- Do you get bored when someone reads a longish passage of Scripture in your church? Do you start wishing they’d get on with the music?
- Do you need music playing in the background for the reading of Scripture to affect your emotions?
- Does a prayer seem too “plain” or “stark” to you if it doesn’t have music playing behind it?
- Do you feel depressed a few weeks after a worship conference because you haven’t felt close to God in a long time?
- Do you desperately look forward to the next conference you’re going to attend because you know that, finally, you’ll be able to feel close to God again?
- If you’re in a big church with great music, are you able to worship when you visit your parents’ small rural church?
- Do you ever feel worshipful in the middle of the week, at work, at school, etc. just because of thinking about God and his grace? Or does that only happen when the music’s playing?
- Do you tend to feel closer to God when you’re alone with your iPOD than you do when you’re gathered with God’s people in your church?
- Do you feel like you just can’t connect with other believers who haven’t had the same “worship experiences” that you have? Can you only connect with other believers who “know what it feels like to really worship?”
- Is your sense of spiritual well-being based more on feeling close to God, or knowing that you are close to God because of Jesus Christ?
This was a part of a series of posts over on the 9Marks blog by Greg Gilbert. I would encourage you to read them (the first is here). There is some back and forth on the subject that is helpful in keeping a focus on God-centered worship, not on emotion or music centered worship.
The bottom line, I suppose, is that it would do every Christian well to do some honest heart-searching about what makes them feel “close to God.” Can you feel close to God just by reading or saying the words, “In Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”? Would you be able to function in a church that’s great in every way except the music? If not, you probably need to give some thought to whether your spiritual life is dependent on something it should not be dependent on.
2 comments:
No doubt the Charasmatic and Pentecostal movements have brought a lot to modern Christianity, but one thing they have made much worse is the sense that we must alway "feel" God and "experience" Him in order to have a truly meaningful church service. There is a strong sense in the Worship Movement that unless you truly feel the love of God in the moments of worship, your faith is false.
This is simply a load of lies. Yes, sometimes we have our moments where we seem to feel God's very presence and those moments are to be cherished. But just as often, God feels far away. He has told us He "will never leave us or forsake us" - does the lack of a feeling mean He is a liar? Not at all. Instead, it is a reflection of our own humanity.
Consider this. In human relationships, there are moments when we feel so close to our loved ones that we almost feel like a single organism. But those moments are brief and rare. Most of the time, our loved ones are the other person in the room who just farted. When the other person stinks or seems totally out of sync with our emotion, do we conclude they no longer love us or that they are no longer worthy of our love? No. We keep on acting out our love, and trust the feeling will return at the proper time.
The same should go for God. And we should be teaching people this, which is something I have not heard in a long time from a pulpit.
I was going to comment with something like Nomad's comments. As usual, he said it much better than I could have.
Our feelings have nothing to do with God's reality. Our feelings are fickle. God is steadfast.
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