5 Simple Ways to Praise God on a Regular Tuesday

Praise is easy to picture on a Sunday with a room full of people. It is harder to picture at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday, halfway through a load of laundry.

But most of life is Tuesday. Here are five ways to praise in the middle of one. Psalm 118:24 does not say this is the Sunday the LORD has made. This is the day that the LORD has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. The day in question is whichever one you woke up in.

One: Say What He Is Like, Not What He Did

Thanksgiving names gifts. Praise names the giver. Both are good and we do far more of the first than the second.

Try one sentence about God himself. That he is patient. That he keeps his word. That he does not change. It feels stiff at first and then it does not.

If nothing comes, read one verse and take the description straight from it. The Psalms are full of ready made sentences and there is no prize for originality here.

Two: Sing One Verse of Something You Know

Not a whole playlist. One verse of one hymn, out loud, while the kettle boils.

Singing does something to the body that speaking does not. Thirty seconds of an old hymn will change a kitchen more reliably than a good intention will.

Three: Read a Psalm of Praise Standing Up

Psalms 145 through 150 are the praise psalms and they were written to be spoken rather than studied.

Read one standing, out loud, at a normal volume. It takes ninety seconds and it is a different experience from reading it slumped in a chair.

Psalm 150 is thirteen lines long and consists almost entirely of instructions to praise. On a flat Tuesday, being told what to do is more useful than being asked how you feel.

Four: Praise Him for the Task in Front of You

Colossians 3:17 says whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

That includes the spreadsheet and the dishes. Name the ordinary work as something offered rather than something endured, and Tuesday afternoon becomes a place where praise is possible.

This is not a trick to make chores enjoyable. It is a claim about who the afternoon belongs to, and it holds equally on the days the work goes badly.

Five: Tell Someone Something Good About God

Say one true thing about him to another person during the day. Not a lecture. A sentence.

Praise spoken to someone else has a way of convincing the speaker. You will believe it more firmly at four o'clock than you did at ten.

Start With the Kettle

Of the five, the sung verse is the one most likely to survive a real week, because it attaches to something you already do.

Next time the kettle goes on, sing one verse of whatever you know by heart. That is a Tuesday well used.

Praise is also less dependent on mood than we assume. It can be begun in a flat state and quite often the state follows the practice rather than the other way round.