Most of you are probably familiar with the author CS Lewis. He’s one of the most well-known Christian authors in history. His book series, The Chronicles Of Narnia, was turned into a wildly successful movie franchise. His book, Mere Christianity, is one of the best arguments for the existence of God ever written. Yet, if you’ve attempted to read some of his other writings, like The Four Loves or The Abolition of Man, you’ve realized that they are much harder to understand than The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Last year I came across one of these challenging books.  It’s called, Reflections on the Psalms, and I thought “CS Lewis talking about the Psalms.  As a Worship Pastor I’d like to know what he has to say.”  So, I bought the book, and I read it. I didn’t understand 90% of what he was talking about. Then I came across a chapter on worship, and I found one of his points to be extremely helpful in understanding human nature and worship.

CS Lewis was an atheist, and before he became a believer he thought the book of Psalms was ridiculous. To the unbelieving Lewis, it painted a terrible and frightening picture of God.  As I’ve shared before, there are 50 direct commands in Scripture to worship God, and most of them are located in the Psalms.  “Sing to the Lord all the earth, sing to God you kingdoms of the earth, sing praises to God sing praises, sing praises to our King sing praises.”  To Lewis this gave the impression that God was like a despotic dictator living in heaven sitting around demanding his subjects to praise him. As if He has some sort of need for affirmation. He thought it made God look like a pathetic celebrity who needs an entourage around him constantly telling him how great he is. Yet, when he became a Christian Lewis had an entirely new view of the Psalms. He realized the underlying reason of why we praise God, and really why we praise anything.  Here’s one of his quotes, “Just as men spontaneously praise whatever it is that they value, they also simultaneously urge others to join them in praising it.” For example, whenever you go to a great concert or hear a great musician play, you say to the people you went with, “Wasn’t that an awesome concert? It was absolutely fantastic!” Or, you may go see a movie with someone, and as you exit the theatre you both say, “Wasn’t that spectacular?” Or sometimes you read a great book that someone else has read and you go to coffee to discuss how good it was. Or more commonly for many of us, when you watch a really exciting down to the wire football or baseball or basketball game, you go to work the next day and spend 15 minutes talking with your co-workers about “What an awesome game it was.”

The world is ringing with people’s praises.  Go online and read the reviews of the new iPhone.  It’s the greatest, most powerful iPhone ever!  The world is ringing with people praising things, and here’s the reason why. It’s because “We delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not only expresses, it COMPLETES the enjoyment.”

The reason the Psalmist writes all of these wonderful things about praising God is because he can’t help it.  His praise is an overflow of what he enjoys, and what he enjoys is God.  If we can truly grasp how much God loves us and how underserved that love is; if we can really begin to wrap our minds around it; that praise will overflow out of our mouths. We will worship because it will complete our enjoyment of God. Telling others about God will complete our joy, because our natural reaction to knowing God and understanding his love for us will be to immediately tell people how “awesome it is.”  Our praise will be the completion of our enjoyment of God.

That’s why our church mission statement rings so true. “Deeper in Christ, Further in mission.” Until you know God and understand His love for you, you can’t go and tell others about Him. That’s why Paul wrote what he did in Ephesians 3: “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to GRASP how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Before you can be effective in telling others about God, you have to grasp His love for you.  It’s our nature to praise what we enjoy, and there is nothing in this world that compares to the joy of knowing Christ. So tonight my prayer is that our praise would always be an overflow of knowing and enjoying our Creator, not a Biblical duty.

God we thank You so much or Your love for us. We are undeserving, evil people, and yet you seek us. We didn’t love You we rebelled against You.  You first loved us and sent your Son to pay for our sins. So God we ask that You would make it our hearts desire to know You, and to truly enjoy the privileges that we receive as Your children: the peace that only You can bring and a hope for the future. May our praise be an overflow of the joy we find in our relationship with You, Amen.

Categories: Paul Austin Uncategorized

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