Editor’s note: Have you ever asked “What is worship?.. Why does God want us to worship?.. Is there a ‘right way’ to worship?” There are biblical answers to those great questions! Enjoy this excerpt from Sam Storm’s book Understanding Worship: Biblical Foundations for Delighting in and Feasting on God.
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- Worship is feasting on God? Really?
So, to make sense of this, let’s begin with a question: Why do you worship? What is your motivation in investing so much time and making such great sacrifices to expend your energy in the praise of God? Some of you immediately know the answer to that question, and it strikes you as silly that I should even dare to ask it. Others of you, quite honestly, are more than a little unsure.
You’re confused and don’t fully understand your motives. Perhaps you worship from a sense of duty. You tell yourself, “Worshiping God is like studying the Bible and praying and witnessing. God commanded it, so here I am reporting for duty. I don’t know if I really like it all that much, but being willing to obey God even when I don’t feel like it is what being a Christian is all about. Right?”
Whenever I hear someone say something like that, a fascinating verse in the book of Deuteronomy comes to mind:
Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. — Deuteronomy 28:47–48
I always responded to that verse, “Wait a minute, Lord. Isn’t it enough just to serve and obey you?”
“No,” says God.
“It is because they didn’t serve Me with joyfulness and gladness of heart that I will discipline them.” This passage in Deuteronomy 28, along with scores of others in both the Old and New Testaments, alerts me to the fact that why we do something for God is absolutely fundamental in determining whether what we do is good, pleasing, and glorifying to our heavenly Father. Now, let’s apply this to worship.
This may initially sound strange, but consider this proposition: if you come to worship for any reason other than the joy, pleasure, and satisfaction that are to be found in God, you dishonor Him. This means worship is principally a feasting on all that God is for us in Jesus. This is because, as John Piper has so often said, “God is most glorified in you when [you] are most satisfied in Him.”1 Or again,
you are His pleasure when He is your treasure.
Which is to say that God’s greatest delight in you is your delight in Him.
I want you to consider that you and I must come to worship hungry!
We must not come with hands or hearts full of goodies and gifts, thinking that worship is fundamentally where we serve and feed God. God is not in need of us. We are desperately in need of Him. Don’t come to God with your well-¬ordered life, serving up your best efforts to feed God as if He were hungry. Come with open hands, an empty belly, and a hungry heart. Let Him honor Himself by filling you. If you’ve ever wondered if God can be sarcastic, consider this claim:
For every beast of the forest is Mine,
the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the hills,
and all that moves in the field is Mine.
If I were hungry, I would not tell you;
for the world and its fullness are Mine. — Psalm 50:10–12
This sentiment was echoed by Paul in his sermon on Mars Hill:
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of Heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. — Acts 17:24–25
Worship is a feast in which God is the host, cook, waiter, and the meal itself.
It’s not unusual for people to voice an objection at this point: “But I thought worship was all about glorifying God. You seem to say it’s all about my delight and satisfaction.” But this is a false dichotomy. To say that worship is either about glorifying God or finding personal satisfaction in Him is to put asunder what God has joined together. His glory and your gladness are not antithetical impulses moving in opposite directions. Rather, His glory is in your gladness in Him. Take a moment and read over that last sentence again, and let its liberating truth sink into your soul.
Years ago, if you had asked me why I chose to show up on a night devoted to worshiping the Lord, I would have said something like, “I’ve come to give glory to God.” Today I would push back on my earlier self and wonder how it is that a broken, finite, sinful man like me could ever hope to “give” God anything. After all, as someone once said to me, “We’re talking about the God who has Genesis 1 on His résumé!” This God, the only God, the creator and sustainer of all that exists, lacks nothing. He is entirely self-sufficient. To suggest that any creature could give anything to God, adding what He otherwise lacks, is nothing short of blasphemous.
At this point, I might have responded with a question of my own.
“Worship is all about glorifying God, isn’t it?” The answer, of course, is yes. But precisely how do we glorify God? Isn’t it by receiving from Him all that He graciously provides for us in Jesus? Didn’t the psalmist declare that He satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul He fills with good things — Psalm 107:9?
When God overflows in love to you and me, when He blesses and empowers us and forgives, heals, and fills us with delight, when He satisfies the deepest needs of our souls, He is exalted as the only all-sufficient supply for His people. God — not we — is the one who gives. And when He does, we see Him as the only all-sufficient treasure in whom we find “fullness of joy” and “pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).
That is why worship is all about glorifying God by finding or gaining personal satisfaction in Him. When you worship, you glorify God through glad-hearted getting of all He gives!
1. John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2011), 10.
Excerpted with permission from Understanding Worship by Sam Storms, copyright Sam Storms.
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Your Turn
Have you ever felt like worship was a duty or a task you had to check off your list? Have you felt like you have to work hard or give something to Him in your worship? How does Sam’s devotion change your perspective? What if you came to worship with desire and a glad heart? ~ Devotionals Daily