Come and praise the lord with me!

I will bless the Lord at all times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
My soul makes its boast in the Lord;
let the humble hear and be glad.
Oh, magnify the Lord with me,
     and let us exalt his name together!

-Psalm 34:1-3

David pens this Psalm while fleeing from Saul in fear for his life. Specifically, he writes this Psalm reflecting on the events on 1 Samuel 21:10-15. In this account, David flees from Saul and finds himself in the presence of the Achish, the King of Gath. After the king’s servants recognize him, David had to find a way out of this mess. When David entered Gath, he was in Philistine territory which was not good news for David. The people of Gath would have coveted a chance to use David against Israel or, at a minimum, prevent him from returning home. 

But David comes up with an idea: he goes mad. He goes absolutely wild. Scripture tells us that he “made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spit run down his beard” (21:13). When the king sees this, they immediately let him go believing that a man of David’s reputation would never behave like this.

David immediate response to the Gath situation is what we see is Psalm 34:1-3. His response is worship. His response is to worship God at all times and boast in His name because of all that God had done for him. He immediately recognized that it was God, and God alone, who got him out of that potentially catastrophic situation.

What is your immediate response after you get out of a predicament? Is it relief? Exhaustion? Confusion? Anger that it even had to happen in the first place? All of those would make sense. But what if it was worship of the God who carried you though it? Maybe our best response is to reflect and see God’s hand in it all. He’s always working in our lives, sometimes we just need to be more intentional in looking for Him.

Verse 3 takes a shift. After worshipping God for 2 verses, he invites others to come worship with him. He doesn’t want to worship alone! He wants to see the face of God and worship His name with others. I have found myself going back to this verse often as I think of and pray for Hillcrest. What if each of us said, “Come and magnify the Lord with me! Let us exalt his name together!”? What if we all simply refused to do this journey alone and we actively pulled others in to worship with us? Imagine how God can work through a people who individually commit to seeking and worshipping the Lord together!

The Lord has carried Hillcrest from the very beginning, including the last several years. My challenge to you is this: let’s look back and see how He worked and commit to worshipping Him together because of His faithfulness. And here’s the best part… He’s just getting started! But it will never have anything to do with us. It will all be Him, just like it always has been.