rejoice in the Lord always?  It’s going to start by following the steps here in Psalm 9.
• The reality of our response to circumstance is that no matter what we are facing we each will choose how we respond to it.
• These are learned responses.
• We respond to stress the way that we have always responded to it from the time that we were children up through our present adulthood.
• We respond to disappointment, anger, grief, success, victory... the whole pantheon of human experience, in a learned behavioral way.
• So how do we change our response from whatever it is to a response of gladness and rejoicing?  Conscious effort and a whole lot of work in re-learning what we have trained ourselves to do.
• Our response to any set of circumstances is only ever out of our control when we allow our hard wired programming to take over our hearts, minds, our logic and reason.
• Begin by changing the heart... correcting your viewpoint, and then make a point of verbalizing your new perspective on a consistent basis.
• Only then will the hard work of modifying your emotional response begins to take place.

Which leads me to the final phase of whole heart praise that David discusses here in these first two verses of Psalm 9, vs.2b

• And here we have behavior modification.  Responding to circumstances with your actions.
• For David this response was song, which makes sense considering the fact that David was a musician and a poet.