{"id":28825,"date":"2022-05-03T07:57:57","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T06:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gloireadieu.com\/?p=28825"},"modified":"2022-05-03T07:57:57","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T06:57:57","slug":"what-it-means-to-bless-the-lord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gloireadieu.com\/english\/prayers\/what-it-means-to-bless-the-lord.html","title":{"rendered":"What It Means to Bless the Lord"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Prayer Bless the Lord<\/h2>\n<blockquote><p><em>Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!<\/em> (Psalm 103:1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The psalm begins and ends with the psalmist preaching to his soul to bless the Lord \u2014 <strong>\u201cBless the Lord, O my soul\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 and preaching to the angels and the hosts of heaven and the works of God\u2019s hands that they should do the same.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Bless the Lord, O you his angels,<br \/>\nyou mighty ones who do his word,<br \/>\nobeying the voice of his word!<br \/>\nBless the Lord, all his hosts,<br \/>\nhis ministers, who do his will!<br \/>\nBless the Lord, all his works,<br \/>\nin all places of his dominion.<br \/>\nBless the Lord, O my soul!<br \/>\n<em>(Psalm 103:20\u201322)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>The psalm is overwhelmingly focused on blessing the Lord. What does it mean to bless the Lord?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It means to speak well of his greatness and goodness \u2014 and really mean it from the depths of your soul.<\/p>\n<p>What David is doing in the first and last verses of this psalm, when he says, <em><strong>\u201cBless the Lord, O my soul,\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>is saying that authentic speaking about God\u2019s goodness and greatness must come from the soul.<\/p>\n<p>Blessing God with the mouth without the soul would be hypocrisy. Jesus said, \u201cThis people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me\u201d (Matthew 15:8). David knows that danger, and he is preaching to himself. He is telling his soul not to let this happen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome, soul, look at the greatness and goodness of God. Join my mouth, and let us bless the Lord with our whole being. Soul, we are not going to be a hypocrite!\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Gloire a Dieu<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bless the Lord, O my soul<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.gloireadieu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/bless-the-lord.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"What It Means to Bless the Lord","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prayers","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gloireadieu.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gloireadieu.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gloireadieu.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gloireadieu.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gloireadieu.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gloireadieu.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gloireadieu.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gloireadieu.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gloireadieu.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gloireadieu.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}