Some people picture drawing near to God as something complicated, reserved for the “super spiritual.” Yet this verse quietly removes the mystery. It shows us the way in: we come not with spiritual résumés or polished performances, but with hearts full of thanks and mouths full of praise. The imagery of gates and courts reminds us that we are approaching a great King—but a King who delights to welcome His people when they come remembering who He is and what He has done.

The Gate We All Must Walk Through

Psalm 100:4 says, “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and bless His name” (Psalm 100:4). Gates imply there is a real boundary between “outside” and “inside”—between distance and nearness to God. In Christ, that boundary has been opened. Jesus said, “I am the gate. If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved. He will come in and go out and find pasture” (John 10:9). We don’t storm into God’s presence on our own merit; we come through the blood and righteousness of Jesus alone. But the posture of those who truly understand that grace is thanksgiving. Gratitude is what it looks like when the heart recognizes, “I should be on the outside, yet He brought me in.”

That means thanksgiving is not a polite religious extra—it is the very atmosphere of a redeemed life. When we step through the “gate” each day, we consciously remember: my sins are forgiven, my shame is covered, my name is written in heaven. We’re not just checking a devotional box; we’re walking into the throne room of a holy God who calls us His children. Imagine beginning each morning by deliberately “entering” like that—naming specific reasons you are thankful for the cross, for God’s mercy, for His patience with your failures. That is how worship stops being a Sunday event and becomes a daily entrance into the courts of the King.

Praise That Reorders Our Hearts

God commands praise not because He needs ego-stroking, but because our hearts need reordering. Left to ourselves, we drift toward self-pity, fear, and complaint. Praise pulls our eyes off ourselves and fixes them on the character of God—His sovereignty, wisdom, love, and faithfulness. “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that confess His name” (Hebrews 13:15). Praise is a “sacrifice” precisely because it often runs against our emotions. When everything in you wants to sulk or spiral, choosing to bless His name is spiritual warfare.

Praise also pushes back anxiety. Scripture says, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Philippians 4:6). Notice that thanksgiving is not what you do after God answers, but as you bring your needs. When fear rises, you can say, “Lord, this situation is heavy, but I thank You that You are wise, sovereign, and good. I praise You that You have never failed me, and You will not start now.” As you do, the problem may not instantly change—but your heart does. Worship re-centers your soul on the unchanging God instead of the changing circumstances.

Carrying Thanksgiving into the World

The thanksgiving of Psalm 100:4 is not meant to stay in your prayer closet or church pew. It spills into your home, your workplace, your conversations. A thankful Christian is a powerful witness in a cynical, complaining world. When others see you giving God glory in ordinary blessings and even in hard things, it raises questions. Scripture calls us to “give thanks in every circumstance, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). God’s will is not merely about where you work or live; it’s about how you respond to Him in everything.

Living this way is an act of daily surrender. Gratitude is not pretending pain isn’t real; it is declaring that God is greater than your pain and that His purposes are good. When you offer your whole life to Him—your body, your time, your schedule, your relationships—you are living worship. “Therefore I urge you, brothers, on account of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship” (Romans 12:1). Today, as you “enter His gates” again, choose to carry that same thanksgiving out through your front door, into every conversation and every task, so that your life becomes a walking testimony that His name is worthy to be blessed.

Father, thank You for opening the gate to Your presence through Jesus. Help me today to enter with real thanksgiving and to bless Your name in every circumstance, so that others are drawn to You.

It is a fact that the New Testament message of good news, "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures," embraces a great deal more than an offer of free pardon. Surely it is a message of pardon-and for that may God be praised-but it is also a message of repentance! It is a message of atonement-but it is also a message of temperance and righteousness and godliness in this present world! It tells us that we must accept a Savior-but it tells us also that we must deny ungodliness and worldly lusts! The gospel message includes the idea of amendment-of separation from the world, of cross-carrying and loyalty to the kingdom of God even unto death! These are all corollaries of the gospel and not the gospel itself; but they are part and parcel of the total message which we are commissioned to declare. No man has authority to divide the truth and preach only a part of it. To do so is to weaken it and render it without effect!

Behold, bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord, which by night stand in the House of the Lord! Lift up your hands to the Sanctuary, and bless ye the Lord. The Lord bless thee out of Zion, even He that made heaven and earth. - Psalm 134:1-3

Figure to yourself the band of white-robed priests gathered in the court of the Temple, their flashing torches touching pillar and angle with strange light, the city sunk in silence and sleep - and ere they part to their posts the chant rung in their ears:

"Behold! bless ye the Lord,

All ye servants of the Lord,

Who by night stand in the House of the Lord,

Lift up your hands to the Sanctuary,

And bless the Lord."

The priests’ duty is to praise. It is because they are the servants of the Lord that, therefore, it is their business to bless the Lord. It is because they stand in the House of the Lord that it is theirs to bless the Lord. They who are gathered into His House, they who hold communion with Him, they who can feel that the gate of the Father’s dwelling, like the gate of the Father’s heart, is always open to them, they who have been called in from their wanderings in a homeless wilderness, and given a place and a name in His House better than of sons and daughters, have been so blessed in order that, filled with thanksgiving for such an entrance into God’s dwelling and of such an adoption into His family, their silent lips may be filled with thanksgiving and their redeemed hands be uplifted in praise. So for us Christians. We are servants of the Lord - His priests. That we "stand in the House of the Lord" expresses not only the fact of our great privilege of confiding approach to Him and communion with Him, whereby we may ever abide in the very Holy of Holies, and be in the secret place of the Most High, even while we are busy in the world; but it also points to our duty of ministering - for the word "stand" is employed to designate the attendance of the priests in their office, and is almost equivalent to " serve." The purpose of that full horn of plenty, charged with blessings which God has emptied upon our heads, is that our dumb lips may be touched into thankfulness, because our selfish hearts have been wooed and charmed into love and life.

The rabbis had a saying that there were two sorts of angels: the angels that served, and the angels that praised; of which, according to their teaching, the latter were the higher in degree. It was only a half-truth, for true service is praise. But whatever the form in which praise may come, whether it be in the form of vocal thanksgiving, or whether it be the glad surrender of the heart, manifested in the conscious discharge of the most trivial duties; whether we lift up our hands in the Sanctuary, and " bless the Lord " with them, or whether we turn our hands to the tools of our daily occupation and handle them for His sake; - alike we may be praising Him. And the thing for us to remember is that the place where we, if we are Christians, stand, and the character which we, if we are Christians, sustain, bind us to live blessing and praising Him whilst we live.