Why We Worship

            “Google maps” has a “satellite” feature that allows people to see the earth from the air.  Take a guess as to what most people do with that feature.  If you said, “They use it to look at their own town” you would be close.  More specifically, most people use it to look at their own house (At church when I asked “Who has done this?” 80% of the people raised their hands.  Those who didn’t don’t use the internet!).

            Why would you look at your own house?   You know what your house looks like!  In fact, you are probably sitting in your house while looking at a satellite picture of it!  Why do we do things like this? 

            We do it because we are the centre of our own worlds.  In other words, I am the most important person to me!  I care more about my problems than anyone else’s.  My thoughts and ways of doing things are more “right” than yours because they are mine.  Think about this: Who do people talk about most often?  Themselves!  Left to our own devices, everything revolves “me”.

            That is why worship is important!

            Worship is the mechanism that breaks my pre-occupation with myself and helps me focus on God.  Worship, both private and public, is the thing that kicks me out of the centre of my life and puts God there.  When that happens, suddenly I have new values and new goals.  More than that, I have a new way of measuring success.  Everything changes when we worship.  Jesus even modeled this truth for us.

            In Luke 22 we find him in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion.  He does not want to die.  In fact, he is praying for a different way.  However, his prayer and his worship ends where all worship times should end; “Not my will, but yours be done!” (verse 42).  Worship was the thing that allowed even the Son of God to refocus and put God’s will at the centre of his life and that is what it ought to do for us as well.

            As someone once said, “Worship is not our time to rest up and get re-energized so that we can rejoin the rat-race.  Rather, worship is the thing that allows us to ignore the rat-race altogether!”  Worship puts things in their rightful place.

            Why do we worship?

            We do not worship because God needs it; we worship because we do!