A God I Can Worship

There's a lot of people pushing religion these days. But one thing that concerns me is that people are trying to get others to worship God for the wrong reasons. In the process I fear that God is coming across as a very self-centered being.

Why should we worship God? Here are some of the common reasons I hear:

Because He's Powerful
Because you'll go to hell if you don't
Because He created you
Because He'll make you happy


Before we can give this question a proper answer, we need to back up and ask a more foundational question: why did God create us? What is the purpose for our existence?

The common response I get is: God created us to worship Him.

So the picture I get from that is that God was feeling a little insecure. So he created little humans who could remind him of just how wonderful he is. And if they didn't really feel like it, well he would afflict them with all kinds of curses and then afterward torture them in hell for all eternity hahahahah! (maniacal laughter) Or he could obliterate them, whatever.

Now, people mean well, and they probably don't have this particular scenario in mind when they give those kinds of answers. But it still begs reflection. If God truly is loving, then He must have loving and unselfish reasons for creating us. It has to be more than just filling churches.

You can see how God's motive in creating us would affect our motives for worshiping Him. If all God is after is our worship, then He really doesn't care one way or another what motivates us to worship Him. It can be fear, hope of reward, or any combination of things. What matters is that we worship Him. If God has our happiness in mind. Than it would matter to Him that we worship Him from right motives.

Ok, so let's ask the first fundamental question: why did God create us?

Let's see what the Bible says:

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?
For You have made him a little lower than the angels,[b]
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; Psalm 8:3-6

Here we read that God made us to take care of this planet He made. It also says that He crowned us with glory and honor. Indeed, if you look at the story of Genesis, you can see how this is so.

After each day of Creation, God said: it is good. The earth, as it was when God made it, was perfect. Everything was made to provide for our happiness. And God gave us this planet as our home and made us it's caretakers so that by caring for the animals and plants, we could learn about His joy that He gets from taking care of us.

The picture we get from Creation is that God made us for the joy of making us happy. Sort of like human parents get their joy from the joy of their children.

Why do we have children? Is it so we can feel better about ourselves? If that's the reason you had kids, has it worked? It sure hasn't for me. Having kids is a great joy, but life revolves around them, not me. Their happiness, not my own, is what counts in this relationship.

There's another event in history that sheds light on this topic. One of the most touching and well-known passages of the Bible says:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16

Here we get the exact opposite reaction that we would expect from a God who created us to satisfy his own vanity. When we turned from God's way, and brought death on ourselves as a result, God gave up His own Son, Jesus Christ, to die in our place.

So we get here this radical picture of God's love, that it is unselfish to the point of being self-destructive!

This tells us that GOD IS LOVE. Perfect, unselfish Love.

Which means that He created us for the joy of making us happy and showering us with His love.

So why should we worship God? Or a better question is, why does God request our worship?

The answer is that we need to worship Him.

Study after study has shown that gratitude makes people happier, more generous, and more successful in life. Gratitude towards God gives us the power to overcome our own selfishness and find true happiness and meaning in life.

On the flip side, without praising and worshiping God, life becomes all about us. We are never satisfied, we demand of others unfairly, we destroy relationships, we hurt others, and ourselves.

God wants us to worship Him, not from fear of punishment or selfish desire for reward, but because we recognize His love for us and our need of Him.



Song Title: Come to the Waters, from the CD: Sing to the Lord

Music by Trilogy Scripture Songs

Worshiping just any God won't do. We need to worship a God who is love, a God who genuinely cares about us, a God who wants to make us happy and is willing to give even His life to save us. I can think of only one God who meets that criteria. He is the true, unselfish God, for whom the heart of humanity has always longed for. Only the worship of an unselfish, personal God, can make us unselfish and bring peace in our hearts.

What about suffering? What about death? What about the fact that I feel so alone and can't see any evidence for this God of love? What about the apparent cruelty displayed in the Bible?

We'll get to that. But right now, I want to invite you to behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Look at Jesus hanging on the cross for your sins and wonder at the fact that God cares about you that much. True answers begin with understanding this one crucial fact: God Is Love.