CHARLO, New Brunswick, August 18, 2023 – One of the many barbs commonly thrown at Christians is that God must be some kind of a self-centered egomaniac if he needs people to worship him.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Yes, God invites us to worship him, but it’s for our sake, not for his.

Allow me to explain.

God gives every human an inbuilt desire to worship. He doesn’t stipulate, in giving us that desire, that we have to worship him. He just gives us the desire and invites us to worship him but leaves the choice of who or what we worship to us.

In worshiping, we bow down to the object of our worship. We may not actually physically bow down, but we bow down in every other way. We elevate our object of worship. We focus on our object of worship. We want to know everything about our object of worship. We spend most of our time thinking about our object of worship. We long to be near our object of worship. We reflect and mirror our object of worship. Our worship makes us subject to the whims and wiles of the worshiped, but we accept these without grumbling. We humble ourselves and would do anything to gain or to please the object of our worship.

Again, we humble ourselves. We humble ourselves in bowing down to our object of worship.

Humility is a good thing. Perceiving someone or something as being quintessentially better and greater than us is good for our soul. It gives us a place of rest. It builds trust in something or someone other than ourselves. It promotes and enables dependence.

In understanding what worship is, it’s crucial to understand that God doesn’t need our worship. He is perfect within himself and would not diminish one iota if no-one worshiped him. He would still be the same: God would still be God. Even unworshipped, he would still be God Almighty, the All-Knowing, the All-Powerful, the All-Merciful, and the All-Good.

He would still be God the All-Good.

Jesus tells us that only God is good. David in one of his Holy Spirit-inspired psalms tells us that all good things come from God – not just some good things or most good things, but all good things. Every good thing in our life comes from God.

So when we take the desire to worship that God’s given us and invest it in him, we humble ourselves before the All-Good, we focus on the All-Good, we aim to please the All-Good. This is why God gave us the desire to worship and then advised and guided us to invest that desire in him – so that we would fix our focus on that which is good, not on that which is not good. We would strive to please that which is good and to embrace that which is good and to mirror that which is good. And in so doing, we would reflect and mirror to others that which is good, keeping us firmly on the straitened and narrow path that leads to Home.

Most people, unfortunately, have chosen to invest their worship desires elsewhere than in God, worshiping money, investments, power, status, fame, career, movie stars, sports icons, YouTube influencers, spouses, children, grandchildren, hobbies, trends, politics, obsessions, demons, Satan, even (sadly) themselves. In other words, they turn away from God; they turn every which way but to God. God permits them to do this because he honors their free will. He gave them their free will and lets them use it however they choose. If they don’t want to worship God, he won’t force them to. But he’ll keep extending the invitation to worship him as long as there’s still time.

Those of us who’ve chosen to worship God know intimately that God is the farthest thing from a self-centered egomaniac. Everything he does, he does for us, not for himself. Our worship of God doesn’t benefit God in any way; he remains exactly as he is even if no-one worships him: worshiping God only benefits us and those around us.

Again – our worship of God only benefits us and those around us.

And that, my friends, is why we worship God.