They Never Stop

Day and night they never stop saying:

“‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come.”

Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:

“You are worthy, our Lord and God,
    to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
    and by your will they were created
    and have their being.”

Revelation 4:8-11

John got a glimpse of the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders worshiping the Lord day and night. Whenever we enter into worship and praise, we are joining something that is already in progress 24/7. It reminds me of how after a show gets interrupted by a special news broadcast, right before it returns, the announcer says, “We now join the regularly scheduled program already in progress.”

In the heavenly realms, around the throne of grace, worship is the regularly scheduled program that is always already in progress. Worship is the norm. Worship is the atmosphere, the oxygen, of heaven.

When we worship and praise the Lord, we are not doing something for God. We are entering the environment He is already in. We are simply agreeing with what is already being proclaimed as true. We are joining all of heaven and all of creation in what is the most natural response to God. When God shows up, reverence, awe, joy and celebration are the natural responses to His glory, grace, goodness and majesty.

We don’t do worship; we enter worship. We don’t work our way into worship; we surrender our way into worship. Moments of worship remind us of what we were created for. Our mind, will, emotions, body and spirit were all fine tuned in their design to be used for worship. It is what we were made for and so should be what we live for.

Worshiping God is such a gift to us. It is universally true that we become like whatever we worship. So when our whole life is about the worship of the Only One who is worthy, we are graciously gifted the opportunity to become more and more like Jesus. If we choose to worship false idols like our self, our career, our comfort, the praise of men, our favorite addiction, or our most used self-medication (alcohol, pornography, greed, success), then we become less and less what we were created to be.

Jesus alone is worthy of our worship, and He is worthy of ALL of our worship!