Awe & Joy - Part 2

After last week’s newsletter article [link], some may have wondered, “Andy, you spoke of worship primarily in emotional and experiential terms. Isn’t worship a choice and an action?” (As a reminder, I defined worship as seeking to be overwhelmed with awe and filled up with joy in Jesus.)

In short, my answer to the question above is, “Yes. Worship is a choice and an action.” However, God’s word is more nuanced than that.

Notice the first word in my definition is “seeking.” Emotionalism focuses on manufacturing emotion and an experience. A biblical worshipper recognizes that sometimes the emotions and the experience are present; sometimes they are not. But, the biblical worshipper is also always seeking, by God's grace, for their heart to be stirred and their imagination to be awakened.

The biblical worshipper always desires to be overwhelmed with awe at the bigness and holiness of our great God--as a way of honoring Him. And, the biblical worshipper seeks to “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice" (Phil. 4:4).
 
But, when the emotions and the experience aren’t there, we obey anyway. We read and listen to God’s word anyway. We sing anyway. We pray anyway. We partake of the Lord’s Supper anyway. Why? Because our Lord has commanded these (1 Tim. 4:13; Eph. 5:19; Col. 4:3; 1 Cor. 11:26), and we love Him (John 14:15).

My final critical reason for using the word “seeking” is that our hearts should always be discontent with awe-less and joy-less worship, however frequently we may find ourselves in these states. We should find it simply unacceptable to operate for extended periods as those who honor God with mere outward actions (Isaiah 29:13) apart from a heart that wells up with thanksgiving and praise and confession of need and brokenness over sin and affection for Jesus.

So, my challenge again this week is to seek to be overwhelmed with awe and filled up with joy in God’s presence.