Skip to main content

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!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Consider This: Who Needs Worship?

  Why does God need our worship? The events of Matthew 14 provide at least one answer.   This chapter starts with the beheading of John the Baptist (verses 1-12). This is the first in a series of events that indicate things are about to become much more difficult for the believers. Next, the scene shifts to a crowd gathered on a hillside in Galilee. After listening to Jesus teach all day, the apostles realized that these people had nothing to eat. They brought the problem to Jesus. He took a child’s lunch and fed the entire group of five thousand men plus women and children. Afterwards, they picked up twelve baskets of leftovers (verses 13-21).   Then Jesus told them to get in a boat and cross the Sea of Galilee. As they went, a storm arose, and the apostles were scared. They struggled along until Jesus came to them walking on the water. Peter tried walking on the water too and sank. After Jesus rescued Peter, they got into the boat, and the storm immediately s...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Spiritual Makeover (1 Peter 1:13-16)

 Three responses to the new life God has given us.  https://youtu.be/FmqX5-3jOKc  
Post a Comment
Read more

Consider This: Something to Hold On To

      If you have never stopped to see the Swinging Bridge in Souris, Manitoba, you should add it to your list of things to do. I like it. Others do not. It feels wobbly. It bounces up and down. I have seen people in the middle of the bridge holding on and screaming because it feels too unstable. Of course, there is nothing to fear. The bridge has huge anchors at each end and is secured by steel cables, but sometimes, our feelings make us forget the facts. Peter knows that his readers are about to face some scary situations. He does not want their feelings to obscure everything else, so he outlines three truths they need to remember. First, their hope is greater than their troubles. “For a little while, you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold… may be proved genuine and result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:6-7). Not...
Post a Comment
Read more