God made lungs and vocal cords and oxygen, ultimately, so that we could use them to worship him. The purpose of breathing is praise. But words fall short of his greatness. We feel this when we pray and sing, don’t we? It feels true, and yet so inadequate. We should feel that way. The inadequacy of our worship reminds us God is always better than we can grasp or express, and it drives us to find more creative ways to tell him so.

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! (Psalm 150:6)
The first and last psalms tell us a great deal about what God wants us to see and hear in all the psalms. The first is quoted far more often than the last:
Blessed is the manwho walks not in the counsel of the wicked,nor stands in the way of sinners,nor sits in the seat of scoffers;but his delight is in the law of the Lord,and on his law he meditates day and night. (Psalm 1:1–2)
Psalm 1 tells us that the happiest and most fruitful people, anywhere on earth and at any point in history, will be those who delight most in the words of God. The words of this book — and every other book in the Bible — are meant to be read slowly, wrestled with, and savored. And not just for a few minutes each day, but throughout the day. The psalm is an invitation into the rich and rewarding life of meditation.
If the first psalm tells us how to hear from God, though, the last psalm tells us how to respond. Humble, wise, happy souls let God have the first word, but encountering him eventually draws words out of them. Like the disciples, we “cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). How does God bring 150 psalms to an end? With a clear charge and refrain: “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”
The Closing Psalm
Anyone can discern what the last psalm wants us to do in response to what God has said. All thirteen lines make the same point: “Praise the Lord!”
No matter where we are, and how bleak or difficult our life becomes, we always have reason to praise our God — to stop and worship him for who he is and what he is done. “Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness!” (Psalm 150:2). Our reasons for praising him — his mighty deeds and his glory over all — always eclipse and outweigh what we suffer, and all the more so now that Christ has come, died, and risen. God doesn’t minimize or neglect our suffering, but his goodness to us always outshines the trials he hands us. And so the psalmist can say to every one of us, at every moment of our lives, “Praise the Lord!”
The psalms, however, are not a simple chorus repeated over and over again, but a symphony, filled with as many experiences and emotions as humans endure and feel.
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Job’s call was for a revelation as to why the innocent, godly, sincere, and compassionate are put to the test in such sufferings. Dealing with the ways of God with men calls for a wisdom that dwells only in the mind and purpose of God. The way to understanding is “hidden from the eyes of all living” and only “God understands the way to it, and he knows  its place.” 

The book of Job consists of waves of expressions that indicate a desire for and the necessity of divine revelation for true knowledge. The entire book is a plea for knowledge from God. God cannot be known if he does not speak and his ways and purposes remain a mystery until he speaks. We find this expressed in several key points in the progress of the discussion in Job.
Something totally unexpected happened to Job. Having conducted himself with punctilious religious observance (1:5), purity (31:1) compassion, generosity (29:12-16; 31:16-23), and wisdom (29:7-11), he finds himself under a severe scourge-“God has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes…You have turned cruel to me; with the might of your hand you persecute me” (30:19, 21). Though clear on the sovereign prerogatives of God (26:7-14), Job declares that God “has taken away my right” (27:2). Job was desperate for a word from God. He knew he could not understand his situation apart from God’s meeting with him. “Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,” Job asked, “whom God has hedged in?” (3:23). Only God knows. “Let me know why you contend against me” (10:2).
Why God sends suffering to the lives of saints calls for revelation. Zophar knows that the answer to Job’s protests lies in the mind of God himself: “But oh, that God would speak and open his lips to you, and that he would tell you the secrets of wisdom.” It becomes clear that Zophar believed that such revelation would reveal a peculiarly deep guilt and hypocrisy on the part of Job. Job’s call was for a revelation as to why the innocent, godly, sincere, and compassionate are put to the test in such sufferings. Dealing with the ways of God with men calls for a wisdom that dwells only in the mind and purpose of God. The way to understanding is “hidden from the eyes of all living” and only “God understands the way to it, and he knows  its place” (28:21, 23). If sin lies at the basis of Job’s suffering, he asks for a revelation from God of it: “Let me speak, and you reply to me. How many are my iniquities and my sins? Make me know my transgression and my sin” (13:22, 23).  Elihu affirmed that only by revelation from God could the entire situation and questions surrounding Job’s suffering be resolved: “It is the spirit in man, breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand…God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it, in a dream, in a vision of the night” (32:8: 33: 14, 15).
In the midst of a desire for revelation of God’s purposes, we find that the language of Job is a marvel of revelatory inspiration.  Several speeches manifest the Romans 1:19-21 grasp of revelation in that God’s power of creation and his control of nature in its every particular is affirmed. The moral implications of such power and wisdom are extended into the ongoing discussion—both sides of the encounter seek particular applications. In the narrative of these observations and arguments, we find some of the most picturesque and striking linguistic images in all of literature. It is not just a literary triumph, but the substance implied behind the images gives powerful insight into the ways and wisdom of God, laying the foundation for Paul’s revelatory affirmation in Colossians 1:15, 17, “By him all things were created…and in him all things hold together.” Elihu expressed the dependence of all creation on the initial creative power of God and his continual and immediate operation of sustaining: “He covers his hands with the lightning and commands it to strike the mark…By the breath of God ice is given, and the broad waters are frozen fast. He loads the thick cloud with moisture; the clouds scatter his lightning” (36:32; 37:10, 11). Job emphasizes his sense of utter despair and helplessness by comparing himself negatively to a dead tree: “For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grow old in the earth and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put out branches like a young plant. But a man dies and is laid low; man breathes his last, and where is he?” (14:8-10). Also, we find beautifully crafted language in service of a plain expression of the central moral issue involved, another point of revelation given in conscience (Romans 1:32; 2:15). “God is clothed with awesome majesty. The Almighty–we cannot find him. He is great in power; justice and abundant righteousness he will not violate” (37:22, 23).
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When we take the sole responsibility of leading, providing, and working upon ourselves, we tend to become slaves to our work. The anxiety this produces destroys our sleep. However, what does God give to those who don’t vainly toil day and night with an anxious spirit? Sleep. When we entrust our work and our provision to the Lord, we can lie down at night and sleep soundly knowing that God works even when we don’t.

Men face overwhelming pressures both internal and external. We feel an internal drive to provide for our families and to contribute to our communities. Whether we want to admit it or not, we struggle with the expectations other people place on us too. We have trained ourselves to ignore the nagging pain because we can’t show weakness.
Our churches often don’t know what to do with the weight men carry. Too often, we berate men for their failures without pointing them to the resourses that will help them grow. We pretend like the inadequacies we feel either don’t exist or shouldn’t be talked about in polite company. The grace we talk about fades from view and we replace it with heavy weights that sink us deeper into the abyss.
The Psalms made no sense to me when I was in college because they sounded so bleak. Here were these compositions that were supposed to be so worshipful, but the Psalmists just spent too much time complaining about how hard life was. Now that I’m in my 40s, the Psalms resonate with me because in my frustration with the difficulties of life, I’ve said many of the things they say.
If you are a man who struggles in silence, turn to the Psalms. In them, you find strong men revealing their weaknesses and showing you where you can turn to for help. There are three Psalms in particular that give you grace for the difficult situations you face.
Psalm 127, for When You Feel the Weight of the World
“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” I cannot emphasize how much we need to hear this. God built men to take responsibility, work hard, protect, and provide. In our brokenness and sin, this God-given wiring can become a complex where we feel like we have to become not only our own savior but the savior of the people who rely on us as well. When we do this, we take a responsibility upon ourselves that only God can fulfill. We wear ourselves down and exhaust the people around us.
Psalm 127 does not call us to a “let go and let God” approach to life, but rather to an appropriate understanding of God’s work and our own. We work, but we realize our work accomplishes nothing if the Lord does not work through it. We work hard, start new ventures, and look for new opportunities, but we do it by entrusting the results to the Lord and praying he will give us the strength we need.
The second verse speaks a truth that every man needs to hear.

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