Oh give thanks to the LORD, call upon His name;

Make known His deeds among the peoples.

Sing to Him, sing praises to Him;

Speak of all His wonders.

Glory in His holy name; 

Let the heart of those who seek the LORD be glad.

1 Chronicles 16:8-10

A week ago, Demario Davis, a player for the New Orleans Saints, walked up to the microphone for his postgame interview, and instead of talking football, told a story about his four-year-old daughter.

Earlier that weekend, she’d had a major seizure and had to be rushed to the hospital. While waiting at the hospital to see if his daughter would be okay, Davis felt the urge to pray and responded by asking God that she would return to health and be stronger than she was before despite the possibility that she had sustained brain damage during the seizure. In the middle of the night, she woke up, and it was clear that God had answered Davis’s prayer with a resounding yes.

Davis used this story to encourage his nationwide audience to be ready to respond when we feel a knock at our hearts like the knock described in Romans 3:20. It was a powerful and vivid example of being willing to answer the knock whenever and wherever it is heard and it brought glory to the God Who is with His people in times of trouble.

Today’s passage is part of the celebration that took place when David brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. After they bring the ark to the tent they prepared for it, the author includes a psalm of thanksgiving that spans almost thirty verses. 

It’s largely derived from other psalms, like Psalm 105, and both songs follow the same basic structure— the worshippers rejoice in what God has done for them, they make a point to remember what God has done, and then they tell the story of what God has done. Each of the first two sections lasts only a few verses, leaving the rest of the psalm recounting the stories of the great things God had done for His people. That was how they praised God. 

I don’t know about y’all, but when I think about praise and worship, I think about that 15-20 minutes that happens in the sanctuary once or twice a week, which is nothing like what happens in this song. Most of the songs we sing today tend to focus on Who God is and who we are to Him, which is a topic full of wonderful truth for us to focus on, but I think we’ve largely missed out on the opportunity to experience the blessing of praising God through stories.

As people, we are wired to share, enjoy, and learn through stories. We’ve been telling stories since the beginning. It’s not a mistake or happy coincidence that much of the truth of the Bible is taught through stories or that Jesus often taught through stories because that’s the way God made us. 

So what if we decided to publicly praise God through our stories like Demario Davis? The majority of us don’t have the same kind of reach that Davis has during his postgame interviews with the press, but the verses above do show us two important results that occur when we choose to praise God by telling our stories.

In verse eight, the result of praising God throughout stories isn’t just a result, but a command— 

“Make known His deeds among the peoples.” The word for peoples can also be translated as nations, so this command isn’t just to share our stories of praise with those who are like us, but with those who don’t share our faith as well. This is one of the ways we are to spread the gospel and the result is that more people get to know at least a piece of Who God really is.

Later, in verse 10 we see the second result— “Let the heart of those who seek the LORD be glad.” Not only can our stories be used by God to spread the good news of a good God to the world that needs Him, but he can also use our stories of praise to bolster the faith and stoke the motivation of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Confession time. I’ve never been one to share the stories of what God has done in my life except through my writing. There have been many times when I could have shared a story with an attitude of praise that could have been an encouragement to those around me. I’ve succumbed to the awkward feeling of vulnerability and decided to keep my stories to myself.

I pray that as we go through this week, we’ll be on the lookout for opportunities to share our stories of praise. We might not touch as many lives as Demario Davis, but it is always amazing to see how God can even use the smallest interaction to change someone’s life.