You Were Made for Worship
“Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” Psalm 46:10
What is it that you really love? Take a second to think about it. If you need some help, then maybe think about the things that you devote most of your attention to…the things you can’t get out of your mind…maybe the things you really anticipate (You know the feeling you have on Christmas Eve? Or maybe the night before camp begins?).
One of the things I really love is spending time in the mountains. I love to camp with my family and backpack with my friends. I’m getting excited just thinking about it right now! I love the feeling of spending the night in the woods, the sound of a creek nearby, and waking up to the cool morning air. I love the bright green ferns that carpet the ground in springtime, and the feel of a soft, worn trail under my feet. I guess there is not much that I don’t like about spending time in the mountains (well, I suppose I could do without most bugs and, of course, snakes).
But here’s the curious thing: no matter how much time I spend in the mountains, it does not ultimately satisfy me. In other words, if I put my love of being in the mountains above all else, I’ll ultimately walk away dissatisfied. Now maybe all this talk about the woods has made you disinterested. Let’s put it this way: if at the very center of your life the thing you think about the most, and spend the most time on is the way you look (your clothes, your hair, your endless shoe collection…), do you think there will come a day when it will ultimately satisfy you? Could you have enough shoes? Probably not.
Our hearts naturally long for something to fulfill us. We long for something to complete us, to make us feel safe and accepted and at peace. Sometimes, if we’re honest, we can set our hope on something as silly as shoes. You see, you were made to worship. But you weren’t made to worship just anything…you were made by God and for God. You were made to worship Him, and here’s the thing: the more we bow before him, and set all of our hopes upon him, the more we start to find those things that we had been looking for in all the wrong places. We start to feel safe, and accepted, and at peace.
C. S. Lewis really loved books and music (maybe you do too). In fact, he loved them so much that in a sense he was tempted to worship them; to put them at the center of his life. Then one day he had this realization, “The books or the music in which I thought the beauty was located will betray me if I trust them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers.”
Did you hear that? Some of the things you love most dearly are not an end in themselves, but are there to direct you back to your one true love…the One who designed you and made you to find all of your needs met in Him.