How to worship and praise God

Chapter Thirty-five: 

What does it mean to worship God?  In fact, have you wondered what your purpose in life is?  With as many people that there were in the world on the day you were born, why did He feel He needed to create you? Was it because He knew that He would require someone like you, with your specific talents or gifts?  Was it, perhaps, to keep the balance of male to female human beings on this planet? I believe the answer is simple...God created you to enjoy being with Him and to worship Him. In return, He would get the joy of having you as His child.

I know that does not sound like a very spiritual answer on the surface.  We would expect the answer to be more along the lines of Him needing as many believers as possible to evangelize, care for the needy, feed the hungry, etc. What we fail to realize is that as omnipotent and all powerful God is, He really does not "need" us...it is simply that He "desires" us.  He has provided the way for salvation for us so that as His children we would love Him and worship Him.  He desires us to worship Him as can be seen in Luke 19:40  where Jesus said, "I tell you that if these (people) should hold their peace (be quiet and not shout their praises to God), the stones would immediately cry (praise) out."  He was telling the Pharisees that the people were doing the right thing, worshiping God, and if they did not, the very rocks themselves would shout God's praises.

After Moses and the Israelites escaped Pharaoh, they worshiped God. Exodus 15:1 says, " “I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea."  Up until this point all the Israelites had been doing was complaining about their situation.  Now they were praising God for His rescue of them. Even though singing played a strong part in their culture, they chose to ignore it and only do it when things were going good. Later on they returned to their grumbling and complaining to God when they were in the desert.  How do you react when you are in a bad situation?  Do you continue to worship God or are your lips silent?  We are meant to worship God even when things are going badly...in fact, I believe that we should be worshiping God even more when things are going badly as our spirits need encouragement and God wants to know that we are not only grateful to Him during what we feel are the good times in our lives. In Ephesians 5:19 Paul urges believers to sing.  It says, "Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord." Luke 4:8 says, "Worship the Lord your God and serve him only."

Being created by God in order to worship Him sounds rather strange to say. I do not believe that God is so self absorbed that He needs a group of humans to exist so we can be standing around singing and bragging about Him.  I believe it is because He genuinely wants us to be part of His family. Also, He knows that as believers who are made in His image, it is a very important part of who we are, and He desires to see that play itself out in our lives. Worshiping God feeds our spirits and also draws us closer to Him, gives us joy and hope and a thankful attitude for what He has done for us through the sacrifice of His Son. More importantly, it allows us to show we honor Him, revere Him, love Him, are surrendered to Him, yielded to Him and gives us the opportunity to confess and repent of any sin He brings to our attention.  He desires that we would so love Him and adore Him as our Abba Father that we would want to be in His presence continually.  He has thousands of sovereign attributes, which should humble us and bring us to our very knees, not only in thankfulness but also in realization of who we are, sinners before a Holy God. 

 

Unfortunately, many of us believe that we must be constantly doing some type of activity for Him rather than simply worshiping Him. I cannot deny that we who love Him have a desire to be doing something good for the Kingdom and have a desire to help others and to evangelize so that they, too, may feel the joy that we know as being a child of God.  However, the danger lies when our "doing" becomes so time consuming and so works focused that we lose sight of our need and our God-given desire to simply stop what we are doing and spend time in worship. Ask yourself if you feel refreshed and full of joy.  This only comes from spending time with God, worshiping Him and being rejuvenated by it in return.

So, what is worship? I would like to talk about two types of worship. The first is the attitude we have towards God throughout the week, the second is the usual one we think of, singing songs to God at church.  I would like to focus  on the first type.  I believe that worship must be a constant and consistent attitude within us as we go about our day. God desires us to fellowship and commune with Him all day long.  God wants us to not only worship Him at church on Sunday, but to continue in a worshipful attitude the rest of the week.  We may be busy at our jobs or other activities, but we are to always have an attitude of worship. I know for myself that in those moments when I am not distracted by something else, my mind goes back to worshiping God and praising Him for what He has done and is doing in my life.  I may be in the middle of doing laundry or some other mundane chore, but my heart finds itself going back to pondering upon the wonders of God and I cannot help but worship Him, even if it is for a brief period of time between the things that I must do.  It may just be a few words of gratefulness to Him, it may be a song of praise that comes to my lips, or it may be a prayer that I want to lift before Him.  The point is, the way I live my life is worship to Him.  I need to express my ongoing friendship and relationship with God throughout the day as it sustains me and gives me peace and an inner strength. My worship is more than singing songs at church...my worship to Him is how I live my life. We may become busy doing things that need to be done and our minds are upon those things, but when we have a free moment our hearts should go back to worshipping God.

So, let us now look at the second type of worship. I believe that offering worship to God has to be one of the main reasons we go to church. In today's churches there are different types of worship services and different types of music that is sung. I remember the first church hymns I heard that many of you are probably familiar with..."Amazing Grace", "Just as I am", "The Old Rugged Cross", etc. The words in those hymns really speak to my heart as they were penned by some very godly people.  When I attended a different denomination, I was exposed to a different type of worship, more upbeat, more contemporary.  This is what is meant when people ask "what is praise?" Praise is often used as a word to describe this style of singing. I saw people worshiping in a different style, with raised hands and some were down on their knees, prostate before God...some were crying as they sang, others had radiant faces as they sang their praises to God.  The words of the songs were often on a screen behind the pulpit, and were a mixture of upbeat songs and slower songs.  I have to tell you that I enjoy both styles.  I love the old hymns that are so full of rich words and meaning, and I also enjoy the contemporary worship where I feel like I just want to continue singing praises to God and find myself sometimes disappointed when it stops as it is time for the pastor to speak.  Both styles of singing really minister to me. We all have different ways we like to worship.

Do not worry if you are not a great singer in the world's eyes...in God's eyes your songs of praise to Him are most beautiful.  In fact, many of us would rather worship God than do anything else.  I know many of my best times have been during times of worshiping Him, singing songs to Him and about Him and feeling His presence while I sang. One of the things I think of when I ponder heaven is how we will be worshiping Him and how wonderful that will sound, all the voices of God's children singing at once, singing to Him, our Holy and sovereign God. 

A. W. Tozer believed that "True worship of God must be a constant and consistent attitude or state of mind within the believer."  He went on to say “I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.” I do not believe he is questioning their salvation but rather feels that they will be in the minority in heaven as there will be much singing and praising of our most Holy God. Revelations 14:3 speaks about heavenly singing, "And  they sang a new song before the throne...".  In Revelation 4:10-11 we see a glimpse of God's created beings rejoicing and praising God because of who He is.

We do not need to all worship alike. There is no formula or "one way" to worship God. It is when the Holy Spirit comes among us with His anointing that we worship God as we should. I know that over the years there have been congregational disagreements about what "style" of worship is appropriate or even "godly".  Some have left churches when the singing style has become more contemporary, feeling that it does not minister to their needs.  I can respect that. Others want a more contemporary type of worship where they feel they can worship the way that they want to, whether it is with raised hands lifted to Heaven, or on their knees, bowing before their God.  I have no problem with either way. 

I think what we do have to be careful of is that we do not try to "make things happen" and I have observed this  in some contemporary settings.  We can become so eager to experience God's presence that it becomes more of us getting ourselves excited than it is actually being Holy Spirit inspired.  Sadly, when this happens we are worshiping God in our own flesh rather than being led by the Holy Spirit. 

We have to be careful not to cross the line where worship becomes less about God and more about entertainment.  In today's society where entertainment is a big part of life and we often seek ways to be amused, it is easy to try to use those same types of means to draw in those who do not know Christ as their Savior. When it becomes entertainment or amusement, the Holy Spirit will not be there and it will simply be man trying to convert man through interesting music and words...and we know that it is only the Holy Spirit who can convict the heart and draw people to Christ.

A. W. Tozer actually had a lot to say about worshiping God.  He said, "Men and women on this earth ought never to fool themselves about the reality of true worship that must always be in spirit and in truth. It is plainly possible to have religious experience and forms of worship that are not at all acceptable to God." I remember attending a church once where the song leader was attempting to rouse the congregation and was prompting them how to sing, when to emphasize certain phrases, and was putting a lot of effort into the worship service.  That was when I saw for the first time how easy it is for us as humans to try to make something happen rather than waiting on the Holy Spirit to initiate it.  When it originates with the flesh it is simply that, but when it is initiated by the Holy Spirit it is something entirely different and you can sense the difference.  Personally, I am looking forward to heaven, to be able to sing with the saints who have passed on before me and, for me, I am hoping that we will continually be singing praises to God in adoration of who He is and what He has done for us.

 And as long as it is the Holy Spirit who inspires the singing, I will not care if it's the hymns of old or the contemporary songs of today.  All I know is that my spirit wants to...no, it needs to, sing praises to my King.  A. W. Tozer summed it up when he said, "God is trying to call us back to that for which He created us--to worship Him and to enjoy Him forever!  It is then, out of our deep worship, that we do His work."