Worship Is Our HonourSample

The God Who Gives Us Himself

If I truly believe that God made me, and that he designed me for a relationship with him, then the most important question that I need to ask is this:

“What does a healthy relationship with God look like?”

At the heart of this, it’s a deeper question about God himself. What is God like? What kind of relationship does he want us to have? In many ways this is the unifying theme of the whole Bible - to reveal God, to show you and I who God is and how a relationship with Him should work. Much of what Jesus said and did was focused on the same idea - correcting our distorted picture of what God is like.

In the ancient world they believed that there were a whole pantheon of gods who were needy and temperamental. They tried to please the gods with ‘worship’ that followed a set of rules designed to keep the gods happy. But in the Bible when God makes his first offer of relationship to a man called Abram, it looks very different. Instead of laying out a set of rules, God makes three promises to Abram and asks Abram to trust him.

This was a totally new idea for a god-relationship. Instead of the gods demanding what they needed from humans, our God promises to meet every need that Abram had. He invited Abram into a relationship of faith. The rest of the Bible unpacks this fresh idea again and again. Worship isn’t about impressing God to ‘earn’ a relationship with him. Worship is about accepting the ‘gift’ that God gives us, the promise that he will meet all our needs. It’s about learning to trust the God who gives himself to us.

So what does a healthy relationship with God look like? Well our worship is all about trusting that every promise of God is reliable and sufficient; trusting that the one who offers us hope and love, will meet our every need; leaning in to our generous and attentive heavenly Father. As we open our hearts to the promises of God, we discover freedom. Freedom from shame, freedom from fear, freedom from the lies we’ve believed about ourselves, freedom from our pain and despair, freedom from our past. God breaks these things off our lives by speaking new truth and new hope into us.

As the Spirit restores us from the inside out, we find His peace and joy starting to overflow. When we experience this life of God flowing up within us, it naturally comes out in a response of thanks and praise. This becomes an ‘offering’ of worship that we bring back to God, as we experience the reality of God’s story transforming our own.

We were made for worship - to know God, to be His people. Every other purpose is a poor and unsatisfying imitation. As Saint Augustine put it so beautifully, “Our souls are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” Over the next four days we’ll explore just how much of an honour it is to know and worship our God.

Reflection Questions:

1. What do I think are the key habits and attitudes to a life of worship?
2. How much of a priority is worship in my day-to-day?
3. If I did an audit of my diary and my spending, what would it say I worship most?