November 4, 2019 – John 4:24

Day 33
Autumn

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.
—John 4:24

Why should we worship God?33 Not only because it is due to him but, [second,] because it is good for us.
If you look on the glory of the autumn woods; if you gaze on the splendor of the night sky; if you stand in awe before the great mountains, snow-clad and towering; if you gaze on the rush of the river or stand by the seashore and hear the rolling waters, there swells in the breast something that wants God for its crown and for its completeness. There are yearnings in these strange natures of ours that only God can satisfy. Our thinking is a mutilated fragment without God, and our hearts can never rest unless they rest in him.
Sometimes only worship can soothe our sorrows and our anxieties. There come times with all of us when everything else fails us; there come times when we go to speak with sorrowing friends and feel that all our themes are weak and empty. You went to visit a friend who had lost a child or husband or wife, and as you sat by your friend and wanted to say something comforting, you felt that everything else was useless but to point the sorrowing heart to God—and you felt ashamed of yourself that you did not dare to do that. How often have devout hearts found comfort in sorrow, found support in anxiety, by the worship of God, by the thought of submission to God and trust in God, a belief that God knows what he is doing, that God sees the end from the beginning, that in all things God works for the good of those who love him!
Further, the worship of God nourishes the root of morality—individual and social. Morality cannot live on mere ideas of expediency and utility. The root of morality is the sentiment of moral obligation. What does it mean when your child first begins to say “I ought to do this” and “I shouldn’t do that”? What does it mean? “I ought.” It is the glory of being human. It makes us in the image of the one who made us. And what is to nourish and keep alive and make strong that sentiment of moral obligation in our souls? It is the recognition that there is a God who gave us this high, moral, spiritual being, who made us for himself, to whom we belong. Our worship of him nourishes in us the highest and best. How can I tell the reasons why we should worship God? They are as high as heaven, as vast as the universe; all existence and all conception—everything is a reason why we should worship God.
—John A. Broadus