Do you have a memory or scrapbook?
One of my favorite things to do is to scrapbook. It’s been a hobby of mine for over a decade and I have so much scrapbook memorabilia (paper, journaling cards, stickers, etc.) it’s not even funny. It’s time consuming and sometimes I’m sure I want to just never do it again; but after pulling a completed album down from the shelf and flipping through the pages, I’m grateful I stuck with it. There is just something about those memories, visible on the page, that makes my heart swell. It’s good to remember; to be reminded that life was good. That those moments I didn’t want to forget are captured and it is often a catalyst for sending up praise to God. “You’ve blessed me so much. Thank You.”
David had a moment like this. When he wrote Psalm 103, I can imagine he felt just like that: thankfulness for all that God had done for him and an awareness of what he was feeling.
Let’s take a look at Psalm 103:1-5.
“Praise the Lord, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
2 Praise the Lord, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits—
3 who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
5 who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
Verse 1 tells us to praise the Lord. It’s God that is to be praised-not us. It’s He that is worthy of praise and we are to praise Him with all of ourselves. This isn’t praise that is just about our outward expression. This isn’t about how high we raise our hands in church or how vocal and loud we get when we sing. This is about our hearts.
This is praise that may not make a sound at all. It may be praise that happens with a smile on our faces and loud singing voices, yes, but it may also be tears and whispers. It is simply a matter of our hearts wanting to give God praise.
In these verses, David is giving us the how and why of praise. The how is that we praise God with all that we are and we “forget not His benefits.” (v.2)
Praise comes from a heart that remembers. It’s easy to get bogged down by what’s happening in our lives now, especially if we are in a difficult season of life. It can seem like everything is going wrong and we have nothing to praise God for. That’s why it’s so important to be able to look back and remember what He has done for us.
David goes on to list the why. These are what we should not forget-the benefits of the Lord:
Forgiveness of sin and healing (v.3): God, in His mercy, has pardoned us. Psalm 103:12 tells us, “As far as the east is from the west so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” And not just once has He forgiven us but He has continued to forgive us. This forgiveness is what has restored us back to Him and heals us. He hasn’t forgiven us some of our sins but all of them. As David Palmer says, “This image is not that God heals every single thing that goes wrong with me physically, but that God is the great healer of my soul; that God is the one who breaks the power of canceled sin in my life; that He is the one who reveals by His grace and power that the effects of sin are reversed in my experience; that coming to Christ for salvation means my sins are washed away and I am restored.”
Redemption from the pit (v.4): The pit could be danger, disease, our own sinfulness and He redeems us and saves us from it all. Our destinies would be quite different if it weren’t for the work of the cross. Isaiah 43:1, “Fear not for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.” God could have shown wrath and instead chooses to redeem us and claim us as His own. We are His! I believe God also redeems us from the low points in our lives-our own personal pits. Psalm 40:2 says, “He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.”
Crowned with love and compassion (v.4): His mercy is beyond what we even can imagine. He not only saves us but crowns us. It isn’t a crown made of gold and silver. It isn’t the crown you receive at the end of a beauty pageant because you’ve passed all the interviews and wore the right dress. It is what comes after the calling back from danger. Recently, my son somehow made it out onto the road in front of our house (scary, I know!). It’s not a very busy street but there is danger- a car could come at any moment. I saw and called his name, yelling for him to come back into the yard as I started to run towards him. He thought it was funny! He ran a little more, not knowing that something could possibly hurt him. When I reached him, I scooped him up (and after scolding him!), I was so relieved that he was safe I couldn’t do anything but give him kisses. I crowned his head with love and compassion. This is what our Father does for us.
Satisfies us with good things so that our youth is renewed like the eagle (v.5): These are true pleasures that really do satisfy. These good things are not too-good-to-be-true false promises that we often receive from the world. He supplies all that we really need. Don’t we drain our strength by chasing one thing after another that we think will satisfy us? There is nothing wrong with hard work, of course, or having goals but the problem is that we are usually not satisfied once we accomplish those goals. We tend to continue to want more and more. Psalm 107:9 says, “for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.”
Just thinking of all of that should make us want to praise Him! But, life can often dull those moments and soon they’ve faded in our memory. Not too long ago, I was reading this Psalm and God just pressed it upon my heart that He had done all of these things for me. He hadn’t done them just for David, but for me. These benefits weren’t for someone else they were for me! In fact, He had already done them for me! They were mine to claim, mine to remember, and mine to praise Him for.
And they are yours.
It’s time to remember what He’s done. If you’re having trouble remembering what He’s done, review David’s list.
And praise Him for it.
Go forward with an attitude of awareness of what He’s doing now so that later it can be a part of that memory book in your heart that you can take down off the shelf and flip through. I remember that. I remember that. Oh praise God, I remember…