Praise

“I will praise you with an upright hear as I learn your righteous laws.” (Psalm 119:7)

In order to praise God we must be in a proper relationship with God. The Psalmist says this means that our hearts must be upright. In the previous verse he mentioned that if we are to be free from shame we must consider the commands of God. Whenever we are ashamed we usually hang our heads and lower our eyes. We cannot look others directly in the eye. We are not upright in our hearts.

One of the definitions of upright is to be morally correct. In order to be morally correct we must know what God requires and we learn this by studying His Word. We find that we must be just because God is just; we must be holy because God is holy; we must be pure because God is pure.

It is when we are morally correct that we can bring our praises to God. Samuel had told Saul that obedience is better than sacrifice. If we are to bring our sacrifice of praise to God then we must be living in obedience.