“You’ve gotta serve somebody” sang Bob Dylan in his song Gotta Serve Somebody, “Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” It was (and still is) a surprising song for a musician known for his drug use and reckless living. Bob Dylan symbolized the anti-establishment, free-wheelin’ hippy love of the 1960s that seemed to be what America represented.
But this admission from Dylan, the icon of a society known for its flippant freedom from anything sacred, rings true: we were made to worship. This was long known to the people of the Bible. This is why the Psalms, including 134, are littered with commands to “praise the LORD!”
Isn’t it amazing to consider that God desires our praise? We, limited, finite, petty, and weak creatures compared to Him! And yet, this is what he made us for! To praise something is central to what it means to be human. This is why it is our purpose in life to praise God: for He alone is the object that is to be praised. Everything else is a distraction.
But this is the sort of mistake that most of us make: we end up praising the wrong things. The price of this is that we lose sight of the purpose God gave us. In fact, we begin to take on the qualities of the thing we praise.
Psalm 115:8, “Those who make [idols] will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.”
So says G.K. Beale in his book We Become What We Worship: “People will always reflect something, whether it be God’s character or some feature of the world. If people are committed to God, they will become like him; if they are committed to something other than God, they will become like that thing, always spiritually inanimate and empty like the lifeless and vain aspect of creation to which they have committed themselves.”
It turns out that our purpose in life is found when we fall to our knees and worship the only One who is worthy of worship. We could search every option in our pluralistic society, only to discover that each and every distraction only served to dilute our praise of the only One deserving.
Our lives will ring hollow until the moment we discover that not only is it our purpose to praise God, but it’s also our privilege.
Ryan Lunde
Young Adults Pastor