Seven Times a Day

Psalm 119:164 – Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments.

I love the book of Psalms, but I especially love chapter 119! It is packed full of so many wonderful, life-changing instructions. If we let it, this chapter can change our lives.

I read this verse a couple of days ago, and this morning I could not help but come back to it. The phrase, Seven times a day do I praise thee… kept resonating in my head. I could not stop thinking about it. The conviction in those words is so strong in my personal life that I just felt compelled to share.

God always knows what is best for us, but I need to be truthful in saying that I do not always enjoy how He does things. I am not always so quick to praise Him for certain things in my life. Do not get me wrong—I am very quick to praise Him for the positive things that happen, but not so much for the negative things that happen. The negative things make me upset, and sometimes I get so blinded by my frustration that I do not see the actual blessings behind it all!

Since it IS such a hard thing for me to see past my frustration to the blessings on  the other side of the negative things that happen in my life, I made up my mind to figure out a way to “train myself” to praise the Lord more during my day! This verse tells us that David praised the Lord seven times a day because of His righteous judgments. That means that David found seven things during each day for which he could praise the Lord. If we were to multiply that by 365 days in the year, we would find that he literally praised the Lord for 2,555 things each year! That is a large number of blessings!

Now, none of us seem to have a hard time finding at least that many things or more about which to complain each and every day! Hence, I contend that we should try just as hard to find things for which we should praise God EVERY day.

A couple of years ago, I decided to start a blessings jar! I have it sitting in a little nook at the top of my stairs just outside my bedroom door. My daughter and I made a pact to write down at least ONE blessing per day and put it in that jar. Sometimes, with the hustle and bustle of life, we often forget to take the time to think back on our day and actually write down our blessings!

Therefore, after reading this verse, I made a decision. I want to be more faithful in praising the Lord each day. I want my blessings jar to be overflowing with little yellow cards to the point that I will need to take them out to make room for more! This is my plan, and I challenge all of you to join me.

Set a recurring reminder on your phone—SEVEN TIMES A DAY—to stop whatever you are doing at that moment to praise God for something He is doing in your life, then write it down in a journal or put it in your own blessings jar! We set reminders on our phones for so many other things. Why not set a reminder to help us to remember to praise the Lord? If we are faithful to do so, we can say as David said, Seven times a day do I praise thee…

What do you say? Please join me in praising the Lord!

by April Hernandez