My resistance to praising and thanking God, in order to bless Him

We are told throughout the Bible, and especially perhaps in the Psalms, that we bless God (so we make God happy and pleased) when we thank and praise Him. So, in Psalm 34:1 for example, it says: “I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth.” In Psalm 103:1, it says: “Bless (affectionally, gratefully) praise the Lord, O my soul: and all that is deepest within me, bless His Holy name.” In Psalm 16:7 it says: “I will bless the Lord, who has given me counsel, yes, my heart instructs me in the night seasons.”

However, I was recently reflecting on the question of why part of me at least, resists praising and thanking God as a way of blessing Him, and I came up with three main reasons.

The first is that, on the face of it, it seems rather ‘needy’ of God to enjoy and delight in my thanking and praising Him. Surely God is more self-sufficient than this, and so if He is an all-powerful Creator wouldn’t it make more sense to respond to my praises and thanks with a shrug and a ‘whatever, I’m God after all’? The second is that when I am praising and thanking God it often feels like I am speaking to ‘thin air’ or an empty room. You don’t hear or see God laughing at all or delighting and enjoying my praises and thanks (unlike a good friend, for example, if you had praised or thanked him/her), so where’s the evidence of God being blessed by my thanks and praise? Finally, the third, and probably most subtle resistance, comes from me worrying that if I do praise and thank God much more than I do now that He will likely be ‘in my face’ and will demand further my praises and thanks, without regard for my freedom to choose to thank and praise him. And, even more crucially from my point of view and as I reflected on this more, I would not, then, have the space to meditate on God from a certain distance, privately contemplating and chewing over the beauty and the wonders of the universe, the joys and pleasures of my life, and the many, many places I have found of satisfaction, anticipation, excitement, and fun.

Let’s take the third reason for my resistance first and see where it takes us with the first two. As I prayed about the matter of worrying that God will be ‘in my face’ and not allowing me the distance or privacy I craved and enjoyed, I suddenly saw that God does indeed give me this distance and privacy, this is, as a ‘divine space’ for praising and thanking Him. He does not and will not be ‘in my face’ demanding his praise and thanks, but is waiting for me to engage in this space, so I can unlock the peace and love of God, as the source of all things good and beautiful. This thought then got me to reason two for my resistance, that it often feels like I am speaking to ‘thin air’ when I am praising and thanking God. 

So, as I was meditating on how, in His wisdom, God has given us this divine space which allows me this distance and privacy between myself and God, I realized that this is precisely why it feels like I am speaking to ‘thin air’ or an empty!! This feeling of space is a direct reflection of the divine space God has indeed given me, and which allows me to exercise my faith that God is there, with me, in the moment, and all the moments of my life, even if I don’t see him! So, finally, this thought got me to the first reason for my resistance to praising and thanking God – that it seems like a ‘needy’ God who seeks praise and thanks for His blessing. 

After meditating and praying a lot on these issues, and, in turn, thanking God so much for the ‘divine space’ he had given me to praise Him, and that my faith when exercised, believes through the ‘thin air’ to a God who is real – I then saw that my blessing him with my thanks and praise, inevitably leads to an unlocking within me, not only of Him blessing me, but also of me being able to have an ongoing relationship with God, and through Him becoming one of us in Christ Jesus. God is, of course, entirely self-sufficient, and not in need of our blessing and thanks – but he wants this of me, so I can have a meaningful and loving relationship with him and enjoy the mutual blessings between him and me.