Many professed Christians in the 21st century are seeking worshipful feelings during the Sunday service. Or I could say, that many believe that they will experience some powerful feelings when they are rightly worshiping God….
It seems that whole denominations are dedicated to stirring up the emotions of their congregants so that they might experience worship.
But in the 21st century the focus on emotions / feelings / affections is perverted.
How so?
Worshipers are focused on the wrong end of the process.
The true root of worship is not affections, but those are the fruit.
What is the root?
Doctrine; love of God’s truth.
Doctrine, love of truth and God-given understanding generate affections with which one might truly worship God.
For example, if you abide in God’s word and come to understand the doctrine of sin from scripture. And you see that doctrine playing out in the sin of your own life, in your interactions with God and with humans; if you wrestle with it and come to understand that you are powerless to stop it, to fix it, to fix yourself…and you subsequently experience spiritual bankruptcy as in Matthew 5:3; then you will experience the emotion of utter delight regarding God’s mercy and His forgiveness of sin.
That delight, that emotion, will be the fruit of your understanding of your own depravity and the forgiveness that results from Christ’s atoning work and His righteous life that have been imputed to you.
That is, powerful emotions will have been generated inside you because of that understanding; those emotions will move you to praise God via singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs…. And you will praise Him to anyone, anytime you have such an experience, or are reminded of such an experience, because you have an understanding of your own utter unworthiness and His great mercy….
Such understandings flow from God the Holy Spirit illuminating His word to you when you are abiding in His word. And as He says in Proverbs 2; Psalm 37, etc., those who cry out for such understanding, like they are digging for gold and silver, will be given their heart’s desire.
In the above scenario, the root understanding (deriving from knowledge of doctrine; self-observation; self-examination; self-knowledge; wrestling with sin…) has borne the gracious fruit of genuine religious affections / emotions. That fruit moves one towards praising God in words, song, music, loving others, helping others, or any other vehicle with which God has gifted one.
In much contemporary worship, the preacher and the choir / band…is pounding away at you to generate feelings. They are manipulating you to cause feelings inside you. These feelings may cause you to sing more loudly, to cry, etc., but they are not genuine worshipful feelings (unless you have the aforementioned understanding; and if you had such, then you likely would not be in such a church).
The link below shows the criteria developed by Jonathan Edwards (also see below the video) from his research after the great awakening of 1741; it denotes a difference between true and counterfeit conversions, based on genuine and counterfeit emotions.
To arrive at those findings, he examined the experiences of true converts and those who fell away after claiming to have had a conversion experience.
He identified the types of feelings that are signs of true conversion; and the types that are NOT sure signs of conversion.
The NOT sure signs are those seen in many worship services in our time; read them and discover for yourself by clicking the following link:
Edwards no sign, sign, partial Justin Taylor blog post
The 3 minute video below, by Dr. John MacArthur is saying the same thing. I tried to say some things that he did not say, but that make the same point.
Another profound discovery of Edwards was what he termed, the struggle of faith. I pasted in the following from another post, The Sinner’s Prayer (see categories, Study Helps, to hear the half hour video from which the following was copied).
Edwards established a 5 stage process which he termed, the struggle of faith: 1) horror of being eternally lost; 2), the sinner’s attempt to stop sinning via his will power; 3), realization that only God can save him from sin; 4), conviction, because the sinner is beginning to see that God’s judgment is just; 5), awakening to God with genuine religious affections.
(Note: the struggle of faith also indicates that emotions or affections flow from understanding that comes from reading the word of God; and self-observation; self-knowledge.)
The following prominent Christians spent many years between stages 1 and 5 of Edwards standard of assessment for genuine conversion:
John Calvin, 12 years; Wesley, 23 years; Whitefield, 10 years; Fox, 12 years; Edwards, 5 years; Brainerd, 9 years; Newton, 6 years; Spurgeon, 4 years….
I am left thinking, “Where am I on this scale?” The criteria of stages 3 and 4 are very familiar to me; not so with 5. I must examine myself more carefully.
At what stage are you?
STUDY RECOMMENDATIONS:
To hear the sure signs in video posts, see Categories; Jonathan Edwards (posts by Dr. Jeff Mayfield, very succinct videos; on his YouTube site, Knowing To Love, are the 12 Not Sure Signs).
For more posts in this blog that address this topic, see: categories, Christian Music; Doctrine; Beatitude Life Posts; Jonathan Edwards.