In my past three posts I have addressed how God reveals Himself to mankind; men and women He has created in His image and likeness to know and love and be loved by Him. I looked at how God, through the witness of the creation, the writings in the Bible and in the person and work of Jesus Christ, reveals Himself as the eternal, self-existent, self-sufficient creator and sovereign ruler of the universe; a fearfully awesome/infinitely glorious being of infinite beauty, wonder, wisdom and power; a God who is holy, just and good.
What I did not address in those posts is how God desires/requires that we respond to this glorious revelation of His person and purposes, namely in unending worship. (Psalm 95:1-7)
The term worship literally means to bow down, signifying homage or humble submission to and dependence upon the object, person or event being worshiped. The Bible as well as human history provides adequate evidence that we are all worshipers of something or someone that we believe is essential to our happiness and wellbeing, to our ultimate significance and security.
Worship of God begins with knowledge of the infinite perfections of His being, and a response in our heart (our inner man) of love, desire and devotion to God displayed in how we live our lives for God and in relationship to His creation.
Pastor and Author John MacArthur writes in his book, The Ultimate Priority, regarding the worship of God: “Worship is our innermost being responding with praise for all that God is, through our actions, thoughts, and words based on the truth of God as He has revealed Himself.”
Theologian William Temple defines the worship of God in this way: “Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose–all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.”
The Bible tells us that the worship of God is the primary, unending activity of heaven engaged in by both the holy angels and redeemed men and women and will be throughout eternity. (Revelation 4:2-11) (Revelation 5:11-14) (Revelation 19:1-5)
Tragically, that is not true on earth. Romans 1:18-25 tells us that God’s great indictment against the human race, which has brought us under his just judgment, is our having chosen to worship things in the creation rather than our creator. This includes the worship of nature, angels, people, government, technology, human talents and achievements, and false and contradictory ideas about God that come from the imaginations of man rather than revelation from God.
God does not call us to worship him because he is some type of cosmic narcissist or tyrannical egomaniac. He is self-sufficient and infinitely glorious and needs nothing from His creation. He calls us to worship Him because He loves us and can alone satisfy the deepest needs and desires of our heart and fulfill the most noble longing of our soul in ways so wonderous, so glorious it is beyond our imagination to conceive of while we are in this present sin corrupted world. And the reason He alone can do so is because He is the one who put those needs and desires and longings in us.
In Luke 19:1-10, we have the account of a man who upon encountering Jesus turns from his worship of money and the things of this world to become a worshiper of God. Jesus then proclaims in verse 10, “For the Son of Man (Jesus) came to seek and to save (restore) that which was lost.” There was much lost as a result of Adam’s sin and in mankind’s continuing sin, but nothing more valuable than the worship of God in the heart of man.
In John 4, Jesus is speaking with a woman who has been pursuing her happiness, her significance and security in the wrong place, which has brought her great shame and loneliness. In heartfelt compassion, Jesus speaks lovingly to her, revealing that He is there because God is seeking those in whom he can restore a heart of worship, and that it is only within intimate relationship with Him (Jesus), that such a heart is restored.
Grace and Peace ×
A true results of being born from above is a ever yearning to acknowledge God in every aspect of his and your being . To me to not worship God is to not desire air to feel my lungs the two have the same outcome death ! To worship for a believer is to breathe.