In Acts 17:25 we read that God “…is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.”
I consider it a sad thing that worshipping God is — in some circles of thought — something we do to placate him. That means, to “make (someone, in this case God) less angry or hostile”. Nor am I satisfied with the idea that to worship God is to “give him his due” — returning to him something our rebellion took from him, as though he needs something from us.
But God needs nothing from us. Consequently, it seems to me that to worship him would be to seek to satisfy his longing to flood and overflow our lives with his life, his light, and his helpfulness, the presence of which engenders in us peace, and joy. The more we satisfy that longing in God to bless us and others through us, the more we are, in fact, worshiping him.
But notice that to do so — to worship — entails a giving up, a surrender of something that matters to us, that is, our own way of trying to fill our lives with peace and joy. This is why sacrifice is a the center of worship in both the Old and New Testament. At the heart of all things sacrificial is this axiom: give up — sacrifice your way of trying to bless yourself for the sake of honoring God’s longing to bless you and others through you. That is to say, “worship the Lord.”
