Glory to the great Lord
“Great is the LORD, and highly to be praised, And His greatness is unsearchable.” (Psalms 145:3)
The Korean youth soccer team is now playing against Brazil. I think many Korean soccer fans will be watching this soccer game, hoping that Park Joo-young will score a goal just like in Nigeria. Park Joo-young, who is a Christian, knows that he always kneels down and prays with goal ceremony. I remember seeing it on TV news before. As a Christian soccer player, I think it brings glory to God when Park kneels down and prays to God when many people are watching in person or on TV. However, not all of us are famous like Park Joo-young. Nevertheless, in each of our lives we have a responsibility to glorify the great Lord. Focusing on Psalms 145:3, I will try to apply the lessons we learn from Psalms 145 to our lives while meditating on how the psalmist David glorified the great Lord.
First, David celebrated the great grace of the Lord.
Look at Psalms 145:7 – “They will celebrate your abundant goodness ….” David celebrated by remembering the great grace of the great Lord. We can glorify the great Lord by remembering and celebrating the great grace that the great Lord has bestowed upon each of us. However, too many times, we live with little or no oblivion of the great grace God has given us. Therefore, David sought wisdom to count God's grace. We need this kind of wisdom. We must celebrate God’s great grace by looking back on our lives and reflecting on the footsteps of God's grace.
We must glorify the great God. In order to do that, we must first take time to look back on our lives. In the midst of that, we must remember God's great grace and celebrate.
Second, David praise the great God highly.
Look at Psalms 145:3 – “Great is the LORD, and highly to be praised, ….” To praise God highly means to declare His great works and mighty acts (v. 4). Therefore, in order to praise God highly, we must meditate on the glorious splendor of His majesty and His wonderful works (v. 5). In particular, in meditating on the Lord's wonders, we must meditate on the goodness and mercies (v. 9) that God has given us. We would not have come thus far without His goodness and His great mercies. Furthermore, we must meditate on the righteousness and love of the Lord (v. 17). We must praise the great God greatly because He who upholds all those who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down (v. 14) satisfies our desire (v. 16).
Pastor Seong-Geon Hong of Youth with Mission made a distinction between praise and worship. I remember that praise is praising what God has done in our lives. We must cultivate a good habit of looking back on life in a busy life with peace of mind. In the midst of that, we need to know how to see what God has done in our lives with our spiritual eyes. I think we can only acknowledge by faith. Then we will be compelled to praise the great Lord greatly. In worshiping God, we must first prepare our hearts in prayer based on the Word. While meditating on the great grace of God, remembering the great things that the Lord has done to us, we must greatly praise the great Lord with gratitude for that grace. However, if a loud voice of praise raised out of ignorance of not knowing what God has done in our lives is meaningless in the sight of God. Rather, we will only hurt God's ears. God will be glorified when we give thanks to Him in great praise as we remember God’s great grace and the great things that He has done in our lives.
Third and last, David greatly proclaimed God’s greatness.
Look at Psalms 145:6 – “Men shall speak of the power of Your awesome acts, And I will tell of Your greatness.” David not only praise God's greatness with his lips alone, but he also proclaimed God's greatness through his life. I think this is our shortcoming. We seem to proclaim a great deal of God's greatness with our lips, but we are actually proclaiming too small God in our lives. We are confined in doubts that don’t fully believe in the great God. And we are living in anxiety, worry, and fear, and thus showing a little God to non-believers around us. Therefore, we hear them say, 'Is that man's God so small?' We can tell just by looking at our 'small love'. We shout out love for our neighbor, but isn't our love for neighbor too small? If our love of neighbor is as great as the greatness of God, I wonder if our society will still be like this. Our lives are manifesting not a great God, but a God of fighting, separation, jealousy, envy, etc. to the world. We shouldn’t be like this anymore. We must live a life proclaiming our great God like David. We must not conceal the great glory of God by minimizing Him to represent 'small God'.
While writing this meditation, I came across news that the Korean youth soccer team lost to Brazil. As I expected, there was no goal ceremony of Park Joo-young. On the Yahoo Internet News, I saw some of the comments in reply: ‘Why did you lose, Christians? It's a Christian national team, and all of them from the coach to the players are Christians. ’ Was it because of lack of your power of prayer compared to Brazil? The national team didn’t lose, but the Jesus’ team lost.’ What do you think about the phrase ‘The national team didn’t lose, but the Jesus’ team lost’? The people of the world are looking at all of us, Christians. We are God's children who have responsibility to bring great glory to the great God. How can we bring glory to the great God? Is it by scoring a goal like a soccer player? We must glorify the great God by celebrating His great grace. Also, we must glorify our great God by greatly praising Him. We must glorify God by proclaiming the greatness of God greatly through our lives.
Meditating on the great grace of the great Lord,
James Kim
(With heart of gratitude for the Lord's great grace in doing the great work of Two fish and Five loaves of bread miracle through a very small person like me)