Last Updated on August 1, 2023 by OCF Communications
Praise God forever! How he must rejoice in all his work! … I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will praise God to my last breath!
—Psalm 104:31, 33, TLB
Attributed to David, the warrior king, Biblical poet laureate, and likely the Lord Almighty’s most unabashed and unashamed cheerleader—much to his wife Michal’s chagrin (see 1 Chronicles 15:29)—Psalm 104 celebrates the greatness of God and the wonder of His creation.
So glorious, so magnificent was the order, grandeur, and multiplicity of what he saw in creation all around him that this man after God’s own heart burst into praise, in worship of the Creator, not the created. As the Enduring Word commentary points out, David “understood that God was the Creator of all things, and that it was He who laid the foundations of the earth. It did not happen by chance or random events. There is a Creator behind all things.”
That there is a Creator behind all the things we can experience and enjoy in nature gives depth and breadth to our lives, pleasures from the hand of God to fill us and our senses with wonder. We gasp in awe at the mountains, the mesmerizing rhythms of the ocean waves upon the shore, and the “complete cosmos: sea and land, cloud and sunlight, plant and animal, light and darkness, life and death … all proved to be expressive of the presence of the Lord,” as Charles Spurgeon wrote.
As marvelous as nature is, and as pleasant as our pursuit to experience its grandeur may be, it fades to nothingness if its Creator is not acknowledged, known, and pursued. What is interesting is that those who reject God and instead consider the created order as their god or church and worship it as such will one day be declared guilty by it: “For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).
The greatness of our God as displayed by His creation is extolled in Psalm 104 and other writings of David. Throughout the ages, hymns and songs have inspired God’s own to consider His handwork and break out into praise. Consider the hymn How Great Thou Art: “Oh Lord, my God/When I, in awesome wonder/Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made/I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder/Thy power throughout the universe displayed/Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee/ How great Thou art, how great Thou art.”
OCF prayer warrior teammates, as we look at the wonders of God’s glory around us and meditate on His love for us, what are your praises? How can we pray for you?
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