Two Reasons God Wants Us to Praise Him

It’s an easy target for atheistic critics. They tell us that the God we worship is so insecure He had to create beings to worship Him. He’s always talking about His glory and His name, and He’s always telling people to praise Him.

There. Did I articulate that critique clearly enough? Did it make the hair stand up on the back of your neck?

But let’s be candid: have you ever wondered why God wants people to worship Him?

I have.

I can think of several reasons, the most of obvious of which is that He is God. If there was ever anyone who had the right to demand worship, it is God.

But even though it’s clear that He is worthy of our worship, the question remains: why does God care whether we worship Him? Why would our opinion of Him matter to Him at all?

Like so many of our problems with God, this caricature of the insecure deity reveals a profound misunderstanding of the nature of both the cosmos and the character of God. And it is there – both in nature itself and in God’s character – that we find that God wants us to praise Him not because He is insecure but because He loves us.

God wants us to worship Him because our worship aligns us not only with the grain of the universe but also with the song of heaven.

1. The whole universe is designed to bring honor and glory to the Creator.
 
Remember when Jesus was riding into Jerusalem and his followers were praising Him so vigorously that the religious leaders told Him He should tell them to stop. Jesus answered that it was so inevitable that He be praised that if His followers had been silent, the rocks themselves would cry out (Luke 19:40).

Remember also the psalmist’s words: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). Before the Hubble telescope was launched, there were vast swaths of the glories of the heavens that had been hidden from human eyes since the beginning of time. Once Hubble came online, we could see what we’d been missing; those images are simply breath-taking! And now the recently launched Webb telescope has exponentially increased our ability to see and understand what the psalmist was talking about three thousand years ago: the heavens declare the glory of the Creator.

So when we offer our worship to God, we are stepping into the stream of the worship that flows from nature, from the angels, from believers all over the world.

God loves us. It grieves Him to see us out of step with the purpose for which the entire cosmos was designed. It grieves Him to see us in rebellion against Him, the prodigal son in the far country, miserable in his sin. He yearns for us to return.

So, yes, God wants us to worship Him because the whole of creation cries out in worship and praise to the Creator, and when we refrain, we are going against the grain of the universe itself.

2. Worship is the language of heaven.

How can any mortal being interact with the Almighty? We can see from Scripture that even the angels in heaven cry out in worship to God. Worship is the language of the heavenly courts, and worship is the language we mortals must use to commune with God.

If I were going to live in Albania, I would take it upon myself to learn Albanian. Worship is the language of the world we will inhabit for eternity. God wants us to learn it to speak with Him here and now. And worship is the tongue that we will speak forever, along with all His people, in the New Jerusalem.

God loves us, and He knows there is nothing better for us than to know Him and commune with Him. That is why He wants us to learn the language of worship.

So, yes, God does want us to worship Him.
 
But His motivation doesn’t spring out of some cosmic inferiority complex; rather, He wants us to worship Him because of His great love for us.

He wants us to flourish, to work along with – not against – the grain of the universe, which is constantly crying out in worship to her Creator.

And He wants us to commune with Him now and prepare to live in His Kingdom, where worship is the common tongue.

Let’s give our lives – not just our lips on Sunday mornings but our hearts in all our days – to the worship of the High King of Heaven. He has graciously invited us to join all nature and the courts of heaven in His praise, so let’s join the chorus!