Do I have to sing?

September 5, 2026

Maria Job 36, Meditation, Praising God, Psalm 104, Rejoicing , , , 1 Comment

5 September 2026

I will sing to the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the LORD.
Psalm 104:33–34 NIV

I am not a singing gal. My mom forced me to take weekly piano lessons for ten years. Practicing regularly was an afterthought for me, leading to shame when my piano teacher would arrive and find me unprepared.

Nowadays when I read the many verses in the Psalms—and throughout Paul’s letters—encouraging us to sing our praises to God, I feel troubled. Of course, I join in with others when I am in church. But that is about the only time I sing.

When I am in the car, exercising, or cooking, I default to podcasts or the audio of YouTube videos. This morning, as I puzzled through these two verses in Psalm 104, I wondered, “Is there something wrong with me?”

Nosing around the Hebrew, I discovered something interesting. While modern translations understand the first verb as “to sing,” older translators sometimes connected the Hebrew form with another root meaning “to behold” or “to look upon.” In fact, in Job 36:24, the King James Version uses “behold” where most modern translations use “sing.”

That caught my attention. Behold. Now that is something I try to do throughout the day. I try to remember to raise my eyes and turn my attention to God.

And then there is the second part of our passage: May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the LORD.  I find it easy to meditate on truths about our God as I focus on Him.

Okay, maybe there is a place for gals like me who, although we enjoy listening to music occasionally, do not give it regular space in our lives.

We non-singers can still  lift our voices and join in with others during corporate worship, but in private we can always be seeking, pondering, chattering to, and praising God all day long.

Does God ordain our desires?

August 11, 2023

Maria Delight, Desire, God's Sovereignty, Psalm 104, Psalm 37, Satisfaction , , , 4 Comments

Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4 ESV

This principle in Psalm 37 keeps beckoning me deeper.  I’m fascinated by more possibilities of what God could be offering us.   

I think a lot of Christians are squishy or squeamish when it comes to this promise.  Perhaps they fear treating God as a genie in the bottle. Maybe they think, “If I take this seriously, I might ask the Lord for something he doesn’t want me to have.  Then I’d be disappointed. So, out of fear, they conclude: God must not really be saying what the words seem to indicate.”

But let’s consider starting from the premise that God is a good god and a happy god who loves to give his kids things to make them truly happy. We need not worry about going ‘overboard’ in asking for something inappropriate, for God has placed a condition that precedes the promise. To delight ourselves in him clearly teaches us to find our greatest happiness in the person of the Lord himself, not what he gives.

Once that condition has been met, then we can turn to two possible ways to take God’s invitation regarding desires that remain unfulfilled.

The first approach goes like this: when we find ourselves being exuberantly happy in him, he wants us to share honestly what our heart also desires because he plans to satisfy those longings. The other option is that God himself has all along sovereignly planted those deep yearnings in us, purposing to satisfy them.

And if he gives us desires, for his good purposes, then they reflect his character. They won’t be bolstering or feeding any false identities. They will be part of his long-term Kingdom plans for us and others.

But you might say, “How do I know if I sourced those desires and can trust them to be the ‘good’ kind that God would approve of, or if they truly are in me because He wired me with them?” An easy test of appropriate desires would be to filter them this way:  Do they feed my ego or not?  If God grants them to me, will I be boasting as though they evidence my greatness or will they make me want to tell everyone about the goodness and kindness of my loving Father?

The other morning the Holy Spirit brought this question to mind: “What if what I long for most in my life here on earth 1.0 actually fits his divine plan of Kingdom expansion?”

Maybe you know how much I love languages. Daily I work toward fluency in several more.  I dream of living in an environment (here in the US or elsewhere) where I can use one of these languages, other than English, throughout each day. In my book, engaging in another language is the ‘funnest’ thing I do.

This is how I have settled the issue of Psalm 37:4. I have concluded that he is the creator of my desires. If then God himself gives me desires that he sovereignly plans to satisfy, then I bet he has plans to bless others as a result of what I LOVE doing.

You open Your hand, they (all your created beings) are satisfied with good. Psalm 104:28 NASB

Could the Lord already have mapped out the fulfillment of my longing to be part of his will being done on earth?