God is to be honored, if for no other reason than that He is God. Man needs to be reminded that God is not the divine vacuum sweeper in the sky sucking up all the nice things that man may say about Him. God doesn’t need egomania as invitation for man’s praise, thanks, adoration, and whatever other worshipful expression one might conjure to achieve purpose. There appears to be too little understanding about the concept of worship. We do not create human celebrity for God, making Him shallow in recognition. The common words, Oh God, so often repeated without meaning and respect are violations of the meaning of God and usually swear words in public.
If God doesn’t need or require worship, why should we do it? Worship of God is the evidence we give to ourselves that we believe God, that our conduct (in this instance, worship) verifies to ourselves and others, that He represents us, and that acts of worship relate to our orientation in the life presently and that to come. Worship bears elements of sorrow for sin, and penitence to forgiveness, so as to call attention to concepts of eternal truth and holiness. Worship invites spiritual and eternal truth. I give up some of my mortal minutes to do freely anything I want to do, and give them over to eternity. Worship enhances my dedication to that which is above nature and moderates that which is mortal – all done in anticipation of immortality, identified as hope for the individual in Scripture. A feeling of personal relief and certainty attends to hope.
Perhaps the inner desire to express worship is shown, in a shallow sense, in man’s adoration of celebrities. The extent to which some persons will go to gain the attention and favor of their favorite personages is almost unbelievable, as seen in the man who shot President Ronald Reagan to gain attention from a movie star. Worship of man is a large distortion found in mental confusion. The worst worship is satanism, a form of falsehood. Some persons worship nature (polytheism), a nature touched with beauty and magnitude that is awesome. These persons have not learned that admiration is enough, and their worship is misplaced, awarding deity to the creations of Deity. What does this tell us? It informs us what the meaning of their adoration and values are, discovered through that to which they give time and resources. They may be used up in a distorted majesty of things or persons, the creatures rather than the Creator.
The worshiper of God feels compelled to express his praise, thanksgiving, love and honor to God, because it meets an urge to lift the spirit of man to someone higher than himself. If I could not worship God, as a believer in Him, I feel I would burst. It must come out, and it does. I feel human, touched with the divine, in worship. It is good for me. My yearning is that God will accept it, and that it makes a difference. How deeply did I want my wife to believe me when I said, I love you. Not a day went by but that I told her so. I apologized for my paucity of language and any contradictory conduct. She warmed to my words, but I am sure I felt better than she for verbalizing the truth of how I felt about her. I wish she were alive so I could tell her again. It would be comforting to me. So much larger to immortality are my expressions to God. I believe He is gracious enough to accept my testimony and prayer for His truth, majesty, love and grace that includes me in that devotion. That is genuine worship. It meets my needs. Worship takes us beyond ourselves. That’s a good thing to do. The paucity of worship is a great loss. If the intimacy of worship were improved in our lives, it is likely that more persons would be attracted to Christian faith than is the current experience. We too would be blessed. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020