The Purpose of Man: Designed to Worship

by A.W. Tozer

“Worship,” Tozer explained, “is to feel in your heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder and overpowering love in the presence of that most ancient Mystery, that majesty which philosophers call the First Cause but which we call Our Father Which Art in Heaven.”

Adam and Eve’s unique purpose in the garden was to bring pleasure, joy and fellowship to God, which is the foundation of all genuine worship.

Fig-Leaf Religion. Religion always focuses on the externals, and Adam and Eve were consumed with their outward condition. They had lost the focus of their inward beauty and purpose, and no longer satisfied the criteria of fellowship with their Creator.

The real tragedy in the Garden of Eden was that Adam and Eve lost their purpose.

Religion only addresses man’s external condition, not his internal confusion.

That biblically defined purpose is that we might worship God and enjoy Him forever.

If he does not know why he is here and does not know his purpose, all you are doing is simply perpetuating the life without direction or purpose. If a person is living just because it is the best alternative to dying, what good is it?

A man can work all his life, be identified by that work and then retire. Shortly after retirement, he dies because he has lost his purpose in life. The end result of work is utter futility.

Our purpose is not for the perfecting of our intellectual nature, the education or development of our mind. I am not against education, because the alternative is simple ignorance. Education, however, does not answer the eternal purpose of why I am here.

What does a man do when life offers him no more pleasure? Some have answered this emptiness by suicide, a tragic end of a life that never found the real purpose of existence.

Those who dedicate their time and the purpose of their life to getting a thrill out of life are going to have one of two things happen to them. Either they are going to run down physically or they are going to run down mentally until they lose all ability to experience any thrill anymore.

Only in man, as created by God, can God admire Himself. Man is the mirror image in which God looks to see Himself. Man is the reflection of the glory of God, which was the purpose and intention of God originally.

Worship is man’s full reason for existence. Worship is why we are born and why we are born again. Worship is the reason for our genesis in the first place and our regenesis that we call regeneration. Worship is why there is church, the assembly of the Redeemed, in the first place. Every Christian church in every country across the world in every generation exists to worship God first, not second; not tacking worship at the end of our service as an afterthought, but rather to worship God primarily, with everything else coming in second, at best. Worshiping God is our first call.

For worship to be acceptable to God, you must be renewed after the image of Him that created you. That “image” must be restored. Only the renewed man can worship God in a way worthy of and acceptable to Him.

Abel brought to God according to His delight, while Cain brought to God what delighted him without any regard to God. God condemned and rejected the worship of Cain, because it lacked atonement.

Heresy means I take what I like and I reject what I do not like. The very word “heretic” means one who picks and chooses. But the Bible says, “And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book” (Rev. 22:19).

Every false religion or cult is built on the selecting of favorite Scripture passages to the neglect of other passages.

world. Do I worship here or do I worship there? Do I worship in this church or do I worship in that church? What church is the right church and what denomination is the right one? That is the difficulty and the problem. The whole problem then was externality of worship. Externalism is our problem even today—the biggest problem the church faces.

You can tell someone something and not actually lie to him or her, but so present the truth that it keeps this person from the truth.

Man wants to worship God, but he wants to worship God after his own comprehension of truth.

God wants worshipers before He wants workers. He calls us back to that for which we were created—to worship the Lord God and to enjoy Him forever. And then out of our deep worship flows our work for Him. Our work is only acceptable to God if our worship is acceptable.

True worship that is pleasing to God creates within the human heart a spirit of expectation and insatiable longing.

Worship is to feel in the heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe. Worship will humble a person as nothing else can. The egotistical, self-important man cannot worship God any more than the arrogant devil can worship God. There must be humility in the heart before there can be worship.

When we ask anything in the name of Jesus, it does not mean pronouncing the name “Jesus.” It means that we are in conformity to His nature.

The soul is a God-shaped void. If I would carry it further, I would say your soul is a God-shaped garment, like a glove shaped to fit your hand. God cannot enter, because it is full of rubbish. Try putting a lot of junk in the glove sometime and then try placing your hand into it; you cannot do it. That glove must be empty before a hand can go into it. The heart must be empty before God can enter.

If you regulate worship to a once-a-week event, you really do not understand it, and it will take a low priority in your life. By nature, worship is not some performance we do, but a Presence we experience. Unless in our worship we have experienced the Presence of God, it cannot rightly be called Christian worship.

The importance of reading the Bible is not reading but fellowship with the Author. The proper reading of the Bible must be in the same Spirit that authored it.

Prayer is not a monologue where we tell God what we think or want. Rather, it is a dialogue between two friends; an intimate fellowship that more often than not surpasses words.