Sometimes, you’ve just got to express yourself. You can’t sit still. You can’t remain silent. That’s what Psalm 100 is saying. It is calling the people to act, to get up, to proclaim the reality of God in their midst. “Shout joyfully to the Lord…Serve the Lord with gladness…Come before Him with joyful singing…Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise…Give thanks to Him…Bless His name” (vs. 1-4). All these actions are based upon a certain reality, a reality in which the people “know that the Lord Himself is God” (vs. 3). There is a knowing and there is a doing.
In fact, in ancient Israel, to know was to do. If one knew and didn’t do, there was a disconnect somewhere. This makes me think of a wonderful prayer of A. W. Tozer:
O God, I have tasted Your goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want You; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Your glory, I pray, that so I may know You indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." Then give me grace to rise and follow You up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
When one has tasted the reality of the Living God and discovered that God “is good,” and that “His lovingkindness is everlasting and His faithfulness [is] to all generations,” it is hard to sit still (see vs. 5). When people know that God has made them, and that they “are His people and the sheep of His pasture” (vs. 3), it is hard to be silent. Sometimes you’ve just got to worship and praise and celebrate. Sometimes you’ve just got to “shout joyfully to the Lord” and “serve the LORD with gladness” and “come before Him with joyful singing” (vs. 1-2). Truthfully, maybe we ought to change “sometimes,” to “always.” How can one remain inactive when one knows that God has reached into their lives, entered into their story, and filled them with an awareness that God is faithful? Inaction is difficult to grasp in the life of one who has been redeemed into the very life of God.
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost but now
am found, Was blind, but now I see.
John Newton, 1779
Life in the Holy Spirit is life in God’s amazing grace. Life in God’s amazing grace is fulfilled-life in his moment. Perhaps this is why Jesus called His followers to pray to God, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew. 6:10).
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