I was attending life group with the young adults and sharing how I memorize scriptures by writing lines. Sometimes up to 10 lines a day I will write one scripture yet I will still struggle to remember the scripture the next day!
Why is this so? I think that my soul is rather stubborn and unyielding like a horse or a mule. I would need to keep writing lines (perhaps up to 20 or 30 times) before the verse become a part of me or embedded in my soul!
This morning during worship the Spirit of the Lord spoke to me "Ruth, there is one way you can try to memorize the scriptures and that is by doing a Bible study line by line, verse by verse. When you analyze it and do biblical research you will remember it better"
Hmm...perhaps the Holy Spirit is right. I do remember things better after I have done in-depth research on it, teach it, preach it and pray it!
So as I like to memorize Psalms and use it in my prayers I will start with Psalms 146 (I have memorized Psalms 150, 149, 148 and 147).
Psalms 146:1 "Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord O my soul"
This Psalms seems to be like an order to the soul to praise the Lord!
What does it mean to "praise" the Lord?
The word "praise" here is "halal" in Hebrew and it means 2 things "To shine, to flash forth light" and "to praise, to be boastful"
So whenever we praise the Lord we are shining like a torch-light, releasing God's light to the world around us and this light is going forth from our mouths to destroy the darkness around us! There is thus a substance that is released from our mouth when we praise the Lord aloud!
The word "praise" also means "to be boastful".
When we praise the Lord we are actually "boasting" of the Lord!
So feel free to be extravagant in our praises of the Lord as we are not boasting of ourselves but boasting of God!
We praise the Lord by acknowledging Him for His might acts and giving thanks to Him for what He has done for us.
With what do we praise the Lord?
We praise the Lord with "our soul".
The Psalmist seems to be ordering his soul to "praise the Lord" as though if he did not do so the soul would be too lazy to do it or just could not be bothered to praise the Lord! The soul's tendency would be to seek a comfortable zone or a zone that just could not be bothered with such an activity.
It is interesting to note that in Hebrew, "soul" means "nephesh" or "appetites, mind, inner being of a man, desire, emotion, passion, breathing substance or being".
The soul is also
- the seat of emotions
- the seat of appetites
- the seat of passion
- the seat of the activity of the mind
- the seat of activity of the will
- the seat of activity of character
It would appear then that if we do not order our soul to praise the Lord (this seems to be what the Psalmist is doing in Psalms 146:1) then the soul wold probably not be praising the Lord but could be seeking ways and means to praise itself!
Think about it for a moment! Our soul is by nature selfish, self-seeking, self-indulgent. We need to verbalize our praise to God so that the soul will have no choice but to bend and bow and align itself to this activity of our will!
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