What Does It Mean to "Bless God"?

A SONG OF ASCENTS.
Come, bless the LORD, all you servants of the LORD,
   who stand by night in the house of the LORD!
Lift up your hands to the holy place
   and bless the LORD!
May the LORD bless you from Zion,
   he who made heaven and earth!
— Psalm 134

Commenting on Psalm 134 in his book, Journey to Joy: The Psalms of Ascent (published by Crossway Books), Josh Moody writes about what it means for a human being to bless God:

How can an inferior person, a subject, bless a superior person, a king? How can a created person, a human, bless his or her creator, the God of heaven and earth? Scholars have attempted various solutions to this conundrum, because the idea of our being able to bless God does not merely occur in this psalm but is fairly frequent throughout the Old Testament. Psalm 72: 18 says, 'Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel'; and Genesis 24: 27 says, 'Blessed be the LORD, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master.' How can this be? How can it be true not only that 'blessed be Abram by God Most High' (Gen. 14: 19), but also 'blessed be God Most High' (Gen. 14: 20)? Or how can we not only receive blessing from God but actually give blessing to God?

Perhaps we need to ask another question: what does it actually mean to be blessed? In English the word bless means to pronounce that something is good or to confer goodness upon something in a religious sense, and the word may have its origins in the Old English word blood. A benediction, frequently used as a synonym, means 'a good saying,' coming from the Latin root meaning to say that something is good or well. The Hebrew word used here for 'blessed' may have the root of meaning to kneel before something or someone, though not all agree with that derivation.

Perhaps it is simplest to say, by analogy, that this word blessed, often used of us blessing God and of God blessing us, functions similarly to when we say that we speak to God and that God speaks to us. When we speak to God , we are speaking, and we speak human words necessarily. When we bless God, we are blessing and give human blessing necessarily. When God speaks, he speaks God's words, and when he blesses, he gives God's blessings. So the blessing of God by humans is a human declaration that God is good. What the pilgrims here are urging the priests to do ('Come, bless the LORD') and what they themselves will do ('lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the LORD!') is to live a life, to utter words and do deeds, in such a way that makes clear that God is good. They are being urged to live a life that honors God, to live a life that focuses upon God, to live for God. They are being urged to say that God is good, that he is blessed. They are not adding to the divine, eternal, complete, sufficient blessedness of God in his own person; they are witnessing to it. They are declaring, in their own experience, through their journey, that they have witnessed that a life lived for God is the happiest kind of life. They are blessing God that he is blessed and worth living for. It is their witness, their declaration.

Calvin Paid His Dues

John Calvin suffered through being in a place and situation he didn't prefer. The demands of the ministry on him were enormous. Enemies wanted his head on a plate. Relatives broke his heart. He was frequently ill. He lost his wife and son.

John Calvin was no mere brainiac. He lived hard and paid his dues.

"Above all by sufferings he wishes us to be conformed to the image of his Son, as it is fitting that there should be conformity between the head and the members" (John Calvin).

Read more: John Calvin in the Valley of the Shadow of Death

Hidden Treasure

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field (Matt. 13:44).

I liken my having embraced confessionally Reformed theology, piety, and practice to the circumstance of the man in the parable of the hidden treasure. Both of our experiences entail having found riches beyond the worth of everything we possessed at the time, a consideration of the ignoble nature of our lot, a refusal to allow the chance of gain to escape, and the giving up of garbage for gold.

Make no mistake about it, the process was not easy. It could not have been. As the selling of everything the man had involved utmost joy, so must it have been laced with pain—pain brought on by the stepping out of his comfort zone, pain through the chastisement of the people in the periphery who thought that perhaps his sanity had taken a leave of absence, all sorts of pain. And yet it would have been a lot more painful had he not seized the prize! The heart had been captured and relenting was not an option.

Many in broad evangelicalism, and most of these of the younger ilk, are finding the expression of the Christian faith in their churches to be barren, hollow, shallow, and devoid of faithfulness to Scripture, especially after having come into contact with the historical and confessionally Reformed one. Even though raised in that consumer-driven paradigm, the allure of truth is stronger and they now find themselves at a crossroads. The man in the parable of the hidden treasure has much to say to them. Sell and buy! Leave error and enter into truth! Though it may cost you your comfort and the esteem of family and friends, leave that apostate church for the confessionally Reformed one. If it is the treasure of a catholic faith rooted in the doctrinal integrity reclaimed by the Reformation that you seek, this you shall find.