STUDY GUIDES CONTINUED.. 

7.  Why Worship? (Click Here)

It is not the only reason, but one of the biggest reasons why we worship God is that, unlike everyone else, His nature is not and cannot be compromised or corrupted by sin

Our ability to love others is so often flawed by our tendancy to also sin against them!

God’s Love comes to us with no such burden!

Why does God deserve all the attention?

Answer: God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.

Ephesians 2v 4&5

Because despite God’s holiness and sinlessness He pardons sinners!

He is morally superior!

He is pure Love! 

He is the source of all true love in the world

His kind of love can’t be matched by anything or anyone else.

Why focus on fake Love or imitations of His love when we can fixate on the real thing?

What’s in it for me?

Answer: 25 Worship the Lord your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you,26 and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span.

27 “I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run.

Exodus 23v 25-27 (NIV)

This verse shows some results of worshipping God.

Who benefits from worship, me or God?

Answer: Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:

Psalm 103 v2

True worship can be an altruistic delivery of pleasure to God from us, but like with sexual experience, giving pleasure can also cause pleasure in return ! 

Worship can be an experience which simultaneously brings pleasure, satisfaction and blessing to both us and God !

Psalm 103 goes on to list at least a dozen of the benefits introduced in verse 2 but also repeatedly uses the phrase, ‘bless the Lord’. This means it is possible for the Lord to be blessed by us, to be the beneficiary of blessing from us! To bless means to bestow good favour upon!

One of the main reasons God hates for us to worship any other besides Him is not simply because He has self-centred feelings of rejection  or jealousy from not having our undivided attention but because He has to sorrowfully watch us lose the benefits of His love and settle upon a lesser substitute for it instead!

It  is like a parent watching a child jeopardise their health by drinking dirty water from a  puddle in the road when they can drink clean water from a tap in the house! 

Both the parent and the child stand to benefit in the long run  if water from a better source is drunk from the tap in the house instead!

Is worship something I can live without?

Answer: Keep thy heart with all diligence, out of it are the issues of life.
Proverbs:4:23

The human heart will always strive to find something or someone to live for

Our heart determines what becomes the issues of our lives.

Human nature furthermore demands that each of our days we look for something or someone to occupy ourselves with and fill our time with. 

Worship can be viewed as the activity and process in our heart that determines and has dictated what that something or who that someone Is!

When we define worship in this way we see it is a concept we cannot avoid facing as we live our lives.

 

These and other questions we seek to answer fully in this study by highlighting the purpose of worship and showing how one way or another the concept of worship touches us all.
This study guide is closely related to the next study guide(8) about the ‘Battle for worship’ . Readers would benefit from studying both guides in conjunction.