“And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the Lord.” (Psalm 26:6)

God’s tent is His temple and today that temple is the church. This is a psalm about worship, and the psalmist visualizes being in the tabernacle of the Lord and singing praises to Him. One of the important points of this verse is the attitude of the psalmist when in the presence of God. It is the attitude of happiness and joy. The psalmist is so filled with what God has done in his life that he wants God to know how he feels and so he shouts.

In many churches today that kind of outburst would be unacceptable to the other worshipers, but not necessarily to God. God wants His people to be happy, to be filled with joy. When you find real happiness, you don’t show it by being solemn and quiet, do you? No, of course not. Real joy calls for celebration, for showing the joy.

As a boy, I learned to be quiet in church. No laughing, no outburst of any kind. Even the songs were slow and stately and seldom exhibited any excitement. Because God was there in the assembly with us, we were supposed to be subdued and passive. That is not what the psalmist is advocating, is it?

The great joy experienced by the psalmist led him to sing and make melody. Not just to sing and make melody for the sake of the singing. It wasn’t about how beautiful the singing was or how in tune or how perfect the pitch. It was singing to the Lord. The melody of the heart was for God. The song was an outpouring of the soul that had to tell God how happy He had made that soul.

In our efforts to have everything perfect we may miss the point of the singing or the praying. We may, in our modern worship, think more about the melody than we do the object of the melody.

Task for Today: Are you happy? Sing and make a melody to God. Let God know about your happiness. Don’t be afraid to shout for joy. Praise doesn’t have to be hushed nor the songs muted. God puts joy in your heart, let your heart express the joy back to God.