Yes, worship of the loving God is man’s whole reason for existence. That is why we are born and that is why we are born again from above. That is why we were created and that is why we have been recreated.
Worship
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Man’s Reason for Being

The primary purpose of God in creation was to prepare moral beings spiritually and intellectually capable of worshipping Him. This has been so widely accepted by theologians and Bible expositors through the centuries that I shall make no attempt to prove it here. It is fully taught in the Scriptures and demonstrated abundantly in the lives of the saints. We may safely receive it as axiomatic and go on from there. (Born after Midnight, p. 123)

Priority in Worship

I am going to say something to you that will sound strange. It even sounds strange to me as I say it, because we are not used to hearing it within our Christian fellowships. We are saved to worship God. All that Christ has done for us in the past and all that He is doing now leads to this one end.

There is a necessity for true worship among us. If God is who He says He is, and if we are the believing people of God we claim to be, we must worship Him. I do not believe that we will ever truly delight in the adoring worship of God if we have never met Him in personal, spiritual experience through the new birth from above, wrought by the Holy Spirit of God Himself!

I have come to believe that when we are worshipping — and it could be right at the drill in the factory — if the love of God is in us and the Spirit of God is breathing praise within us, all the musical instruments in heaven are suddenly playing in full support. (Whatever Happened to Worship?, pp. 94, 118, 123)

A Concept of Worship

I can offer no worship wholly pleasing to God if I know that I am harboring elements in my life that are displeasing to Him. I cannot truly and joyfully worship God on Sunday and not worship Him on Monday. I cannot worship God with a glad song on Sunday and then knowingly displease Him in my business dealings on Monday and Tuesday.

I repeat my view of worship—no worship is wholly pleasing to God until there is nothing in me displeasing to God. (Whatever Happened to Worship?, pp. 124-125)

Worship Never Cultivates Passivity

The beautiful part of worship is that it prepares you and enables you to zero in on the important things that must be done for God. Listen to me! Practically every great deed done in the church of Christ all the way back to the apostle Paul was done by people blazing with the radiant worship of their God. A survey of church history will prove that it was those who were the yearning worshipers who also became the great workers. Those great saints whose hymns we so tenderly sing were active in their faith to the point that we must wonder how they ever did it. The great hospitals have grown out of the hearts of worshipping men. The mental institutions grew out of the hearts of worshipping and compassionate men and women. We should say, too, that wherever the church has come out of her lethargy, rising from her sleep and into the tides of revival and spiritual renewal, always the worshipers were back of it. (Whatever Happened to Worship?, pp. 18-19)

Our Worship Lacks Depth

It is certainly true that hardly anything is missing from our churches these days—except the most important thing. We are missing the genuine and sacred offering of ourselves and our worship to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

If we are truly among the worshipers, we will not be spending our time with carnal or worldly religious projects.

God has provided His salvation that we might be, individually and personally, vibrant children of God, loving God with all our hearts and worshipping Him in the beauty of holiness. This does not mean, and I am not saying, that we must all worship alike. The Holy Spirit does not operate by anyone’s preconceived idea of formula. But this I know: when the Holy Spirit or God comes among us with His anointing, we become worshipping people. This may be hard for some to admit. But when we are truly worshipping and adoring the God of all grace and of all love and of all mercy and of all truth, we may not be quiet enough to please everyone. (Whatever Happened to Worship?, pp. 9, 12, 14)
First Things First

We all should be willing to work for the Lord, but it is a matter of grace on God’s part. I am of the opinion that we should not be concerned about working for God until we have learned the meaning and the delight of worshipping Him. A worshiper can work with eternal quality in his work. But a worker who does not worship is only piling up wood, hay and stubble for the time when God sets the world on fire. I fear that there are many professing Christians who do not want to hear such statements about their “busy schedule,” but it is the truth. God is trying to call us back to that for which He created us—to worship Him and to enjoy Him forever! It is then, out of our deep worship, that we do His work.

I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.

I wish that we might get back to worship again. Then when people come into the church they will instantly sense that they have come among holy people, God’s people. They can testify, “Of a truth God is in this place.”

True worship of God must be a constant and consistent attitude or state of mind within the believer. It will always be a sustained and blessed acknowledgment of love and adoration, subject in this life to degrees of perfection and intensity.

Men and women continue to try to persuade themselves that there are many forms and ways that seem right in worship. But God in His revelation has told us that He is spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. God takes the matter of worship out of the hands of men and puts it in the hands of the Holy Spirit.

We must humbly worship God in spirit and in truth. Each one of us stands before the truth to be judged. Is it not now plain that the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit of God, far from being an optional luxury in our Christian lives, is a necessity?

Yes, worship of the loving God is man’s whole reason for existence. That is why we are born and that is why we are born again from above. That is why we were created and that is why we have been recreated. That is why there was a genesis at the beginning, and that is why there is a regenesis, called regeneration. That is also why there is a church. The Christian church exists to worship God first of all. Everything else must come second or third or fourth or fifth.

Worship must always come from an inward attitude. It embodies a number of factors, including the mental, spiritual and emotional. You may not at times worship with the same degree of wonder and love that you do at other times, but the attitude and the state of mind are consistent if you are worshipping the Lord.

Real worship is, among other things, a feeling about the Lord our God. It is in our hearts. And we must be willing to express it in an appropriate manner. We can express our worship to God in many ways. But if we love the Lord and are led by His Holy Spirit, our worship will always bring a delighted sense of admiring awe and a sincere humility on our part.

The proud and lofty man or woman cannot worship God any more acceptably than can the proud devil himself. There must be humility in the heart of the person who would worship God in spirit and in truth.

They can change the expressions in the hymnals, but whenever men and women are lost in worship they will cry out, “Oh God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee” (Psalm 63:1). Worship becomes a completely personal love experience between God and the worshiper. It was like that with David, with Isaiah, with Paul. It is like that with all whose desire has been to possess God.

What we need among us is a genuine visitation of the Spirit. We need a sudden bestowment of the spirit of worship among God’s people. (Whatever Happened to Worship?, pp. 12, 13, 20, 24, 44, 46, 56, 83, 84, 89, 91)

A Challenge to Worship

Every great spiritual work from Paul to this hour has sprung out of spiritual experiences that made worshipers. Unless we are worshipers, we are simply religious dancing mice, moving around in a circle getting nowhere.

God wants worshipers first. Jesus did not redeem us to make us workers; He redeemed us to make us worshipers. And then, out of the blazing worship of our hearts springs our work. (Sermon to Youth for Christ, National Convention of YFC, Chicago)

Worship Is the Center

Israel began her history in a burst of divine power. When God led the Children of Israel out of Egypt… and into the Holy land, with the fire and cloud going before and the children of Israel… one miracle followed another and grace upon grace, with faith and love and worship at the center like a beating heart. (Sermon, “The Deeper Life,” Chicago, 1956.)

The Definition of Worship

Worship is to feel in the heart and express in an appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe. Worship humbles you. The proud man can’t worship God any more than the proud devil can worship God. There must be humility in the heart before there can be worship. If it isn’t mysterious, there can be no worship. If I can understand God, then I cannot worship God. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #5, Toronto, 1962)

God wants us to worship Him. The God who doesn’t need anything nevertheless wants worshipers. The God who in His uncreated nature is self-sufficient yet wants us to worship Him.

If man had not fallen then worship would have been the most natural thing to him in the world because God made man to worship Him. Man fell away and sin came to his life and sin is not natural.

Worship is unnatural only in the sense that so few people really do it. But it is natural in that it is what God created us for. That’s what He meant us to do, to worship Him and enjoy Him forever.

I find that when people haven’t found God and do not know the new birth and the Spirit is not on them, yet they have the ancient impulse to worship something. If they’re not educated they kill a chicken and put a funny thing on their head and dance around. If they are educated they write poetry. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #3, Toronto, 1962)

The reason that Jesus Christ was born of the virgin Mary to suffer under Pontius Pilate to be crucified, dead and buried, the reason that He overcame the sharpness of death and rose again from the grave is that He might make worshipers out of rebels.

Worship is the moral imperative of the Christian, and yet it is the missing jewel in evangelical circles.

God wants you to worship Him and then out of your fiery worship He wants you to work for Him. But He doesn’t want you to jump up and start any amateurish toil.

If worship bores you, you are not ready for heaven.

Worship is the normal employment of moral beings. Every glimpse that we have of heaven shows the creatures there worshipping. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #4, Toronto, 1962)

God is infinitely more concerned having worshipers than He is about having workers. We have degenerated into the place where we put God on charity and make Him to be a foreman who can’t find help. He stands at the wayside asking, “How many helpers will come to My rescue and come and do My work?” If we could only remember that God doesn’t need anybody here—God does not need anybody in this city. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #4, Toronto, 1962)

When a man yielding and believing the truth of God is filled with the Spirit of God then his warmest and smallest whisper will be worship. We can find that we can worship God by any means if we are full of the Spirit and yielded to the truth. But when we are neither yielded to the truth nor full of the Spirit then the so-called worship is not worship at all. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #3, Toronto, 1962)

We have everything but worship these days. A man you can’t get to a prayer meeting will sit on the board and decide how much money the church spends. You can’t get him to prayer meeting because he’s not a worshiper. He’s just a fellow who runs the church. It seems to me that it has always been a frightful incongruity that men who do not pray and who do not worship are nevertheless able to run the church and determine the direction it will take. No man has any right to debate an issue or vote on it unless he is a praying man. We tend to let the women do the praying and the men do the voting. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #4, Toronto, 1962)

Worship is an inward attitude, not a physical attitude but an inward attitude, and it is a state of mind and it is a sustained act. This is subject to degrees of perfection and intensity. You cannot always worship with the same degree of wonder and love that you do at other times, but it must always be there—an attitude and a state of mind and a sustained act subject to varying degrees of intensity and perfection. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon # 5, Toronto, 1962)

Worshipping men and women made some of the great advances in civilization. Wherever the church came out of her lethargy and rose from her sleep and into a renaissance or revival, always some worshipers were back of it all. We are called to worship and we are failing God in this. We are not worshipping God as we should. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #4, Toronto, 1962)

God has created us that we might be worshipers and we have become everything else but worshipers.

One of the ingredients in worship is boundless confidence in the character of God. We can’t worship these days because we do not have a high enough opinion of God. God has been reduced, modified, edited, changed and amended until He is not the God Isaiah saw high and lifted up but something else. Because He has been reduced in the minds of the people we don’t have that boundless confidence in His character that we used to have. Confidence is necessary to respect. You can’t respect a man in whom you have no confidence. When you extend that upward to God, if you cannot respect God, you cannot worship God. Worship rises and falls in the church altogether depending on whether the idea of God is low or high. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #5, Toronto, 1962)

I believe that when we worship our God the breath of song on earth starts the organs playing in heaven above.

There can be only one worship. We cannot worship whom we will for there is only One to worship. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #6, Toronto, 1962)

If I haven’t absolute confidence in God I can’t worship Him. You can’t sit down with a man and have fellowship with him if you have reason to fear that he’s out to get you and that he’s tricking you or deceiving you or cheating you. You have to respect him before you can sit down with him quietly. You have to trust him before you can have human fellowship. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #5, Toronto, 1962)

We come into God’s house and say, “The Lord is in His holy temple, let us all kneel before Him.” Very nice. I think it’s nice to start a service that way once in a while. But when any of you men enter your office Monday morning at nine o’clock, if you can’t walk into that office and say, “The Lord is in my office, let all the world be silent before Him,” then you are not worshipping the Lord on Sunday. If you can’t worship Him on Monday you didn’t worship Him on Sunday. If you don’t worship Him on Saturday you are not in very good shape to worship Him on Sunday. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #6, Toronto, 1962)

God is spirit and worship must accord with the nature of God. We worship God according to what God is, not according to what God is not.

Spirituality is one of the ingredients of worship, and without spirituality I cannot worship God acceptably. No matter how much I worship, if it is not acceptable worship then it is vain worship and better not attempted.

A second ingredient in worship is sincerity as distinct from formality or duplicity.

Honesty is a third ingredient of worship and must be in all prayers as distinct from mere propriety. I’ve got to be absolutely honest. There must be complete honesty before God. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #8, Toronto, 1962)

A local church exists to do—corporately what each should do individually—namely, worship God. It should show forth the excellencies of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light, reflect back the glory of Him who shines down on us, even God, even Christ, even the Holy Ghost. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #10, Toronto, 1962)

Nobody has ever worshipped God and done nothing else. That’s the beautiful thing about it: If you worship God, you will be an active person. People blazing with the radiant worship of God did practically every deed done in the church of Christ, back to Paul. The great mystics and the great hymn writers and the great worshipers were also the great workers. The great saints whose hymns we so tenderly sing were active to the point where you would wonder how they ever did it. George Whitefield, John and Charles Wesley, St. Bernard, Tersteegen and Zinzendorf and you can name them off. They were the ones who wrote our hymns of praise and the ones whose knuckles were skinned and whose hands and palms were callused with toil. (“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #4, Toronto, 1962)

He [Brother Lawrence] spent his long life walking in the presence of his Lord, and when he came to die there was no need for any particular change in his occupation. At the last hour someone asked him what was going on in his thoughts as death approached. He replied simply: “I am doing what I shall do through all eternity—blessing God, praising God, adoring God, giving Him the love of my whole heart. It is our one business, my brethren, to worship Him and love Him without thought of anything else. (The Price of Neglect, p. 23)


The Altar Within

In our present-day age of grace and mercy, we acknowledge that the only altar in effect for us is in the glory world. It is there that our Lord Jesus Christ ministers as our great High Priest. But we are Christian believers intent upon glorifying God and worshiping Him. It is consistent with that objective that there should be an altar deep within our own hearts, our inner beings. (Men Who Met God, p. 29)
Worship Key to Revival

Many of the Lord's people do not know what you mean when you mention a spirit of worship in the church. They are poor victims of boards, churches, denominations and pastors who have made the noble decision to modify the truth and practice a little. But God responded, “If you do, I will withdraw from you the spirit of worship. I will remove your candlestick.” (Rut, Rot or Revival, pp. 167, 170)

Knowledge, Wonder, Love

While we may worship (and thousands of Christians do) without the use of any formal creed, it is impossible to worship acceptably without some knowledge of the One we seek to worship. That knowledge is our creed, whether it is ever formalized or not. It is not enough to say that we may have a mystical or numinous experience of God without any doctrinal knowledge and that is sufficient. No, it is not sufficient. We must worship in truth as well as in spirit; and truth can be stated and when it is stated it becomes creed.

[One] stage of true worship is wonder. Here the mind ceases to understand and goes over to a kind of delightful astonishment. Carlyle said that worship is “transcendent wonder,” a degree of wonder without limit and beyond expression. That kind of worship is found throughout the Bible (though it is only fair to say that the lesser degrees of worship are found there also). Abraham fell on his face in holy wonderment and God spoke to him. Moses hid his face before the presence of God in the burning bush. Paul could hardly tell whether he was in or out of the body when he was allowed to see the unspeakable glories of the third heaven. When John saw Jesus walking among His churches, he fell at His feet as dead. We cite these as a few examples; the list is long in the biblical record. (That Incredible Christian, pp. 21, 128)

The essence of spiritual worship is to love supremely, to trust confidently, to pray without ceasing and to seek to be Christ-like and holy and to do all the good we can for Christ's sake. How impossible for anyone to hinder that kind of “practice.” As soon as our normal churchgoing religion is interdicted by government decree or made for the time impossible by circumstances, we can retire to the sanctuary of our own hearts and worship God acceptably till He sees fit to change the circumstances and allow us to resume the outward practice of our faith. But the fire has not gone out on the altar of our heart in the meantime; and we have learned the sweet secret of submission and trust, a lesson we could not have learned any other way. (The Root of the Righteous, p. 130)

It is quite impossible to worship God without loving Him. Scripture and reason agree to declare this. And God is never satisfied with anything less than all: “all thy heart … all thy soul … all thy might.” This may not at first be possible, but deeper experience with God will prepare us for it, and the inward operations of the Holy Spirit will enable us after a while to offer Him such a poured-out fullness of love. (That Incredible Christian, p. 126)

Man is a worshiper and only in the spirit of worship does he find release for all the powers of his amazing intellect. (God Tells the Man Who Cares, p.103)

It remains only to be said that worship … is almost (though, thank God, not quite) a forgotten art in our day. For whatever we can say of modern Bible-believing Christians, it can hardly be denied that we are not remarkable for our spirit of worship. The gospel as preached by good men in our times may save souls, but it does not create worshipers. Our meetings are characterized by cordiality, humor, affability, zeal and high animal spirits; but hardly anywhere do we find gatherings marked by the overshadowing presence of God. We manage to get along on correct doctrine, fast tunes, pleasing personalities and religious amusements. How few, how pitifully few, are the enraptured souls who languish for love of Christ. The sweet “madness” that visited such men as Bernard and St. Francis and Richard Rolle and Jonathan Edwards and Samuel Rutherford is scarcely known today. The passionate adorations of Teresa and Madame Guyon are a thing of the past. Christianity has fallen into the hands of leaders who knew not Joseph. The very memory of better days is slowly passing from us and a new type of religious person is emerging. How is the gold tarnished and the silver become lead! (That Incredible Christian, p. 131)

One of the most liberating declarations in the New Testament is this: “The true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” John 4:23-24). Here the nature of worship is shown to be wholly spiritual. True religion is removed from diet and days, from garments and ceremonies, and placed where it belongs—in the union of the spirit of man with the Spirit of God. From man's standpoint, the most tragic loss suffered in the Fall was the vacating of this inner sanctum by the Spirit of God. At the hidden center of man's being is a bush fitted to be the dwelling place of the Triune God. There God planned to rest and glow with moral and spiritual fire. Man by his sin forfeited this indescribably wonderful privilege and must now dwell there alone. For so intimately private is the place that no creature can intrude; no one can enter but Christ, and He will enter only by the invitation of faith. “Behold. I stand at the door and knock: If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). (Man: The Dwelling Place of God, p. 10)

Man Created for Worship

God is real. He is real in the absolute and final sense that nothing else is. All other reality is contingent upon His. The great Reality is God, the Author of that lower and dependent reality which makes up the sum of created things, including us. God has objective existence independent of and apart from any notions, which we may have concerning Him. The worshiping heart does not create its Object. It finds Him here when it wakes from its moral slumber in the morning of its regeneration.

In our desire after God let us keep always in mind that God also has desire, and His desire is toward the sons of men, and more particularly toward those sons of men who will make the once-for-all decision to exalt Him over all. Such as these are precious to God above all treasures of earth or sea. In them God finds a theater where He can display His exceeding kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. With them God can walk unhindered; toward them He can act like the God He is. (The Pursuit of God, pp. 50, 98)

Longing for God

When all of the fully-redeemed universe is back once more worshiping God in full voice, happily and willingly and out of the heart, then we will see the new creation and the new heaven and the new earth! Worship seeks union with its beloved, and an active effort to close the gap between the heart and the God it adores is worship at its best. (The Tozer Pulpit, Book 1, p. 56)

Brethren, when we finally have our meeting with God, it has to be alone in the depths of our being. We will be alone, even if a crowd surrounds us. God has to cut every maverick out of the herd and brand him all alone. It isn't something that God can do for us en masse. (The Tozer Pulpit, Book. 8, p. 81)

Mystery always baffles the understanding and stuns the mind, and we come before God in speechless humility in the presence of the mystery inexpressible. I feel that we should always leave room for mystery in our Christian faith. When we do not, we become evangelical rationalists and we can explain everything. Just ask us any question and we're quick on the trigger—we can answer the question. I don't believe that we can. I think mystery runs throughout all the kingdom of God just as there is mystery running throughout nature. And the wisest and most honest scientist will tell you that he knows practically nothing. And the Christian who has met God and seen God on His throne with the eyes of his heart has stopped being an oracle. He won't pretend to know everything any more and he also won't condemn another man who might take a little different position from his. (Sermon, “The Man Who Saw God,” Wheaten College, 1961)

You can have all the plans you want and you can get the help from all the advertisers and you can get the help of modem mechanical gadgets, and when it's all done you will fall short unless first God is glorified in the midst of His Church. (Sermon, “Babylonian Captivity,” General Council, 1960)

In worship several elements may be distinguished, among them love, admiration, wonder and adoration. Though they may not be experienced in that order, a little thought will reveal those elements as being present wherever true worship is found. (That Incredible Christian. p. 126)

God dwells in the heart where praise is. Man is made to admire something, and he admires. And when he admires to the point of incandescent white heat charged with mystery, that's worship. The world has made a mistake. Some people admire everything, some admire nothing and some admire the wrong things, but God has given us Himself and says, “Here, admire Me, I am God.” (Last sermon at Chicago, 1959)

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