Stop the Worship? (Radio / Podcast)

You worship what you do not know…
(John 4:22 – ESV)

As a pastor you always need to be talking to the song leaders about the balance. We should review the songs in the rotation and look together at new songs that they want to bring in. In this way you can use these times as teachable moments. Indeed we should have feelings and responses because of God's grace, but we need more "Thou art" and less "I will" in the songs, God entranced and not man entranced.

Now sometimes songs can slip by you or they can slip by a congregation without anyone really focusing on what is actually being taught. Congregational singing is more than stirring up feelings, it is teaching each other in song, and it is important, albeit for reasons that are sometimes lost on “worship leaders”.

It should be more about “doctrinal led devotion” than simply proclaiming our increasing love for a God we aren’t increasing in our knowledge of. It isn’t how much more I feel Him means how much more I love Him, but how much more I know Him, and then this would produce the proper devotion. We more often than not get the order reversed, and think we are growing deeper in our love for Him when we are actually growing colder even as our feelings burn hot.

Considering this, I have literally “stopped the worship” more than once. Actually I just stopped the music and singing and focused our worship on some truth I was absolutely sure we needed to hear more clearly as we sang it.

It was during the song “unfailing love” that I stopped the music and went over to the screen and pointed out the lyrics and something I wanted to make sure people noticed. The lyrics were “Praise you God of earth and sky how beautiful is your unfailing love, unfailing love”… “And you never change Lord you remain the holy one and my unfailing love, unfailing love”.

From these lyrics I showed that they teach correctly that His unfailing love is grounded in His holiness, “you never change you remain the holy one”, and so therefore He remains unfailing in His love. His love is grounded in His holiness not in our faithfulness and His holiness is that from which His love springs, not vice versa.

I’m not sure whether or not the author intended it this way, but it was good to point out considering the sermon of the day, or any day, nonetheless.

Also I used the stoppage purposefully to stop people from just “going with the flow”. The atmosphere was starting to get moving, and not necessarily in a bad way, but I wanted to make sure people don’t always equate this “everybody’s into it” thing with “now we are really worshipping”. I pointed out that we shouldn’t bristle at someone, something, or some event stopping our “flow”.

I asked if anyone was thinking like, “I was just getting into it man”, and how their focus would be wrong. Well, no sir, you were just feeling it, but God was already here to be worshipped and you must renew your mind to the fact that feelings are a byproduct of worship, not the conduit of them. Feelings aren’t the way into His presence, as if we simply stir up our emotions by repeating some vague chorus over and over, and “poof!” God is there. No. Was I wrong to stop the singing, no, not at all, it was a good demonstration of the fact that if this hindered your worship than you were worshipping at the altar of your own feelings.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©