By Rev Tan Eng Boo
I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and
ever. Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever.
(Psalm 145:1, 2)
One day during one of my birding trips, I heard a lovely melodious sound of a bird singing. I am glad to have taken a photo of this Yellow-bellied prinia, full of zeal, singing in the morning.
There are wonderful biblical lessons we can learn from nature, and from the fowls of the air. C H. Spurgeon says,
“The early morning hour should be dedicated to praise, do not the birds set the example?”
The first thing every one of us should do when we wake up in the morning is to praise the living God. The fact that we are alive after a night of rest is a miracle. It is by the grace of God that He has sustained us, and we have a new day before us. There are people who sleep in the night but fail to get up in the morning. They die in their sleep. Some do not get up in the morning because of war. They get killed while they sleep.
Do you remember this hymn?
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father
There is no shadow of turning with Thee
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be
Great is Thy faithfulness
Great is Thy faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies I see
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me
We cannot and must not take for granted that we will have a tomorrow. In fact, we do not deserve a tomorrow. If we have it, it is because of the mercy and grace of God. So, while we have the new day, we must be grateful to God. That is why the Psalmist says:
“Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever.”
(Psalm. 145:2).
There is one more thing I must remind you. Go to bed at night with a pure heart, cleansed by the blood of the Lamb. Do not harbour bitterness, hatred, anger, and jealousy. Ask the Lord to take it away before you go to bed. I am sure you have experienced such evil thoughts before going to bed. You cannot sleep in peace. Your prayers will not be heard by a holy God. Sometimes, our fellow brethren hurt us, and we lose sleep over it. When the morning comes, it will be a struggle to offer words of praise and worship to God. Why should we allow this evil to beset us?
I look forward to praising God each morning when I wake up. It is not that I have not gone through such problems in my life, but why should I let it continue to trouble me and affect my praise to God on a new day?
Put the Word of God into action:
“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put
away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another,
tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
(Ephesians 4:31, 32)
If you do that, every morning will be a time of praise to God.
Let me leave you with a stanza taken from the song “My Heart Is Filled With Thankfulness” by Stuart Townend:
For ev'ry day I have on earth
Is given by the King;
So I will give my life, my all,
To love and follow him.
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