Praising the Lord

Loving God is a beautiful gift.  And although it is done through faith in His Son Christ Jesus, literally praising Him is an important expression of our sincere love for God.  As God's creation, we have such a distinct pleasure in offering up sincere praises to the Holy Lord Almighty.  We get to join with creation's choir in lifting up a sacred song of worship.  In fact, as the Psalms indicates, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork (Psa. 19:1)."

Or consider the four living creatures that sit around the throne and continually say, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is to come (Rev. 4:8)!"  And the twenty-four elders cry out in response, "Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by Your will they existed and were created (Rev. 4:11)."

Heaven is a continual and constant worship service of praise and adoration for the Holy Lord.  In reality,  God has no need of our praise and worship; He does not need it.  He does, however, command us to praise Him (1 Chron. 16:8; 1 Thess. 5:18; Heb. 13:15, et al).  Therefore, it stands to reason that God asks us to praise Him for our sake.

This should both convict and challenge us to rethink our preconceptions of worship.  Truthfully, if we can assert that God does not need our worship, we must conclude that we do and that worship serves us in loving Him, but how?  God wants us to worship Him because in worshiping Him, in loving Him through praise, we ascribe to Him what He deserves while simultaneously denying self-praise.

Additionally, and much more importantly, worshiping God through sincerely offering praises and exaltations, positions us into performing the exact role that each of us was made to.  In a sense, for us not to worship is like trying to drive a fishing boat along railroad tracks.  Not only will it damage the boat, but it will never be as effective as putting the boat into the lake to do what it was made to do.

One of the challenges to this is our limited understandings of what constitutes worship.  The scope of this dialogue does not allow much more than an in-exhaustive list of what constitutes worship--school, work, chores, music, prayer, Bible study--all of these can be worship when done to the glory of God.  The intent of our heart is the important part of worship.  Let us then pursue worshiping God so as to be the people He has made us to be and to love Him with thanksgiving and devotion!