If this is a "buzz," I want more of it

Light of the world, You stepped down into darkness,
Opened my eyes and let me see
Beauty that makes this heart adore You,
Hope for a life spent with You.

Here I am to worship
Here I am to bow down
Here I am to say that You're my God.
You're altogether lovely,
Altogether worthy,
Altogether wonderful to me.

Tim Highes, Here I Am to Worship

I stayed after singing in the second service of our church just so I could sing the song, Open The Eyes of My Heart, LORD. Today's worship was a feast for me. Today's sermon and Sunday school was positively glorious.

I'm concerned about something, about this notion in Christendom, especially conservative evangelicalism, that to "get a buzz" in worship is somehow wrong. Or, to sound even more heretical to my viewing audience, that it's wrong to want to manipulate the emotions of the congregation you are leading in worship through variations in musical style or whatever.

Now, the fruit of such concern is that there are indeed a vast amount of services and leaders who manipulate people into emotional frenzies that are unbiblical and no deeper than the skin on my body. So, as these people manipulate the emotions of the people, they are not turning their hearts toward God through His Word, but just mindless "feel good" liberalism.

But the damage this is also causing is that we somehow think that the emotional feelings we get in worship are by-products of real, solid, doctrinal worship of God. There is this notion that if we come to "get a buzz" (as the emotions produced from emotional music is often called) in worship, is no reason to worship God. This stems from thinking that to praise or worship God merely means to compliment Him or give Him our approval.

That's nonsense.

When I am about to sing a song of worship to God corporately, I want to engage the affections of my brothers and sisters so that we might magnify the Lord together. I want them to be stirred out of the stupor that was caused by a week's worth of vicious attacks from all that is in the world. All the pleasure the world promises... we forget about God being our chief delight. We scream and yell and are passionate about the Super Bowl, but when it comes to God, it's, as Packer says (and I quoted earlier this month), "deferential blankness." Sure, we'll pay lip service and sing the hymns and choruses and all that, but if I start getting emotional to the point of wanting to raise my hands, that's fleshly.

Again, that's nonsense.

When I get in front of the brothers and sisters of my church, I have examined myself and am ready to worship God. I am ready to tell God how much I delight in Him and that He is more important to me than anything and anyone in this world. And in so doing, my joy is made full not when the congregation says amen, or claps, or whatever. I don't care how you express your agreement, whether by clapping or saying amen or stomping the floor or throwing fish at the walls. I'm not singing for the agreement of the congregation. I'm singing to God, and one of my hopes that in so doing I might be joined by the hearts of the people in the service. I want them to worship God with me.

And telling God you love Him without feeling it is hypocrisy. And so, I want to engage the emotions in a very deep way, with truth. They go hand in hand. A song like Tim Hughe's Here I Am to Worship is one such song that I believe was designed to be emotional, but it is the emotions that truth causes.

Think about it! "[You] opened my eyes and let me see beauty that makes this heart adore You...." That truth, found strewn about the book of John and Romans and Ephesians... how can you say it with a straight face? How can it not grip you? God has called us out of the darkness into the Kingdom of His marvelous Light!

I was reading Psalm 34 again yesterday, which is fast becoming my favorite psalm, period. Hear this:

"I will bless the LORD at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul will make its boast in the LORD; the humble will hear it and rejoice. O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt His name together. I sought the LORD, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. They looked to Him and were radiant, and their faces will never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear Him, and rescues them. O taste and see that the LORD is good; how blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him." (Psalm 34:1-8)

If you ask me, it sounds like David is getting quite a "buzz" from the LORD. Not from His gifts, but in God Himself. The truth of God erupted spontaneously in David's heart into exuberant praise and delight in God. O taste and see that the LORD is good!

We do not worship because we feel good, nor do we feel good because we worship. It's not really a question which one goes first; it ought to be the same. I praise God not to compliment Him, but to express my lovesickness for Him. Does that mean that I am always gleefully and deliriously happy? No, as we may worship in tears or while we experience great suffering and trouble. But underneath it all are the everlasting arms of God.

I think Edwards hits the nail on the head:

"God is glorified not only by His glory being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart. God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory; and that it might be received both by the mind and heart. He that testifies his idea of God's glory doesn't glorify God so much as he that testifies also his appropbation [approval] of it and his delight in it." (Jonathan Edwards, Miscellanies)

So, my conclusion tonight is that for us to want to be joyfully satisfied and emotionally engaged when we sing is worship so long as it is in God that we are seeking such satisfaction. There is shallowness in merely wanting to "feel good," and there is deadness in just singing "because it honors God." Both the mind and the heart must be engaged.

If the "buzz" I've been getting in my worship of God, the feeling in my soul that I cannot possibly do without God, then I want more of this buzz. As the deer pants for streams of water so my soul pants for You, O God.