Together in Christ: 'Praise His Holy Name!' — Psalm 30:4-5

Singing is a great gift God gave His people to express themselves in all sorts of circumstances in their lives. ^[1] Today's verses on singing center on living and worshiping in relationship with God and each other. We sing to the Lord. We sing, speaking to one another. ^[2] Our singing helps us express our shared faith even when some of us are in difficult places — when we feel God's disappointment with us or find life bone-wearyingly full of long nights. We sing with others who have faith and whose faith can reassure us until we regain our own faith!

Our daily routines can sometimes be accompanied by a loss of resolve, weariness, hardships, struggles, grief, and discouragement. These challenges make our connections with other believers essential. We need to sing with others who have made it through similar hardships and found God's morning of joy again. We need to hear from brothers and sisters who have found themselves undeniably living in the favor and blessing of God after a time of struggle in life's spiritual deserts. Satan wants us to feel hypocritical when we praise God when we don't feel like praising. The evil one wants us to quit and wallow alone in our hurt, anger, and self-pity when our lives are in shambles. But, as I once heard it expressed, "Faith is the bird that sings, while it is yet dark, anticipating a new dawn." In dark moments of the soul, we need the faith of others to encourage and sustain us! We worship together and sing with each other to stir one another up in our faith. Rather than hide from other believers when our faith wanes and our doubts rise, we need each other even more. As the Holy Spirit says:

And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. ^[3]

Thankfully, when we praise God with other believers, we don't have to be the lone "bird that sings" in our darkness. We sing with others who help us anticipate better things. We praise God together so that the faith of our brothers and sisters can buoy us until we find our spirits rising on the inrushing tide of God's grace. We sing to the Lord with "His godly ones" because we trust the moments of anger and nights of weeping will come to an end. Morning dawns, joy returns, and we have brothers and sisters who share the journey with us!