Worship Planned For God's Pleasure


Revelation (4:11)
You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being."

Psalm (149:4)
For the Lord takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with salvation.

The moment you were born into the world, God was there as an unseen witness, smiling at your birth. He wanted you alive, and your arrival gave him great pleasure.
God did not need to create you, but he chose to create you for his own enjoyment. You exist for his benefit, his glory, his purpose and his delight. Bringing enjoyment to God, living for his pleasure, is the first purpose of your life'. When you fully understand this truth , you will never again have a problem with feeling insignificant. It proves your worth. If you are that important to God, and he considers you valuable enough to keep with him for eternity, what greater significance could you have? You are a child of God, and you bring pleasure to God like nothing else he has ever created.

One of the greatest gifts God has given you is the ability to enjoy pleasure.
He wired you with five senses and emotions so you can experience it. He wants you to enjoy life, not just endure it. The reason you are able to enjoy pleasure is that God made you in his image.
We often forget that God has emotions, too. He feels things very deeply.
The Bible tells us that God grieves, gets jealous, and angry, feels compassion, pity, sorrow, and sympathy as well as happiness, gladness, and satisfaction. God loves, delights, gets pleasure, rejoices, enjoys, and laughs!

How we bring pleasure to God is called "worship."
Anything you do that brings pleasure to God is an act of worship. Like a diamond, worship is multifaceted. Anthropologists have noted that worship is a universal urge, hard-wired by God into the very fiber of our being--an inbuilt need to connect with God. Worship is as natural as eating or breathing. If we fail to Worship God, we always find a substitute, even if it ends up being ourselves. The reason God made us with this desire is that he desires worshippers! Jesus said the Father seeks worshippers."

Depending on your religious background, you may need to expand your understanding of "worship". You may think of church services with singing, praying, and listing to a sermon. Or you may think of ceremonies, candles, and communion. Or healing, miracles, and ecstatic experiences. Worship can include these elements, but worship  is far more than these expressions.
Worship is a lifestyle. Worship is far more than music. For many people, worship is just synonym for music. They say, "At our church we have the worship first, then the teaching." This is a big misunderstanding. Every part of a church service is worship: praying, Scripture reading, singing, confession, silence, being still, listening, taking notes, giving an offering, baptism, communion, signing a commitment card, and even greeting other worshippers.
Actually worship predates music. Adam worshiped in the Garden of Eden, but music isn't mentioned until Genesis (4:21) with the birth of Jubal. If worship were just music, then all who are non musical could never worship'. Worship is so much more than music.

What's worse is that, "worship" is often misused to refer to a particular style of music: "First we sang a hymn, then a praise and worship song." Or, "I like the fast paced songs but enjoy the slow worship songs the most." (I'm guilty of this.") In this usage I have learnt that if a song is fast or loud or uses brass instruments, it's considered "praise."
But if it's slow and quiet and intimate, maybe accompanied by guitar, that's worship.
This is a common misuse of the term "worship".
Worship has nothing to do with the style or volume or speed of a song. God loves all kinds of music because he invented it all--fast and slow, loud and soft, old and new. You probably don't like it all, but God does! If it is offered to God in spirit and truth, it is an act of worship.

As a pastor I receive messages, saying I loved the worship service today. I got a lot out of it." This is another misconception about worship. It isn't for our benefit! We worship for God's benefit. When we worship, our goal is to bring pleasure to God, not ourselves. Our motive is to bring glory and pleasure to our Creator.

Reverend William Bowers