“To You O Lord, I will sing praise.” Psalm 101:1

David again put quite an emphasis on his commitment to the God whom he was directing his praise to. It was more than a “feel good” emotional response even as depicted on Monday as I wrote about the elements of good praise music. It appears that David’s music was the response of a heart dedicated 100% to God. Not only is he going to “sing praises” TO God; he’s also making a strong statement about the rest of his life given to his Creator:

I will be careful to lead a blameless life
I will set before my eyes no vile thing
I will have nothing to do with evil
My eyes will be on the faithful in the land
He who walks blameless will minister to me

And the list goes on, just a bit more subtle and not quite as direct! Singing praises to God appears to be just a type of response to living a life committed to God. And the living part seems just as passionate at the singing part!! Those are pretty strong commitments, probably made after he had fallen into and been forgiven for his terrible sins of adultery and murder. He understood, I believe, that one cannot play around with the worldly, sinful, or leading to sinful things and still make sense out of Christianity. What if I said:

I’m going to try and be sort of careful and to lead a semi-blameless life- I mean, after all, I’m only human and I’m a sinful human being at that!
I’m going to try and not watch REALLY vile things but I can’t protect myself from EVERYTHING vile! Actually some of it is pretty funny and laughter is good for the soul, right?
I’m going to try not to mess too much with evil but man alive, it’s everywhere—what’s a guy to do?
My eyes will prefer, most of the time, to at least glance at the faithful in the land to see how I should be, but I have to live in this world too!
I probably should prefer good people to be my support system but that’s being pretty closed minded and I’m a very open person and feel comfortable seeking wisdom from all areas of life.

I wonder how successful my life would be as compared to David who was called, “A man after God’s own heart?” If I want to be after God’s heart it sounds like I better make a few concrete commitments in my life!!

Have a great day committing,
Pastor Rich