Psalm 66:17

NASB I cried to Him with my mouth, And He was exalted with my tongue. 

NLT For I cried out to him for help, praising him as I spoke.

VOICE I cried out to Him with my mouth, and I praised him with my tongue. 

Crying and Praising

In biblical times, crying out to God was common. This reflected a deep feeling of need and urgency. It shows a personal and direct communication with God, showing that God is attentive to us when we cry out to Him. To praise God is about expressing our worship and gratitude. It reflects acknowledging God’s personality and promises through our spoken praise. Praise is used to glorify God, done both personally and communally. 

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: Crying out to God shares our needs. Praising God shares our gratitude. What do you see yourself doing lately? 

What is Means to Cry and Praise

Let’s look at the deeper meaning of crying out and praising. To cry out is the Hebrew word qara’ (kah-rah). It means to call out or cry out. It’s a purposeful speech directed to God in need, trust, or dependence. Typically, psalmists use this word to convey trust. They called out to God, trusting that God will hear their stress and will help them overcome their distress.The level of trust in their calls is determined by honesty – through either their gratitude or their crisis. Overall, this is the foundation of our relationship with God. We cry out. God speaks. We respond and move forward under God’s authority and guidance. 

The basis of this is trusting that God is going to respond to our calls for help. In our severely stressful moments, we often have a plea: “God! Please stop this! Please take this away! I’m tired. I don’t want to deal with this anymore.” We get so fatigued by trying to manage the stress ourselves that we tend to rely on God as a last resort. The psalmist is encouraging us to trust God as our first option. That no matter the stress, we call on God to share our concerns, our frustrations, our heartaches, our grief, our anger, and more; and to trust that God is both going to hear us and respond. The response may not be immediate nor may not be what we wanted, but we can have faith that God’s response is wise and faithful, even when not immediate,  and will lead us to the greatest benefit overall.

To praise him is the Hebrew word rowmam (roh-MAHM). This is the only time the word is used in the Hebrew Bible. It carries the sense of lifting up, exalting, or praising. For this verse, praise is present on the psalmist’s tongue. Overall, it shows that lament and praise can belong in the same conversation with God. To remember that when God delivered on His promises in the past and trust that God will deliver again to others in the future. Sometimes, this can be really difficult. I’ve seen myself struggle with this because there have been people around me that I’ve trusted completely fail to keep their promises. That caused an immense hurt and a struggle to try and trust both them, and others, again. The hurt that we feel when someone close breaks our trust can be immense, intense, and hard to heal from. Depending on your upbringing, that same feeling can come with God. I want to remind you that God is a loving God. God created you for great things in this broken world, and He hurts when the world hurts you. God wants you to share everything with him like a close friend, father, and partner. God will give you the advice you need to hear, the strength you need to move forward, and the confidence to go boldly into the world. God will both cheer you on and give you some parental guidance as needed to to help you understand how you’ve messed up in the past and how you can move forward. God meets us with compassion, truth, and justice. God wants the best for you, and it may require you to deal with some consequences of your own decisions in order to learn them. At the end of the day, God will be there to help you become the best version of you that you need to be. 

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: How do you see yourself sharing your cries to God? How can you respond with praise?