Psalm 103:1-2
Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:
The Hebrew word that is translated “bless” in these two verses, literally means to kneel yourself before another or to lift up another. It speaks of honoring another in an act of adoration. It is a verb that requires action to be taken by one person that shows and expresses respect and significance to another person. In this passage, the Psalmist David is declaring his desire to bless the Lord from his soul because of the good blessings of God unto him in his life. Everyone who has entered into a relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour has been greatly blessed by God in so many ways; we should always be seeking to bless the Lord from our soul through our life. Every person, even an unsaved person, benefits from so much of the goodness of God in so many ways. I am thankful that our founding fathers identified this reality as Thomas Jefferson penned the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident” to reflect the truth that the Bible declares. He also said that we are all created by our Creator, which is also recorded for us in God’s Holy Word. Even though many liberal politicians may try to mock the idea that many of our rights originate from God and not from government, our nation’s Declaration of Independence clearly declares that truth as penned by Thomas Jefferson when he wrote, “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. I am thankful that this great document of our nations birth states clearly three of those unalienable rights as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” For me personally, one of the blessings I have been thanking God for this week over and over is that I was born in this great land of the free. I am thankful to God to live in a nation where I am free to pursue happiness in my life because of the liberty we are blessed with to do so. I am thankful for all the brave souls who have served and do serve to protect our freedoms. I heard someone say once that we are blessed not merely for ourselves, but so we can be a blessing. We need to bless others with the blessings we are blessed with. Our nation has blessed other nations around the world because of the blessings we have enjoyed as a nation. For the born-again believers today, we must understand that we have been blessed by God so greatly to be His children and we need to bless others with the blessings we have benefitted from in our life. We need to be a blessing to others by seeking to introduce them to Jesus as their Saviour. We need to tell others how good God has been to us as His children. However, we also need to bless the Lord because of the blessings we have received from Him as well. God has blessed us all and He is worthy of our honor. This was the spirit of David as he wrote this Psalm and this should be the reality of every blood bought child of God today as well.