“Unto you, O Lord, do we lift up our souls,” (Psalm 25:1)
When the saints pray to the Lord, they must consider the first part of prayer. This is to address God and adore Him with suitable acknowledgements, professions, and preparatory requests. The God who is to be worshipped and adored is to be given His due. What is “due” to God? That which is in accordance with His nature. When the soul lifts itself up in rapturous praise, such praise is to be suitable to His nature.
Consider two questions – do you regularly lift up your soul to God in spiritual delight, and when you do, is it worthy of His nature?
Our spirits are to be composed into a very reverent and serious frame. Our thoughts are to be gathered in, and all that is within us charged in the name of the great God carefully to attend the solemn and awful service that lies before us and to keep close to it. We must, with a fixed attention and application of mind and an active lively faith, set the Lord before us, see his eye on us, and set ourselves in his special presence. In this we present ourselves to Him as living sacrifices, which we desire may be holy and acceptable to God in our spiritual service (Romans 12:1). Then, we bind these festal sacrifices with cords up to the horns of the altar, (Psalm 118:27) when we adore him in such a manner that fits his holy character.
Matthew Henry said, “Let us now attend to the Lord with undivided devotion, (1 Cor 7:35) and let not our hearts be far from him when we draw near to him with our mouths and honor him with our lips, (Isaiah 29:13).”
In your next devotion, send your thoughts up to God in high adoration like Jeremiah said in Lamentations 3:41, “Let us now lift up our hearts, with our eyes and hands, to God in heaven.” Consider Isaiah 64:7, “Let us rouse ourselves to take hold of God,” “to seek his face,” as we are instructed by Psalm 27:8, and to ascribe to him, “the glory due his name,” (Psalm 29:2).
In all your devotions, enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus with confidence, “by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh,” (Hebrews 10:19-20). Let us now worship and adore God, who is spirit, in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him, (John 4:23-24).
Contemplation:
Lord, help me to live in the constant contemplation of the glory of Christ. Help me to look the virtue of Christ, and help me through him to repair all my decays, to renew a right spirit within me and to cause me to abound in all duties of obedience.
Help me to fix my soul to Christ who alone is suited to give me delight, complacency and satisfaction. Fill my mind with thoughts of Christ and his glory, and cause my soul to hold tightly onto him him with intense affections. Help me to overcome nor give admittance to, the causes of all my spiritual weakness in adoring God in a wrong way. Nothing will so much excite and encourage my soul, Lord, as a constant view of Christ and his glory.
