WHY WORSHIP?

Recently a friend of mine told me that their child had asked the question, "Why are we told to worship God?" To her it seemed almost selfish that God would expect us to worship and praise Him. A very interesting question and perspective from a 9 year old. They ask me if I had any thoughts that might help them in their attempt to give an answer. I rattled it around in my brain for a while. After all I was the director of music at a very large church in Southern California for a long time and have written hundreds of worship songs... of course I can answer that. Right? But as I fumbled through it I realized that I saw things from the perspective of an adult. When I came to God, I was 30 years old. My perspective was that of an adult, not a child. So after throwing out my first response because it was just too lofty, I repositioned myself as a father talking to my young child. So this is what I wrote.

First off, the word worship means, in the simplest of terms, to love and adore someone or something so much that it occupies the majority of our thinking, so much so that they or it becomes a huge part of who we are.

When it comes to God it plays an even greater role because the more we worship Him, the more He becomes the most important thing to us. The greater our minds pull away from the world and all its distractions and we begin to become more like who He is. We slowly begin to resemble Him. And the result of becoming more and more like Him is, an unmovable peace deep within us begins to take shape because we now have peace with Him. And God knows this.

God doesn't need our worship. If you think about it, according to the Bible, God is surrounded by amazing angels and creatures too fantastical to describe who give Him praise and honor and glory constantly. So in reality, the worship of God is not so much for Him as it is for us. Why? Because we live in a fallen world and pride has taken over our minds as a result, the only way to pull away from that mindset and attitude is to re direct our minds focus towards the One who made us. God is holy and by us worshipping Him we bring ourselves into a place of humility before Him, acknowledging that He is and always will be God and that we need Him every second of every day. There's nothing wrong with being our best but when that takes us over and we put all our confidence in ourselves we begin to lose perspective of who we really are and what we were created for, and is to know God personally. So we don't really need more of us or the world and all it offers us, we really need more of God.

This is why there is such a struggle in this life to pull our hearts and minds away from Him. The truth is the one who hates us hates Him because God created us in His image. God has a very real enemy who wants to keep us from being intimate and really close to God because he knows this, that if we believe in God and His son Jesus, and if we give our lives to God and worship Him, then God's enemy [who is our enemy as well] whose name is Lucifer, not only loses the battle with us but he loses everything. Every single soul matters to God.

The Bible says He will keep in perfect peace the one whose mind and heart is focused on Him. That is worship. To love and adore God. To give ourselves to Him and trust Him with all our heart, no matter what may come. To love Him more than we love anything else. What we worship will take over our thinking and affect our thoughts and our actions. The more we love and adore Him the more we want to be like Him. It's not selfish of God, it's wise. It is the love of a Father for His child.

Why does God wants us to worship Him... because He knows it fills us with life.


Steven Bliss
© 4/26/2020