Praise When You’re Struggling - Nick Napier

The Christian life cannot and must not be lived based on mere feeling. We all have times when we don't 'feel it' when following the Lord. I think of our brothers and sisters of whom we so often like to feel superior, thinking, "I would never have acted like that." You know them: the Israelites. Imagine it: you have been promised deliverance by Jehovah, and yet you see the plagues and hear the threats of Pharaoh. God said it, and so it was as good as accomplished, but they sure didn't feel delivered. Then, there they were with their backs against the sea and it hadn't opened yet, and Pharaoh and his army were barreling down upon them; I am certain they didn't feel it then. Then, they go a little way into the wilderness and they don't have water—they didn't feel delivered, they felt as good as dead. As a matter of fact, they were ready to walk back into Egypt based upon their feelings. So, we should see that we cannot live life based upon our feelings of any given moment. We will endure many hardships and difficulties and trials in this life. That, too, has been promised. 

So, how do we walk by faith and not by sight in the Christian life? How do we go against the grain of our feelings, and follow Him in the midst of trial? How do we praise Him in the midst of hurt that we encounter—not just any hurt, but the kind of hurt that has you questioning His goodness, shakes you to your core, and puts you in the middle of a fight for your faith? 

We cannot be certain of what His deliverance for us in any given circumstance may look like, or through what means it may come, and so we are to live our lives  grounded upon God’s character and promise as we see it revealed in His Word. Which brings us to this article. 

There will be times we don't feel like doing something that we know is right and yet we are called to do it. There will be times when we know we are to know we are to call on Him in worship, and to be with His people, and yet, for whatever reason, life has been hard, and we almost can’t bring ourselves to do it. How do we? 

Psalm 103 gives us some instruction. Though we could spend a lot of time considering the richness of this Psalm and really look into for a lifetime (for instance, we could consider His compassion as a father; or the marvelous grace of the forgiveness of sin; etc.), we are going to focus on this Psalm based on the matter outlined above, not dealing with it in its entirety. We don't know what occasioned this Psalm; it could be that David is rejoicing or that he has been brought low and is stirring himself up to praise. In any case, it's no accident that it follows Psalm 102 (see particularly  verses 3-7, 9-11) and the woe faced there (much like Psalm 90 follows the hard questions of Psalm 89). Whatever the circumstance, this Psalm is great for helping us work through the issue. 

So how can we be brought to praise when we're struggling?

We are taught here to prod our souls to praise the Lord

Three times this Psalm calls us to stir up our souls to praise. (See verses 1, 2, and 22.) The hard reality of life is that there are times when we must say to ourselves, "I know that praise is right and I need it, and in the face of this hardship and trial and struggle, I must stir up what I know is right and best, in light of who God is and what He has promised as revealed in His Word." When my flesh and eyes fail me, I have to stir myself up in faith, grounded in that Word, on that promise and upon His character.

This is not something that we do naturally, and yet that is something of what it means to praise the Lord. The world will think you’re crazy, especially when they look around with naked eye—an eye that is not able to see spiritual things, and all it sees is your back against the sea. They see it as nature red in tooth and claw, some meaningless, nihilistic void, but we see beyond. We know there is more, and so we must prod ourselves. 

 So, David stirs himself to praise: "All that is within me, bless his holy name." Surely you should praise Him with all that is within you!  Again, we like to think we are different from Children of Israel, and yet we are more apt to complain than praise. So David, so the children of Israel, so we must stir ourselves up to praise. How? How do we do this when we don’t feel like it? When the darkness is deep and we’re not sure if we’re even able? When we don’t know if we can go forward? We remember.

We are taught to cultivate our memory toward praise 

One of the key words throughout all of Scripture is remember. We are told that the Lord remembers and we are to remember. So here, David calls us to remember. "Forget not all his benefits." The reality is that often we let that which is the blessing of Lord pass by with scarcely a thought, only the expectation that that is what we should have. Then as we pass by that it is only to dwell on hardship that is before us. 

We fail in thanksgiving and excel in focusing on our troubles. In so doing, we fail in praise. This is because we "forget" His benefits, and don’t meditate on them, don’t dwell on them, don’t roll them over and over in our minds. We perseverate on the hardships that befall us because we are expecting only good things—receiving the good and passing by it in a moment. We are forgetful that because of the Fall we are "liable to all the miseries in this life."¹ We fail to remember that our afflictions are light and momentary in light of eternity—and doing that causes us to forget His benefits and the nature of His benefits. When we forget His benefits, we are walking by sight and feel on the basis of what we see that our afflictions are what’s eternal. 

David is calling us to memory work. He's calling us to recall the Lord's benefits—to remember His promises to all who are His by faith. "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s." You might be thinking, "Wait minute! I am in the midst of woe and disease and don't feel satisfied at all." We must remember that His benefits here are in some cases present, but all are speaking ultimately.  

We can illustrate it with Abraham. Abraham and those early saints didn't have the promised blessing in hand, but persevered in faith based on God's Word of promise to them. Abraham died being promised the world and a seed more numerous than the stars and sands of the seashore, but had a grave plot and a son of promise. Hardly the world or stars and sand. Without a memory of the Lord's Word of promise and His character, Abraham would have despaired.

So often, our tendency is to let covenant promises and blessings and the current status that we enjoy slip further and further from the forefront of our minds, because those promises are still “out there.” When what we see is struggle and hardship, our memory’s must be pricked and our souls must be prodded to go beyond what our eyes see in times of trouble—and brought back to ground zero of faith. How do we do that?

We are taught to probe the Scripture to ground our praise 

In verse 7 David reminds us that, "He made known his ways unto Moses,
his acts unto the children of Israel." Jehovah did so revealing His arm in strength to deliver them from Pharaoh—but He did not do so without revealing it by His Word first. He spoke to them revealing His promises of deliverance and fulfilling it. 

Remembering His Word is what would see them through in their hardships and in their great difficulties. It is when they failed to remember who He is and His promises that they grumbled. As Thomas Watson said, "When men begin to distrust the promise, then they quarrel at Providence." 

His Word, His promise, this is to be the ground of all our faith; resting in it, we can praise in the midst of our struggles. Because, in His Word, we see all His promises brought to yes and amen in Jesus Christ. He was treated as sin so that we might be forgiven our sins; He was treated as an enemy with no mercy in order that we might be brought to a merciful father; He was suspended between heaven and earth, rejected by heaven and rejected by earth in order that He might show us mercy as high as the heavens are above the earth. It is when we see this in Scripture, that we can be encouraged to continue to probe to ground our praise. 

Remember, the Children of Israel saw Lord’s great deliverance, and yet when they saw the sea not yet opened, their hearts failed; they saw the sea open and crossed on dry ground, and when they did not see water, their hearts failed—and on and on it goes. Their eyes failed; which is why Scripture teaches, "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God."² Our eyes will fail us; so our praise must not be built upon what we see or feel, but must be built upon the Word of God. Our eyes and hearts will fail us, but we have something more sure—a sure Word of prophecy.³

There is indeed a richness and depth to this Psalm that could be drawn out for pages to come, but for this post, let it bring us to basics of praise—that when hardship comes, we are to prod our souls to praise the Lord; cultivate our memories toward praise, and probe the Scripture to ground our praise.

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¹ Westminster Shorter Catechism answer to question question 19.
² Romans 10:17.
³ See 2 Peter 1:16-21.