“Sing praises to God, our strength. Sing to the God of Jacob. Sing! Beat the tambourine. Play the sweet lyre and the harp. Blow the ram’s horn at new moon, and again at full moon to call a festival! For this is required by the decrees of Israel; it is a regulation of the God of Jacob.” (Psalms 81:1-4 NLT)
Why would God make worship a requirement for His people?
He knew that we need worship to remind us that the world is bigger than ‘me.’ He knew that sin had left a terrible scar on the earth and that life would be hard and we would be dependent on our good God. He knew that we would get busy and distracted, even distraught when left to our own devices, so He built worship into the rhythms of our calendar to bring our hearts home from before they got too far off the beaten path. He asked that we set aside one day a week to honor Him and make room for rest.
Gone are the days where every believer attends church every Sunday. In fact, recent Pew Research studies tell us that today’s typical congregant calls themselves a ‘regular attender’ if they attend just two Sunday’s a month. We are losing our regular rhythms of worship. What are we gaining?
The truth is that God knows our need to worship. Do we know it? Can we feel how our soul has been scrubbed clean when we’ve spent time in His presence? Can we tell hw our perspective has been righted when we’ve calibrated it to His Word? Can we measure the sense belonging we gain when we gather with other believers?
We might be tempted to ask, what gives God the right to make demands on our time?
“He made it a law for Israel when he attacked Egypt to set us free,” (Psalms 81:5a NLT)
God earned the right to our worship when He set us free from sin. If that was all that He ever did, it would be more than enough to spend the rest of our days in praise. In my experience, however, salvation was only the starting blocks of His blessing. In the vein of Fredrick Lehman’s lyrics; I haven’t enough ink or parchment to properly document His ongoing favor.
Our God is faithful. Are we?
“I heard an unknown voice say, ““Now I will take the load from your shoulders; I will free your hands from their heavy tasks. You cried to me in trouble, and I saved you;” (Psalms 81:5b-7a NLT)
God doesn’t require our worship because He’s an egomaniac who needs to be constantly told how awesome He is. He requires our worship because we need to regularly remember that He is, in fact, awesome! He’s got us and in the end, it’s all going to be alright.
Worship is the sacred space where God lightens our load. When we go there often, we learn to live disentangled from the world. We learn to live with eternity ever in our sights.
Lord, thank You for requiring our worship. It is a necessary calibration point for our every day lives. Thank You for lightening our loads when we come into Your presence and praise You. It is a joy to belong and to be loved. May we spend our lives adoring You. Amen.