”Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord all the earth; … For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; He is to be feared above all gods.” - (Psalm 96:1, 4)
We’ve learned that we worship God to enter His presence, we worship God to show other’s around us how great He is, and the verse above shows that we worship God because He deserves it!
If there were no other reason to worship God, this would still be enough of a reason. There is nothing in the universe as great as God. He is light years beyond anything else we could even think of worshiping, and He deserves all of our praise. Psalm 96 goes on to describe how great God is – not how loving or merciful He is, not all of the marvelous things He has done for us, but just the glory of His greatness. And yet how much more we can praise Him because He is so loving, He is so merciful, and He has done amazing things for us!
We need to start by worshiping God for who He is. If we only worship God for what He has done for us, we are focusing on ourselves, but if we start our worship with recognizing how great God is, we focus our worship on God. That will then naturally lead into praise for all He has done for us.
“Then sings my soul, … how great Thou art!”
In Christ, Amy Smith