Something unnerving in the church today is how often we are caught "worshipping" without stirring our hearts and minds about the object of our worship. We are so easily pulled into music and lyric that we believe we have raised our affections and later upon thought of what we have sung or meditated on, we realize that maybe it was not Biblical. I think specifically of the example brought up in class of the song "Above All". How many times do we come unprepared into worship and blindly regurgitate words on a screen because it is what we ought to do? Sooner than the pre-chourus hits there are hands in the air and emotions are stirred. What is it if not the knowledge of the Holy that brings us to that point.
Sam Storms identifies affections as vigorous exercises of the heart. So, if we are not vigorously exercising our hearts during worship but are coming to similar effects what is it that we are worshipping?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Jack Hayford once said, “If I can get a person to
raise his hands, I can get him to speak in tongues.” Why? Both are external actions people perform. Once you are deceived into thinking that you can do better worship through the external raising of your hands, it is a small step to adopting another external sign like tongues speaking. Hand raising increases the emotion and intensity of feeling. However, once that wears away, you will want something else to bring on that feeling. And tongues will give you that next “rush” of feeling. And then there will need to be some other external sign. And it never ends.
In Matthew 23:25-28, Jesus promotes the inward, not
the outward. Is hand-raising only outward or does it
reflect a vital inward spiritual reality too?
If hand-raising is God’s prescribed way of praise and
worship, is He excited about all of it, or only those
who have pure hearts?
Post a Comment