Glory in His holy name;
Let the heart of those who seek the LORD be glad.
— 1 Chronicles 16:10
After David brought the ark of God into the tent in the city of David, the occasion overflowed with joy and gladness. And out of that joy came a song of thanksgiving — and these are the words we find within it.
Glory to His Holy Name
The song opens by ascribing glory to the holy name of God. This is where true worship always begins — with God Himself. His name is holy. He is worthy of the praise, honour, and adoration that is due to Him.
The word glory carries a sense of weight — of something immensely significant and important. To ascribe glory to God is to declare that He carries a weight of significance that nothing and no one else in all creation can match. This is the essence of worship — giving to God the weight and reverence that He alone deserves.
And this is the natural posture of a heart that has truly seen what God has done. When we behold His works — when we consider His grace and His goodness toward us — the only fitting response is to declare His glory.
Let Those Who Seek Him Be Glad
The song then turns from its focus on God to describe what happens to those who worship Him. It says that the hearts of those who seek the Lord will be glad. Not just content — glad. Joyful. Full.
This is the promise embedded in genuine worship and seeking after God. When God is truly glorified in a heart, that heart is blessed. It becomes glad and satisfied. Paul echoes this when he writes that the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
And this makes profound sense when you consider what lies at the very heart of every human pursuit. Beneath all our striving — for success, for love, for meaning, for pleasure — there is a deeper hunger that none of these things can ultimately satisfy. It has been well said that inside the heart of every person there is a God-shaped void — a hollow that only God Himself can fill. When we turn to Him in worship and seek after Him with our whole hearts, that void begins to be filled. We become satisfied in the way nothing else can satisfy us.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism captures this beautifully in its very first question: What is the chief end of man? The answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.
To glorify God and to enjoy Him are not two separate things — they are one. The heart that truly glorifies God is the heart that finds its deepest joy in doing so.
Glad as We Seek
May we be a people who ascribes glory to the holy name of God — and who discovers, in the very act of seeking Him, that our hearts are made glad.
Amen.
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