Worshipping God

We praise You, we bless You, and we worship You and glorify You, and offer thanks to You, and for the greatness of Your glory.

Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise! Give thanks to Him, bless His name!

Psalm 100:4

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God!

Psalm 48:1

In Greek, the verb “to worship” is the word “Proskineo.” This verb comes from two Greek words “pros” which means “towards” and “kineo” which means “to kiss.” In antiquity, when one came in front of a deity, or ruler, they would bend down on their knees and kiss the hand of the ruler or deity, as a sign of the authority of the ruler, reverence for their position and submission to a higher authority. In worshipping God, we may bend our knees or bow our heads, so that there is a physical posture. But even if we are worshipping Him while sitting, our spiritual posture is reverence for Him as God, acknowledgment of His authority as God, and obedience/submission to a power that is greater than us.

Worship is central to the practice of Christianity. This is because the Holy Trinity is at the center of our faith. We believe in God as the source and center of everything. That’s what it means to be a Christian. We believe in Jesus Christ as the Co-eternal Son of God, the promised Messiah, the Savior of the world. We believe in the Holy Spirit, also Co-eternal. This puts us in the posture of being servants of God, in the sense that He is Lord, and we are to be obedient to Him. This also puts us in the posture to worship Him, to bend our knees, and bow down before Him.

Whether we worship God publicly in a service, or privately in our personal prayer and devotion, before we supplicate Him (ask Him for something) or do anything else, we acknowledge Him as our God. Thus we begin prayer with words like “Dear God,” or “Heavenly Father,” or “Almighty Lord,” words of worship, even before words of thanksgiving.

The second thing we should do in prayer, after an expression of worship, is an expression of thanksgiving. There is always something to be thankful, even on our worst day. We can thank God for breath, we can thank Him for the opportunity to pray to Him. There is always a blessing to be found in something. While we do not need to thank God for our misfortunes, we should certainly thank Him during our times of misfortune.

Each time we pray, there are five elements we should include. First, we should worship God. Second, we should thank Him. Third, we should make confession and repentance. This means to acknowledge any sin we have committed since our last prayer and ask God for forgiveness. This is different than going for the sacrament of confession. In confession, we receive absolution—that IS the sacrament. The sacrament of confession is receiving absolution of the sins we have formally confessed. However, we should wait until a formal confession to acknowledge our sins—we should be continuously acknowledging them and repenting of them.

The fourth element of prayer is intercession, this is praying for others, interceding on their behalf. We should each have a list of people we pray for each day. Some people actually have a list on paper, others in their heads, but praying for others is an important element when praying. The fifth element is supplication, asking God to help us with our specific needs. Many people are tempted to go right to supplication, or perhaps follow worship with supplication, and we tend to forget thanksgiving, confession and intercession.

The second line of the Doxology focuses us on worship and thanksgiving. Why would we need to “bless God,” since the hymn says “we bless You”? When someone gives a blessing to someone else, they are giving their endorsement of that person, i.e. the bishop gives me His blessing to write the Prayer Team. One way to interpret “blessing” when it comes to God is ceding control of our lives to Him, we give our “blessing” for God to lead us, and we place ourselves in a position of submission to Him. Thus, we praise God by offering words acknowledging His authority over all things. We bless God by submitting and being obedient to Him. We worship God with a spiritual (and sometimes physical) posture that bows before Him. And we give thanks to God for all of His blessings. Before continuing on in supplication, we acknowledge the greatness of His glory.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the lands! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into His presence with singing! Know that the Lord is God! It is He that made us, and we are His; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise! Give thanks to Him, bless His name! For the Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness to all generations. Psalm 100

Worship and praise should be part of our lives each week, as we gather for communal prayer, as well as daily, as we pause for private prayer and devotion.