Words and Meditations
A few thoughts from a very well known passage:
May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart
Psalm 19:14, NIV UK
be pleasing in your sight,
LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.
We had the unusual privilege yesterday of going to a real service with real people, and singing in worship without masks and with minimal outdoor-style social distancing. This church we visited is meeting in a school with a wonderful canopied space, making it an outdoor meeting where everyone stays dry whatever the weather. Better than mumbling behind a mask, and much better than Zoom!
God loves us to express our praise with the words of our mouths. This isn’t only singing, but includes prayers, Bible readings, shouts and chants, and testimony of what God has done for us. As Christians we are a forgiven people, a set-free people, and we are so thankful for the work of the grace of God in our lives that we can’t keep silent! Praise and worship, sung and said, are in our spiritual DNA, and the Bible expresses the praises of the saints in the words of their mouths from Genesis to Revelation.
But we also praise in the meditation of our hearts. Spurgeon (among many others) is well-known for saying that praise is first of all “a thing of the heart”, in other words true praise must come from the centre of our being. True praise properly expresses itself in sounds – words, music and song – but it must originate from a heart of worship. Jesus has much to say about the heart, making it clear that our hearts must be set on heaven for “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21)
The psalmist understands that the heart and the tongue must act in harmony, that our words of praise must come from a heart of praise. When God has so got hold of our lives that this begins to be a reality, then we know that we are truly pleasing Him! “Be pleasing in Your sight” – note that God is just as able to see our heart as He is able to hear our words: our sole aim should be to please our wonderful Saviour God, so let’s press on into Him, in thought and word, and of course in deeds also.
How incredible that our meditations and our words can please God!
