{"id":13655,"date":"2023-02-11T13:45:56","date_gmt":"2023-02-11T13:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pjhmail.wordpress.com\/?p=13655"},"modified":"2023-02-11T13:45:56","modified_gmt":"2023-02-11T13:45:56","slug":"psalm-1031-blessing-the-lord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/13655\/psalm-1031-blessing-the-lord\/","title":{"rendered":"Psalm 103:1 – Blessing the Lord"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good Morning, Pastor John,<\/span><\/p>\n

While reading Psalm 103 this morning a new thought came to me.\u00a0 103:1 “Bless the LORD, O my soul!\u00a0 And all that is within me, bless his holy name”.\u00a0 I have said and prayed, “Bless the LORD!” many times.\u00a0 But as I now know, we have nothing of benefit to God.\u00a0 How can we bless the LORD?\u00a0 I think I know what it means when the Lord blesses us, whether it be receiving the holy Ghost, being healed, or some burden lifted.\u00a0 But how can I\u00a0bless the LORD?\u00a0 But as it is in the Bible several times, I have to believe that it is something possible and good to do.\u00a0 Still, I don’t like the fact I have been praying something for years (“Bless the Lord”) and don’t understand what I have been saying.\u00a0 Can you help me understand what seems to be simple, but is confounding me this morning?<\/span><\/p>\n

I also read in Proverbs 8 where Jesus was there before heaven and earth, even before eternity itself.\u00a0 That has been on my mind ever since.\u00a0 “Before eternity” doesn’t seem possible, but then, what do I know?\u00a0 Does this mean that God, through Jesus, made time?\u00a0 It seems to imply there was no time before this, and will not be, once the Final Judgment is made.\u00a0 There’s another verse where it says a 1000 years is as a day to God.\u00a0 I have heard you say eternity is not the same to God, but it didn’t think that meant there was no time.\u00a0 It seems to imply that God is above or outside of time even now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Your thoughts and insights are greatly appreciated!<\/span><\/p>\n

Love,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark Whelan<\/span><\/p>\n

========<\/span><\/p>\n

Hi Mark.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I am happy to see that your mind is on these things.\u00a0 As for your first question, we bless God by praising Him with an upright heart.\u00a0 That is basically what “bless” means in that context.\u00a0 We cannot bless God by improving His situation, as He does ours.\u00a0 But we can praise Him.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

As for your second question, there is a mystery to eternity that is just beyond us.\u00a0 \u00a0It does no good to analyze eternity, though we all have wondered about it at times.\u00a0 Here is our translation of Proverbs 8:22\u201323, where the Son is speaking of his existence with the Father before creation: “The LORD\u00a0created me the beginning of His way, the first of His works.\u00a0\u00a0I was formed before eternity, before the beginning, before earth existed.”\u00a0 We debated the phrase, “before eternity”, since, as you said, that seems impossible.\u00a0 But in the end, we decided to leave it because that is what the Hebrew of that verse says, and we like the mystery of that phrase, and it accurately reflects the wonder of eternity, from our perspective.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I hope that helps.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Pastor John<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Good Morning, Pastor John, While reading Psalm 103 this morning a new thought came to me.\u00a0 103:1 “Bless the LORD, O my soul!\u00a0 And all that is within me, bless his holy name”.\u00a0 I have said and prayed, “Bless the LORD!” many times.\u00a0 But as I now know, we have nothing of benefit to God.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-qa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13655"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}