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“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”

—

Friedrich Nietzsche (via amortizing)

When you something beautiful, unconsciously or not, you want to praise it.
A beautiful sunset: ‘wow’ ‘wonderful’ ‘breathtaking’ ‘stunning’
When you get to know God and all his attributes, you will not care whether or not he wants to be praised, you will be compelled to do so, and it will fill you with pleasure and joy.
Whether or not He is humble the cross can respond.

Also, I feel the need to comment on this. As some theologians have pointed out, we get a sense of gratification from praising things. It completes our joy. When we love someone, romantically for instance, we don’t just soak up everything we love about them. We tell them how beautiful they are, or we tell them how amazed we are by them. We are, in a way, praising them. We do it because we love them so much, we enjoy them so much, that our praise spills over. We’d feel that our joy wasn’t complete if we couldn’t express it. It would just be trapped inside us, building up. We feel joy in its full when we get to express it.

God wants that joy for us. God wants us to feel complete joy in him, both in enjoying him inwardly, and getting the full completion of that joy by expressing it to him.

And also, praise is good for us when we are sad too. When our hearts are breaking, when we are dying inside, when we are lost and confused and anxious and depressed, praising God sets our minds and hearts on him in a way that can help lift our spirit. I personally believe that if we praise God “in the storm”, whether or not we feel immediately better, God honors our effort and our striving to praise him and trust him and will cause our praise to help us, somehow.

So when God tells us to praise him, it is partially because he is worthy of praise and if we don’t praise him, we are likely praising something else less deserving of our praise. Praising and worshiping are in our nature.

But it is my opinion and belief that God’s command to us to praise him is also one of the ways he shows us grace and love. He is the greatest pleasure imaginable, and he gives us praise so we can enjoy him even more. Imagine that! And also he gives us praise to help us, to turn our hearts and minds to him.

Praise isn’t God wanting an ego-boost. Praise is what we owe God, but it’s also a precious gift from him.

“Whether or not He is humble the cross can respond.”

Except that it does matter. He is not humble, and I don’t believe I would want Him to be. In fact that He is not humble is even more of a reason to praise Him. Allow me to explain.

What is humility? The dictionary definition is: a modest or low view of one’s own importance. By this definition, our God is most certainly NOT humble. By viewing Himself as less than He is, that would mean that He was putting something above Himself. And that’s idolatry. If that were true, we would serve a God that demanded we put nothing above Him while at the same time putting something above Himself. How could He say, “You shall have no other gods before Me” while at the same time thinking, “Nah, I’m nothing much.” That’s contradictory. He sets Himself up as more important than anything else, and He is.

He is Creator, Sustainer, Savior. And He knows it. And He never tones that down. He commands us to be humble not because God Himself is humble but because He is greater than we are and we can do nothing without Him.

Moving on the the reason for praise, the very fact that He created us should be reason enough to give Him praise, never mind everything else He’s ever done. We wouldn’t even exist if He hadn’t wanted us to exist. When you create a work of art – a painting, a story, a quilt, a knitted scarf, whatever – that is a testament to yourself, right? Let’s say you knit a scarf for a friend. Someone else comes up to your friend and says, “Oh, I love your scarf!” Does your friend take credit for it? Not if they’re a good friend, they don’t. They say, “Thanks! So-and-so made it for me!” When we like something, we complement it. When someone does something for us, we thank them. When someone does something for us, we tend to tell others about it. In the same way, we praise God for everything He has done.

Does He demand praise? Yes, He does. Because He knows and is well-aware of everything He has done for us, and He knows He deserves it.

And you want to know why He created us? To give Him praise. He literally created us to worship Him. And, as horrible as this may sound at face-value, why would anyone want an object that doesn’t serve its purpose? If you knit a hat for yourself and it’s too small, then it serves no purpose. When people in Biblical times stopped worshiping Him, do you remember what He did? He flooded the entire world and wiped humanity off the face of the earth, except for the one family that still worshiped Him.

He created us to worship Him, and yes, He demands praise.

But if you think believers praise God only because they have to, you are dead wrong.

He has every right to demand our praise. But, more than that, we give if out of grateful hearts.

We don’t give Him praise because we have to. We give Him praise because we want to.

(I’m sorry if this is a bit of jumbled mess… I’m just spilling thoughts. ^^;)

This is great!!! He deserves praise, and he allows us to praise him as a gift so we can enjoy him more.

And it’s totally true- God is the supreme source of joy, and if he were to be “humble”, he would be telling us that true joy is found somewhere else. He tells us where to find true joy (himself, with nothing above him), and then he tells us how to come and receive it. And an essential part is praise.