Live God Adventures

“Bless the LORD, O house of Israel! Bless the LORD, O house of Aaron! Bless the LORD, O house of Levi! You who fear the LORD, bless the LORD! Blessed be the LORD out of Zion, Who dwells in Jerusalem! Praise the LORD!”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭135:19-21‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Many times in scripture you read, “bless the Lord” or “Bless the Lord, o my soul”. You hear pastors say it, I’ve heard people pray it. Wonderful.

I am a children’s pastor. A lot of the time my brain works in a children’s pastor, children’s oriented learning, type way. That being said, when I read this scripture I thought about kids. We’re telling them to “bless the Lord” then we better know how to teach them to do just that.

What does it mean to “bless”? Most often we think of bless or blessing as it pertains to us. The Lord blessed me in “this” way, I am praying for a blessing from the Lord. We often get very inward focused and think about how or why the Lord will bless us and then begin to expect things.

Let me clarify. Yes, of course, we should expect blessings from God. He is our Source and Provider and says that He will bless us!

But is being blessed our main goal and focus? If so, I think we’ve got it backwards. It’s not what God can do for me and how much I deserve His blessing. It’s how can I serve Him, how can I bless Him, surrender to Him. He will provide, trust Him, focus on blessing the Lord.

If you’ve read many blogs you know I love to study and will often look up definitions to better describe something. When I did that for bless or blessing what came up was “being blessed by God” , “receiving favor”. Proving my point.

Then at the very end what came up was: Blessing; praise, devotion, worship.

How do we bless the Lord? Praise Him, be completely devoted and surrendered to Him, worship Him in all things.

Take some time and meditate on the scripture at the beginning. Look up some other scriptures that instruct us to bless the Lord. Take a few minutes to bless the Lord, praising, worshiping, and devoting yourself to Him.