At the 2010 Desiring god Pastors Conference, Sam Storms quoted C.S. Lewis Amazingly by saying thus:
7) God's passion for his glory is the consummate expression of love for you.
Considerate these words from C .S. Lewis in his essay, “The Problem of Praise in the Psalms” (found in Reflections on the Psalms):
We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand. Thus a picture, at once ludicrous and horrible, both of God and His worshippers, threatened to appear in my mind. The Psalms were especially troublesome in this way - ‘Praise the Lord,' 'O praise the Lord with me,' 'Praise Him.' ... Worse still was the statement put into God's own mouth, 'whoso offereth me thanks and praise, he honoureth me' (50:23). It was hideously like saying, 'What I most want is to be told that I am good and great.' . . . It was extremely distressing. It made one think what one least wanted to think. Gratitude to God, reverence to Him, obedience to Him, I thought I could understand; not this perpetual eulogy...
We don't like the athletes who always show off or the cosmetically enhanced actress posture and pose on the red carpet, because we know they care nothing for anyone but themselves. Again, Lewis says,
...it is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men. It is not of course the only way. But for many people at many times the 'fair beauty of the Lord' is revealed chiefly or only while they worship Him together. Even in Judaism the essence of the sacrifice was not really that men gave bulls and goats to God, but that by their so doing God gave Himself to men; in the central act of our own worship of course this is far clearer - there it is manifestly, even physically, God who gives and we who receive. The miserable idea that God should in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain author presenting his new books to people who never met or heard him, is implicitly answered by the words, 'If I be hungry I will not tell thee' (50:12). Even if such an absurd Deity could be conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don't want my dog to bark approval of my books.”
Lewis is answering the question, "Why do we worship a God who has no needs?" Here's how he answers it:
But the most obvious fact about praise - whether of God or anything - strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless . . . shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise - lovers praising their mistresses [Romeo praising Juliet and vice versa], readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game - praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. . . . Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible. . . . I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: 'Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?' The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help doing, about everything else we value.
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with ...
If it were possible for a created soul fully . . . to 'appreciate', that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude. . . . To see what the doctrine really means, we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God - drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression, our joy is no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds. The Scotch catechism says that man's chief end is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.
If God is to love you optimally, maximally, for your highest good, then he has to impart the highest gift he can to you, which is himself. If God really loves you, he has to give himself to you. And then he has to work by his Spirit and grace to awaken you to him. He must work by all means to enlarge your joy and satisfaction in him. So he comes to you and says, "Here I am. Look at me! Look at me ... in Jesus! See me! Savor me! Enjoy me! Celebrate who I am ... the eternal God!"
Does that sound like God glorifying himself? Yes, you bet it does. But it's also the best way for you be enthralled and captivated and fascinated in pure joy. That's why our greatest joy is found in the enjoyment of God.
For God to work for his glory in you (which is his love for you) and for him to work for his glory in himself (which is his love for his own glory) is the same thing. If we don't capture this, we'll drive people into fear, depression, legalism, etc. The only way for God to consummate your joy is by making his glory great to you.
That is why Psalm 16 says that at his right hand are pleasures that never ever end. There are pleasures that satisfy the human heart forevermore.
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