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WHY WE WORSHIP GOD
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 20, 2023 – An unbeliever asked me yesterday why God needs us to worship him, which is an excellent question. You can always count on unbelievers to ask the hardest-hitting and most uncompromising questions. The short answer I gave him is that God doesn’t need us to worship him; he doesn’t need anything from us. We need to worship him, and to do so for our own benefit, not for his.
When we worship God, we benefit.
Case in point. I had an unsettling dream last night that left me with an accusing mindset when I woke up. Still half asleep, I was mulling over the dream in my mind when I heard a choir of what I can only assume were angels singing a song of worship to God. I listened for a few seconds and then I couldn’t help but join in. It was a very simple and very catchy tune (it just went up and down the scale) with very simple lyrics, so I picked it up fast. As soon as I started singing, the accusing mindset melted away and the unsettled feeling resolved into joy.
Glory!
Glory all together!
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
Glory all together! Praise the Lord!
In the name of Jesus!
Praise the Lord!
This is why we worship God. When we praise him, his joy finds an outlet through our worship, however we choose to express it. When we worship God, it opens all our spiritual doors and windows, enabling his Spirit to work powerfully through us. While it’s true that God’s Spirit is always with us born-again believers (if God’s Spirit isn’t with us, we aren’t born-again), praising and worshiping God – especially through singing – amps up the measure of the Spirit God has given each of us. It doubles, triples, quadruples our measure of God’s Spirit during the time of worship, which is why people who love God love to worship God – it just feels good!
Worshiping God is the best thing we can do for ourselves, which is why God made worshiping (loving) him the first and foremost of his Commandments. Worshiping God is also the highest form of spiritual warfare: It steers us away from thinking things we shouldn’t by resolving any enmity we might have in our heart and putting our focus squarely on God.
So the next time someone asks you why an omnipotent God needs us to worship him, tell that person God doesn’t need anything from us; we need everything from him, especially his joy, which he’s made us to receive simply by worshiping him.
Glory!
Glory all together!
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
Glory all together! Praise the Lord!
In the name of Jesus!
Praise the Lord!
(* Repeat as many times as you need to!)
HEAVEN TEN
I am rabidly areligious. I hate all religions equally, and I hate them with a passion.
In my mind, ‘freedom of religion’ just means freedom to bow down to whichever demon you fancy, because all religions are demon worship, every single one. It’s better to live where religion is outlawed than to live where all religions are welcome.
Take Christianity, for instance. It’s loosely based on Jesus’ life and teachings, but it’s polar opposite to what Jesus intended. When he warned us: “Many will come in my name”, he was referring to the multiplicity of denominations that would spring up like weeds after a hard rain. None of these denominations reflect the true teachings of Jesus, and yet all claim to be “Christian”. Like the other demon-worshiping cults they mimic (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.), denominational Christianity is based on creeds and a rigid system of beliefs rather than raw live faith.
Jesus wanted us to experience faith raw and live, and he showed us how we can do that. Rather than institute a religious system that requires us to mouth “vain repetitions” (by reciting certain words over and over at certain times of the day) or perform deeds that were disconnected from our daily lives (like attending worship services), Jesus demonstrated how faith in God should not be something separate from what we do every day but instead should be life itself. He constantly referred to God as “the living God”, and invited us to live along with him. We don’t need to go into a building to worship God because our worship is the choices we make, every day, all day. We are our faith, we don’t just “practice” it.
If you follow Jesus as you should be following Jesus, your faith is indistinguishable from your life. In fact, if you follow Jesus as you should be following him, you could live in a Muslim country where Christianity is outlawed, and still openly live your faith 24/7. This is what is so astounding about what Jesus accomplished: he not only conquered death by paying our sin-debt on the cross, but he also conquered religion and the need for religious worship by turning everyday life into worship.
If you follow Jesus, you automatically are worshiping God.
If you follow Jesus, you live your faith real and raw by the choices you make, every day, all day.
Following Jesus is the highest calling a human being can aspire to; it’s also the most natural and the most rewarding. Jesus was a cool guy who lived a cool life. He was answerable to nothing and no-one but God, whose values he fully shared and fully espoused. He was areligious in the extreme.
So should you be.
WORSHIP
Sunday is the day that most Christians flock to church. They don their ‘Sunday-best’ and shine up their church faces to smile at other shined-up church faces. During the hour-long so-called worship service, they stand on command, sit on command, kneel on command, recite on command, sing on command, keep silent on command, and (most importantly) give money on command. This is what worship service is all about. After it’s over, they leave the church building and figure they’ve done their worshiping for the week. Then they go about their non-church lives.
Apparently these Christians didn’t get the memo: You don’t need to go into a building to be in church or to worship. If you’re born again, you’re already in church – God’s church, which is made up of born-again souls in human bodies. If you’re born again, you’re in church now, wherever you are. You’re in church all the time, and everything you do is your worship.
Everything you do is your worship.
Everything you do is your worship.
Make sure it’s worthy of God.
Jesus was not a fan of ritual during his ministry years on Earth. In the gospels, we see only two episodes that could be considered rituals – one was his baptism by John the Baptist, and the other was the Passover meal just before his crucifixion. Nothing he did in between could really be construed as ‘ritual’. Even his public prayers were in no way ritualized. He just talked to God the way I’m talking to you now. That’s what prayer is.
Contrast Jesus’ extreme lack of ritualized worship to the super-abundance of ritualized worship that characterizes most church services today. In some cases (Catholicism, for instance), the entire service is a ritual that is essentially just a performance, a show (as in “as show of piety”). There is nothing genuinely worshipful about it. You don’t even have to be a Catholic or even believe in God to take part in it; you just have to show up, preferably with your wallet.
Jesus said that God is looking for people to worship him in spirit and in truth. A ritualized worship service where everything is scripted and done on command is NOT worshiping in spirit and in truth. At the very best, it’s just “showing up”; at the very worst, it’s demon worship. Demons demand ritual and strict order in worship. God doesn’t: he just wants you to be yourself and do what you do, with him in mind.
This, here and now, is worship. I’m worshiping by writing, and you’re worshiping by reading.
This is what Jesus meant when he said to worship in spirit and in truth. He meant to be authentic. He meant to be real. Paul said to do all things as if unto God and to pray without ceasing. He meant to live your life knowingly and consciously in God’s presence. He meant to do your best at all times, and to look to God for help and guidance at all times. He meant to make your entire life your worship, not just one hour a week in a designated building.
Everything you do is your worship, from the time you get up in the morning until the time you go to bed at night. You are always in church. You are always in God’s presence.
Everything you do is your worship.
Let your life reflect that.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 