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WorshipWhy Worship?
by Pastor Greg Laurie
This may come as a surprise, but every person on earth is a worshipper. Skeptics worship. Atheists worship. All people worship. Now, we don't all worship the God of heaven. But we all worship someone or something. It may be a sports figure. It may be an entertainer. It may be a possession. It may be a career. It may even be our bodies. Everyone bows at some kind of altar. Everyone everywhere worships. It is one of the distinctions of humanity.
No other living creature has this drive within. For instance, animals don't worship. My dog doesn't sit in the backyard and contemplate the wonders of eternity. He spends most of his time sleeping and wondering when his next meal will be.
In contrast, God has placed eternity in the hearts of humanity (see Ecclesiastes 3:11). He has placed in us a sense that there is more to life. You might say as men and women uniquely created in His image, we are "hardwired" to worship.
But if you are not worshipping the true and living God, then you will worship a god of your own making or another false god. The problem with false gods is that they don't hear you or see you. The true God, the living God, sees you. He hears you. He cares about you.
Therefore, we worship God because He is worthy of our praise. The word worship comes from an old English word that could be translated worthship. In other words, we worship a God who is worth it. To worship means to ascribe worth or value to someone or something.
A number of words are translated worship in the Bible. The one used most frequently, shachah, means "to bow down and pay homage." Used often throughout Scripture, this phrase first appears in Genesis 18:2. When three visitors came to the home of Abraham, he bowed down before them. Abraham paid homage because he recognized they had come from God. We later read that one of the visitors was the Lord Himself.
Another word used for worship in the Bible literally means, "to kiss toward." It conveys the idea of reverence. By putting these meanings together, we get an idea of what worship is and what it should be. We worship God because He is worthy. In doing so, we bow down and pay homage to Him. That speaks of reverence and respect for God. But we also "kiss toward" Him, which speaks of tenderness and intimacy in worship. God wants you to reverence Him and to honor Him. But at the same time, He wants tender intimacy in your worship.
Sometimes we don't want to worship God because we don't feel like it. Maybe the car is broken down or the bills aren't paid or we're facing some other problem. The point of worshipping God isn't because we feel like it. We worship God because He deserves our praise. This is an important distinction. We shouldn't worship God only when everything is going well. We should worship Him because He is always worthy of our praise.
When the Bible says, "rejoice always" (1 Thessalonians 5:16) and "in everything give thanks" (1 Thessalonians 5:18), it doesn't mean we are to give thanks for bad things that happen. Instead, we are to give thanks in the midst of our difficult circumstances. We are to give thanks for the fact that God is still on the throne.
When I'm not in the mood to worship and I do it anyway, that is a sacrifice of praise. Just as David refused to offer God a sacrifice that cost him nothing (see 1 Chronicles 21:24), worship will cost us something as well. However, a lot of people offer God "cheap" praise. They don't want to give Him their best, so they basically give Him their leftovers. When something needs to be eliminated from their overcrowded schedules, the first thing to go is church or Bible study or prayer.
If a person thinks this way, then he or she is not a true worshipper, because worship is not only something we do when we lift our hands and voices in praise. It is the way we live. We worship through our lives. We worship through the way we do our jobs. We worship through the way we treat our families. We worship through the way we give. We worship through everything we do.
As we enter the holiday season, there will be a number of opportunities to worship. We'll have the opportunity to "bow down and pay homage" as we reflect on all God has done for us over the past year. We can thank Him and praise Him for His faithfulness. We'll also have the opportunity to worship with reverence and intimacy as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, God's greatest gift to us.
These opportunities also will bring choices. We can choose whether to bow down to the demands of the season and the gods of our own making and ultimately give God our leftovers. Or, we can decide to give God our best, offering Him our sacrifices of praise. Which will it be?
God help us to be true worshippers. |
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