Self Talk or God talk?

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Psalm 103:1-2: "Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits—"

"One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least somebody's listening," Franklin P. Jones once said. Now a new study shows that talking to yourself in a positive way may be an indication of health. Psychologists Daniel Swigley and Gary Lupyan gave 20 people the name of an object (like a loaf of bread or an apple), which they were told to find in the supermarket. During the first set of trials, the participants were bound to silence. In the second set, they repeated the object's name out loud as they looked for it in the store.

Test subjects found the object with greater ease when they spoke to themselves while searching. Saying things out loud sparks memory. It solidifies the end game and makes it tangible. According to psychologist Linda Sapadin, talking out loud to yourself helps you validate important and difficult decisions. "It helps you clarify your thoughts, tend to what's important, and firm up any decisions you're contemplating." [David Finch, Elk Grove, California; source: Gigi Engle, "People Who Talk To Themselves Aren't Crazy, They're Actually Geniuses," EliteDaily.Com (7-8-15)]

We are always talking to ourselves, giving ourselves messages. What messages are you giving yourself? Are these messages rooted in God's Word, in truth, and in love? David is a model of Biblical self-talk (Psalm 103:1-2) when he encourages himself in the Lord. The Proverb writer says, "For as he thinks in his heart, so he is" (Proverbs 23:7a NKJV). Our thoughts, or self talk, can shape us, can change our mind set. What kind of person would we become if instead of the usual messages we find in our heads we changed them into praise and gratitude to God? So, praise the Lord and speak to yourself of His benefits! 

Prayer: Father God, praise Your holy name! You are great and You are good. We remember all the ways you have delivered us, saved us, given us a hope and a future. We praise Your holy name. In Jesus, amen.

All creation worships God...

Today's thought:

Psalm 148:3-4 & 7-10, "Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars. Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies... Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds..."

All creation worships God. We rarely stop to think about that. Ever go for a walk in nature, slip into a deep mysterious woods, cast your line into a bubbling brook, look upon a meadow desert of sequoia cactus, hear the distant roar of a misting waterfall, watch a sea of grass roll and wink in a gentle breeze, be lulled to sleep by the rhythmic lapping of salty waves? There is a sense that comes over us. Many interpret that as a closeness to God. Perhaps what we sense is the worship of creation, worshipping its Creator for creating it. There is a sound to creation as it operates as it was created to. It is called bioacoustics.

Research in the field of bioacoustics has revealed that every day we are surrounded by millions of ultrasonic songs. Did you know, for instance, that the electron shell of the carbon atom produces the same harmonic scale as the Gregorian chant? Or that whale songs can travel thousands of miles underwater? Or that meadowlarks have a range of three hundred notes? Supersensitive sound instruments have discovered that even earthworms make faint staccato sounds! Arnold Summerfield, the German physicist and pianist, observed that a single hydrogen atom, which emits one hundred frequencies, is more musical than a grand piano, which only emits eighty-eight frequencies.

Science writer Lewis Thomas summed it up it this way: "If we had better hearing, and could discern the [singing] of sea birds, the rhythmic [drumming] of schools of mollusks, or even the distant harmonics of [flies] hanging over meadows in the sun, the combined sound might lift us off our feet." [Adapted from Mark Batterson, All In (Zondervan, 2013), pp. 118-119]

All creation worships it's Creator. When we lift our praise to God we join a larger song of worship. We are the only aspect of that song that is voluntarily offered. God is seeking those who will join the song. Jesus said, "Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks" (John 4:23).

What creation does best for us is to point our attention to the Creator. Then we can worship Him. Makoto Fujimura, Christian artist and thinker, said, "Perhaps the greatest thing we can do as a Christian community is to behold. Behold our God. Behold his creation. The church has exiled beauty from its conversations, and I think that we need to rediscover the beautiful in order to recover ourselves—our humanity. Jesus seemed to indicate that beauty is a door into the Gospel."

Prayer: Mighty Creator, when we consider the works of Your hands, we bow in awe before You. Your power, majesty, imagination, knowledge and love etched into Your creation calls us to praise Your name and join the song of what You have made. We praise You! For You alone deserve glory, honor and praise, forever! In Jesus name, amen.