Why do we worship?

Not just – why do we, at Evident Grace Fellowship, worship God. Why do we, every human being, worship? Because we all do. It isn’t a question of whether you worship, only what you worship. Some people worship fame. Some worship fortune. Some worship form. Some worship fashion. All worship really means is to ascribe ultimate worth to something. And in that sense, everyone worships.

But why? Why do we worship?

Fifteen hundred years ago an African bishop wrote, “You are great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Your power, and of Your wisdom there is no end. And man, being a part of Your creation, desires to praise You. Man, who bears about with him his mortality, the witness of his sin, even the witness that You “resist the proud,” – yet man, this part of Your creation, desires to praise You. You move us to delight in praising You; for You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You” (St. Augustine of Hippo).

In short, Augustine says we worship because God created us to worship. More than that, he created us to worship him – “God the Father, almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” Until we do that, until we find our rest in worshiping him, we will restlessly worship anything and everything else.

Notice that Augustine says we “bear about with [us] [our] mortality, the witness of [our] sin, and even the witness that [God] resist[s] the proud.” We could rephrase this to say “we all know and fear that we will die, we all know and feel guilt over our failure to live up to some standard, and we all know that, despite the first two things, we pretend to be better than we are, and fear we’ll eventually be outed as fakes!”

At Evident Grace Fellowship, we have found rest from these things in worshiping God. We worship him because we know that Jesus Christ is our only hope in life and death. He is “the resurrection and the life,” and because he died for us, and rose again, and we believe in him, “though [we] die, yet [we] will live” (Jn 11.25).

We worship him because he bore our sins on the cross, and nailed them there, together with the record of debt, and legal demands that stood against us and made us guilty before God and man. This means that each of us is now a debtor to mercy alone. It means that we can rest from living up to constantly changing, unreasonable, man-made standards. We have a consistent, simple, divine standard – loving God with all our being, and loving our neighbors as we would ourselves.

But we also worship him, because even though we don’t live up to that standard, Jesus did, and one day he will make us like himself, once and for all. This means we can confess our sins to him, and be sure we will receive forgiveness, because his love can never fail. It also means we can confess our sins to one another, and receive forgiveness as well. Admittedly, we don’t always do this perfectly, but we also don’t have to pretend we do. That’s why we are Evident Grace!

So, we worship, because he is worthy. We worship, because it, and he, are our delight. We worship, because we have found our rest in him. If you are seeking that kind of rest, join us, and help us make God’s grace evident by being and becoming those kinds of worshipers.