Christ or Chords? The Manipulated Emotionalism of Hillsong, Asbury, and Pentecostalized Evangelical Worship

 This applies not only to music but other forms of art such as movies and TV shows like The Chosen and The Jesus Revolution. Satan is an expert at manipulating humans - their feelings and emotions - so don't be fooled. There is only one real Jesus and it's not the Jesus of The Chosen. So maybe you will get goosebumps or cry, but  beware of these things.

MAR 13, 2023

SCOTT ANIOL


When Christ was asked about the great commandment in the Law, he answered without hesitation: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Mt 22:37). True worship of God is centered in our affections for him. As Jonathan Edwards rightly observed, “True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.” Indeed, a purely intellectualized worship is no worship at all.

This is one reason God has commanded that his people sing in corporate worship. Singing, Paul explains, allows believers to express their hearts to God, particularly thanksgiving (Col 3:16, Eph 5:19). The inspired songs of Scripture are filled with heart expression such as lament, contrition, thanksgiving, love, and praise.

However, the role of emotion and music in worship today has departed considerably from biblical precept and example. In fact, I would suggest that the relationship of emotion and music to worship in contemporary Christianity has shifted to such a significant degree that it hardly resembles what Scripture models.


The relationship of emotion and music to worship in contemporary Christianity has shifted to such a significant degree that it hardly resembles what Scripture models.


This reality is clearly evident with recent events like the faux revival at Asbury University, the global popularity of worship music of groups like Hillsong, or, frankly, the entire contemporary worship movement. It is almost impossible to engage in thoughtful, biblical conversation with contemporary Christians about worship, music, and emotion due to fundamental shifts that have come to characterize contemporary evangelicalism.

In each of these cases, intense emotional expression has come to define the essence of true relationship with God. “The students at Asbury are so passionate about God!” So we dare not question the validity of what’s happening. “I can feel God’s presence in that worship!” So why wouldn’t we promote that music? If the nature of true worship is love for God, why would we question whether these movements are biblical?

John MacArthur summarized the reason well in the recent Shepherd’s Conference Q&A session when he described what happened at Asbury as “chords over Christ.” “Shut off the music and see what happens,” he challenged.

MacArthur put his finger on the issue I have been identifying for many years: music has taken on an unprecedented and, indeed, unbiblical role in contemporary evangelical worship today, in which music is used to create what modern Christians assume to be “feelings of spirituality,” “the felt presence of God,” and “revival.” And because this function has become so intrenched in contemporary evangelicalism, to question the music, the feelings, or the experiences is to question the very work of God in many evangelicals’ minds.

No wonder I get so much hate mail.


Music has taken on an unbiblical role in contemporary evangelical worship today in which music is used to create what modern Christians assume to be “feelings of spirituality,” “the felt presence of God,” and “revival.”

Nothing More Than Feelings

Yet carefully defining the true nature of spiritual experience based upon the Word of God is critical. And, in particular, we need to recognize how modern notions of “emotion” are not the same thing as what the Bible calls praise, joy, or love.

The category of “emotion” is a relatively recent term, only entering common discourse about 200 years ago. Prior to that, people didn’t use the term, and consequently, they had a far more nuanced understanding of human sensibility.

Thomas Dixon traces the creation and evolution of this idea in his very helpful book, From Passions to Emotions. He demonstrates how the idea of emotion “is little more than a hundred years old. Darwin’s Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1872) and William James’ “What is an Emotion” (1884) are the first studies of the emotions using scientific methodology.”1

The category of emotion, shaped as it was by Enlightenment rationalism and Darwinian evolution, is defined primarily by effects upon the body, what we might call “feelings.” Then, with this more recent category firmly entrenched in modern thought, Christians read biblical descriptions of worship and relationship with God and define such realities also primarily in terms of feelings. Consequently, exhilaration, euphoria, and other merely chemical affects upon the body have come to define Christian worship and spirituality for most Christians today.

However, the biblical concept of affection was something entirely different. The fruit of the Spirit, for example, are by definition affections not inherently defined by physical feelings. Since God is a Spirit and does not have a body like man, affections like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are fundamentally spiritual. Though each of these affections certainly may affect the body, they are not defined by physical feelings.

Furthermore, even the nature of how spiritual affections affect the body or what kinds of feelings may accompany them differ from the nature of physical feelings typically associated with worship in contemporary evangelicalism.

For example, Michael Brown recently tweeted the following:


Immediately you can see his assumption that the modern category of emotion is inherently an essential part of worship. And so I responded to his tweet by listing many passages that do, indeed, caution against unbridled physical feelings:Romans 12:3 – Think with sober judgment
Gal 5:23 – The fruit of the Spirit is self-control.
1 Thess 5:6, 8 – Be sober.
1 Tim 2:9 – women should be self-controlled.
1 Tim 3:2 – An overseer is to be sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable.
1 Tim 3:8 – Deacons must be dignified.
1 Tim 3:11 – Deacon’s wives must be dignified and sober-minded.
2 Tim 1:7 – God gave us a spirit of self-control.
2 Tim 3:3 – The last days will be characterized by lack of self-control.
2 Tim 4:5 – Paul commands Timothy to be sober-minded.
Titus 1:8 – An overseer should be self-controlled and disciplined.
Titus 2:2-6 – Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women are to be reverent in behavior. Younger women and younger men are to be self-controlled.
Titus 2:12 – Renounce ungodliness and worldy passions, but be self-controlled.
1 Peter 1:13 Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 4:7 – The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.
1 Peter 5:8 – Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
2 Peter 1:6 – Add to your faith self-control and steadfastness.

Unbridled emotion is actually a mark of spiritual immaturity, while true spiritual affections have more modest affects upon the body. Religious affections will be characterized, not by intense euphoria, but by what Jonathan Edwards calls “the lamb-like, dove-like spirit or temper of Jesus Christ.” Truly Spirit-formed religious affections, according to Edwards, “naturally beget and promote such a spirit of love, meekness, quietness, forgiveness, and mercy, as appeared in Christ.”2

Instead of cultivating true biblical religious affections, contemporary evangelicalism has become what a former professor of mine called a “glandular religion.”
Musical Manipulation

With the secular category of emotion thoroughly impacting Christian interpretation of worship and relationship with God, Christians in the nineteenth century began to look for means to cultivate the kinds of feelings they assumed to be essential characteristics of conversion, spiritual growth, and worship.

They found the perfect tool in pop music.

Charles Finney was among the first to urge those leading his revival services to use music to create “feelings of spirituality.” Believing it was the preacher’s responsibility to create the proper conditions for revival through raising excitement, a kind of music designed to quickly manufacture such excitement was the ideal stimulant.

And stimulant is exactly what that music is. Pop music is specifically designed to produce immediate gratification through direct stimulation of bodily feelings. After Finney, this kind of music began to replace the substantive hymnody of church history past that was carefully chosen to give expression to biblical religious affections.

Since the earliest days of the church, church leaders had cautioned against using music in worship that was simply designed to stir up feelings. Clement of Alexandria, for example, insisted,


But we must abominate extravagant music, which enervates men’s souls, and leads to changefulness—now mournful, and then licentious and voluptuous, and then frenzied and frantic.3

Rather, Clement argued that the church’s hymnody should employ “temperate harmonies.”4 In A New Song for an Old World, Calvin Stapert notes how uniform this understanding of music was among early pastors and theologians.

This emphasis was renewed during the Reformation. Martin Luther and other German reformers insisted that worship music embody reverence. For example, Johann Konrad Dannhauer required that music be “sacred, glowing with love, humble, dignified, the praise of God sung by the voice of men and instruments with becoming grace and majesty,” contrasted with “profane music, which is unspiritual, frivolous, proud, irreverent.”5 Likewise, Balthasar Meisner insisted,


Let all levity, and sensualism be absent [in worship music]. On the contrary, let gravity and a pious intent of the mind prevail, which does not contemplate and pursue bare harmony but devoutly fits and joins to it the inmost desires and affections. For unless a ready spirit is joined to the turns of the voice and a vigilant and fervent heart to the varied words, we weary God and ourselves in vain with that melody. For not our voice but our prayer, not musical chords but the heart, and a heart not clamoring but loving, sings in the ear of God.6

John Calvin, too, insisted that music used for worship fit its solemn purpose, having “weight” and “majesty” rather than being “light” or “frivolous.”7

These theologians understood the proper place and function of music in worship. They knew that biblically, emotion and singing come as a result of the Spirit’s work through the Word of God in a believer’s life, not as a cause of the Holy Spirit’s work. Calvin Stapert helpful makes this point with reference to Ephesians 5:18–19 and Colossians 3:16:


“Spirit filling” does not come as the result of singing. Rather, “Spirit filling” comes first; singing is the response. . . . Clear as these passages are in declaring that Christian singing is a response to the Word of Christ and to being filled with the Spirit, it is hard to keep from turning the cause and effect around. Music, with it stimulating power, can too easily be seen as the cause and the “Spirit filling” as the effect.8

“Such a reading of the passages,” Stapert argues, “gives song an undue epicletic function and turns it into a means of beguiling the Holy Spirit.” He argues that such a “magical epicletic function” characterized pagan worship music, not Christian.9

In other words, in Scripture, it is Christ over chords. True spiritual affections are created within us by allowing the Word of Christ to richly dwell within us; singing then helps us to express those affections that were created by the Spirit of Christ filling us with the Word of Christ.


Singing then helps us to express those affections that were created by the Spirit of Christ filling us with the Word of Christ.

The Pentecostalization of Evangelical Worship

The evangelical expectation of intense feelings manufactured by music as the essence of spirituality was only exacerbated by Pentecostalism in the twentieth century. Charismatic theologians argue that the Holy Spirit’s primary work in worship is that of making God’s presence known in observable, tangible ways such that worshipers can truly encounter God. This theology places a high emphasis and expectation in worship upon physical expressiveness and intensity, resulting in what is sometimes called a “Praise and Worship” theology of worship. The goal, in this theology, is to experience the presence of God in worship, but praise is considered the means through which Christians do so.

This change in theology of worship led to a new understanding of worship music perhaps best described by Ruth Ann Ashton’s 1993 God’s Presence through Music,10 raising the matter of musical style to a level of significance that Lim and Ruth describe as “musical sacramentality,” where music is now considered a primary means through which “God’s presence could be encountered in worship.”11
Musically Manufactured Emotion is No Work of God


We must be careful to define spiritual affections biblically and put music in its proper place. Otherwise, we risk worshiping chords instead of Christ.


The use of music to manufacture “feelings of spirituality” is exactly why Hillsong and the whole contemporary worship music movement are so popular—take away the music, and you eliminate the “feelings of spirituality.” In fact, the Hillsong documentary that came out last year made this very point:

The use of music to manufacture “revival” is what drove the events at Asbury—take away the music, and you eliminate the “revival.” Since when is a bunch of college kids swaying to music for multiple consecutive days revival?

MacArthur was right: in most of evangelicalism today, it is chords over Christ.

True religion does consist in the religious affections, and music is a wonderful gift from God that helps to give expression to the affections created by the Spirit through his Word.

But we must be careful to define spiritual affections biblically and put music in its proper place. Otherwise, we risk worshiping chords instead of Christ.

Ceaseless Prayer in the Church

By J. Mike Minnix
Bible Book: Isaiah 62 : 6-7

On your walls, O Jerusalem,
I have set watchmen;
all the day and all the night
they shall never be silent.
You who put the Lord in remembrance,
take no rest,
and give him no rest
until he establishes Jerusalem
and makes it a praise in the earth.

Introduction
I want to speak to you today on the subject of prayer, especially the effective prayer of God’s people when they join together on bended knee to call upon the Lord. It is a strange thing, but a very real one, that most of us will depend on our wisdom, experience, education, contacts, positions of power, and anything else at our disposal in God’s work until we find ourselves unable to move forward. Then, and only then, we will say, “I guess we had better pray about this situation.” If only we began with prayer, continued in prayer, and surrendered through prayer, we would find that the work never comes to an impasse. When we depend on ourselves, we get exactly what we are able to do. In a world of spiritual conflict, we will quickly discover that we have no power at all without God’s work in and through us. So, I want us to think about prayer and the work of God’s Church.

In Isaiah 62:6 and following, we find a very interesting passage of scripture that points clearly to the Church of our Lord. In this chapter, it is Christ who is speaking. He is speaking not just to Judah but to the Church. Why do I say that this word was spoken, not just to Judah, but to the Church – even though it was spoken seven-hundred years before the Church appeared on the earth? We see that this text refers to the Church in its use of the marriage analogy in verses 4 and 5. We further observe this truth in the words of verse 10 where the banner is raised for the nations to come. Only in Christ did the nations come to God's kingdom. The clear picture of the Church is seen in verses 11 and 12 where the "Holy People" and "Redeemed of the Lord" are mentioned. The "City No Longer Deserted" can be none other than the New Jerusalem of Revelation.

The fact that this passage is addressed to the Church takes on deeper meaning when we investigate the significance it has for us today. Let us begin at verse 6 and learn something about the power and peace of prevailing prayer in the New Testament Church.

I. THE POSTING - ISAIAH 62:6A

In verses 6 we notice that God has posted some people on the wall of the city, whom He calls “watchmen.” What was a watchman? In the days of old, people lived within walled cities. Unlike people in our day, who like to live in the suburbs of larger cities rather than in the city proper, the people in ancient times wanted to live with the city itself. Why? Because the city was surrounded by walls which protected the inhabitants from bands of enemies, barbarians and terrorists who desired to kill anyone in their path and steal everything of value.

Watchmen were placed on the walls to protect the citizens inside the city gates. If trouble inside or outside the walls was spotted, a watchman would call for the captain of the guard who would bring soldiers to defend the city against any threat.

How does the analogy of the watchman apply to the Church? In just this way. God has chosen to use prayer as his method of sending out an alarm or call for help. He places believers on the wall of prayer and tells us to cry out when something is amiss. Who do we call? There is no human army that can deal with the spiritual assaults which are mounted against God’s people – against the Church of our Lord! No, we can call on no other than the Captain of our Salvation - our precious Lord - to come to our rescue. Thus, God places believers on the wall of prayer to call out to Him!

We need to note two important characteristics regarding the posting of the watchers on the wall of prayer.

A. The Personal Commission ... By the Lord

Remember, we need to see that is it our Lord – Jesus, Himself - speaking in the passage before us. He says, "I have posted watchmen on your walls...". The Lord is the One who has chosen to use prayer as a means of accomplishing His work. We can never fully understand how prayer works. I am convinced that we are not to understand prayer but simply undertake prayer and then we will see God work through it!

Jesus is our Master. We are not to question Him but simply to act in faith. Jesus once made mud from the mixture of His saliva and the dust of the ground. He put the strange concoction on the eyes of a blind man and told him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. The order seemed ridiculous, but nevertheless the poor blind man obeyed and received His sight! Our duty is to do what He tells us and to trust fully in His power to accomplish the promises He has made.

B. The Positional Condition ... In the Lord

But we must note another important feature of the posting of the watchers. God only commissions prayer for those who are in Christ. We see this in the fact that He is addressing those who are united to Him through marriage. Look more closely at Isaiah 62:4 and 5. Surely this imagery signifies the manner in which the Lord speaks of His Church in the New Testament. This portion of scripture is prophetic and powerful. The Lord loves the Church as a bridegroom loves his bride. Jesus is the Bridegroom of the Church and the Church is the Bride of Christ!

Many times God addresses the important aspect of our union with the Savior in the Scriptures. Note at least five of these occasions.

1. Matrimonial Example
Bride wed to the Bridegroom (Isaiah 62:5 et al) - Christ the Bridegroom

2. Biological Example
Members of the Body (Eph. 4:15‑16) ‑ Christ the Head

3. Horticultural Example
Branches in the Vine (John 15:5) ‑ Christ the Stem

4. Architectural Example
Stones in the Building (Eph. 2:20‑22) ‑ Christ the Corner

5. Zoological Example
Sheep of a Flock (Acts 20:28) ‑ Christ the Shepherd

Only those who have accepted Christ as Savior and, thus, have been united with Him can offer effective prayers. It is not enough to know about Him. It is not enough to simply believe that he exists. After all, the devils believe in God and tremble at His power, but they cannot pray. No, you must be born again through a personal encounter and relationship with Christ in order to minister through prayer.

II. THE PRAYING OF THE WATCHERS - Isaiah 62:6b-7a

What is it that the Christians posted on the wall are to do? They are to call to God in the face of the enemies of the Church and our souls. In fact, this is just another way of saying that we are to pray fervently. This is God's command to us. God has chosen to hear prayer and to act when His people pray. Prayer is not something we fully understand but when we undertake to pray as we are instructed we discover the power and wonder in it. Note two significant facts about the praying of the watchers.

A. The Constant Work

The work of praying on the wall is to be constant. The Lord says we are to never be silent in this operation. How is this possible? I cannot pray day and night. I must sleep. I must work and sometimes my work will demand concentration which will not allow me to pray. How can I do this thing which the Lord requests?

Remember that watchmen served in turns. That is, some people served while others went about their other duties. Then they exchanged positions. People in the military serve on guard duty, but a soldier does not stay out on duty for eight hours. Rather, a soldier will be on duty two hours, and then off duty for four hours. So, the soldiers take turns guarding their post.

This is precisely the way God meant for us to pray. In fact, I’m proposing that we begin a Prayer Wall Ministry [This was a plan I used in First Baptist Church, Lilburn, Metro Atlanta, Georgia in 1994], as some other churches are doing, so that we can have continual prayer going up to God from our church family. Each person is being asked to take an hour on watch per week. During that specific hour, you will pray and call upon God in behalf of the many needs which can be observed all around us. If one-hundred and sixty-eight people would agree to take one hour each, we could pray without ceasing as a church family. With our attendance, there is no reason we cannot have two or more people for each hour of each day per week calling on the Lord. We can be engaged in the constant work of praying around the clock.

B. The Calling Work

The praying of the watchers was also to be a calling on the Lord in which we take no rest nor give God any rest. What an interesting way for the Lord to summon us to prayer. We are to remind God; that is the fullest meaning of our text. The Hebrew word means to be a remembrancer.

Does God need reminding? Has He some form of cosmic, celestial Alzheimer’s disease? God does not need reminding, but He has chosen to work based on the remembered promises which His people claim before Him. Does this mean that God may not work if we do not remind Him of some promise? Precisely! You will remember that Jesus once went to minister in Galilee but could not do many mighty miracles there because of their unbelief (Mark 6:4-6). God has linked Himself in some spiritual manner to the prayers and faith of His people. For us to fail to prayer is in essence to pray to fail!

We are to remind God of His promises. This is not so that God will remember His promises, it is so that we will remember and claim those promises which God has made to us!

III. THE PROMISES TO THE WATCHERS - ISAIAH 62:7B

God has made specific promises to those who will mount the walls of prayer. These promises should grip our hearts and cause us to sprint to the walls of prayer.
A. Protection so that the Enemy may not Steal our Work

Verses 6 through 9 tell us that the hand of God will be granted to us when we pray. For what purpose will God's hand be extended? So that the enemy can no longer steal the fruit of our work! Nothing is worse than laboring faithfully and then finding that Satan has stolen the fruit of our work. That is what happened in the days of Isaiah. The people planted their crops, weeded them and watered them faithfully. They worked in the hot sun for hours each day to insure a good crop. Then, when the crop was ready for harvest, an enemy would come along and steal their crops from the field. That is what Satan wants to do today! We must so pray that God will extend His hand of provision and block the enemy from stealing that which God has granted.

B. Proclamation so that the Enemy may not Suppress our Witness

Furthermore, God promises to open a highway of proclamation so that the enemy cannot stifle our witness. What good is our testimony for Christ, unless God's Spirit administers it to the hearer? Satan would love for us to witness in the flesh for he knows that such evangelism is infertile and in vain! Let us ascend the walls of prayer so that each witness will have God's touch of power upon it. Then the lost will come weeping and will turn to Christ. Before another teenage suicide, before another broken family, before another soul plunges into hell, let us pray and not be silent even as God has commanded.

C. Preservation so that the enemy may not Stop our Worship

That which is described in the final verses of Isaiah chapter 62 relates to the return of Christ. He will come with His reward. What shall we do on that day? In the Book of Revelation we read the record of those events. Chapter 4 of Revelation tells us that we shall receive crowns but we shall cast them at His feet. Chapter five tells us that we shall sing a song of praise to the Lamb. We shall praise Him forevermore. Here our praise is deep and real, but it is tempered with the trials and tribulations of our flesh. One day we shall praise Him freely and forever. We shall never grow weary or need rest from giving Him glory!

Conclusion

What is needed is a commitment to obey our Lord in this matter. We must take our place upon the wall of pray so that we are never silent and we call to Him day and night! It will make a difference in our Work, a difference in our Witness and a difference in our Worship now and forever.

Moses prayed for the Lord not to consume the people when they had sinned. He reminded God of His great mercy (Numbers 11:1-2).

Samuel told the people that he would not sin against the Lord by failing to pray for them (1 Samuel 12:23-25).

Daniel prayed for the people (Daniel 9:17-19).

Stephen prayed as he died for the people who stoned him (Acts 7:60).

Paul prayed for Israel to be saved (Romans 9:2).

Christ intercedes for us before the throne of the Father (Hebrews 7:25).

The Holy Spirit is always available to help us when we pray (Romans 8:25).

We cannot work till we pray, but we can do mighty work after we pray! So let us join the saints of old and be a people of prayer. Let us join our blessed Savior in the act of intercession. Let us cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the matter of true prayer!

Someone here today needs to pray a prayer of repentance from sin and faith in Christ. If that is your need, when we sing in moment, you can come and one of our counselors will pray with you.

I’m asking for you as members to come and pick up a card this morning. Take it home and commit to the Lord to take one hour a week to pray, so that we fill every hour of every day to lift up prayers to the Lord. Turn in your card in the next four weeks and we will begin to fill in each hour for each day.

Charles Spurgeon once said, “I would rather teach one man to pray than 10 men to preach." Andrew Murray wrote, “The man who mobilizes the Christian church to pray will make the greatest contribution to world evangelization in history.”

[Our church filled every hour of every day for an entire year - in that year our church prayed around the clock. Those praying did not have to come to the church – they prayed wherever they were at their given hour of commitment. We also offered prayer guides to help those who struggled with praying. In that year and a couple of years afterward, we saw incredible growth in spirit and in numbers, and broke the all-time record for baptisms in our church. A couple of years later we entered into a Prayer Partner Ministry, and once again we saw remarkable results. I encourage every pastor to lead your people to be a praying congregation. No plan or program can be what God intends without persistent, believing, dedicated prayer.]

The greatest enemy.......

........ of the life of faith in God is not sin, but good choices which are not quite good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best.  Oswald Chambers

Saw the following article on Brian King's facebook page and loved it!

Good Intentions Gone Bad

by R.C. Sproul

The adage tells us that there is a destination, the road to which is paved with good intentions. It is the destination that we would prefer not to reach. Good intentions can have disastrous results and consequences. When we look at the revolution of worship in America today, I see a dangerous road that is built with such intentions. The good purposes that have transformed worship in America have as their goal to reach a lost world — a world that is marked by baby boomers and Generation Xers who have in many ways rejected traditional forms and styles of worship. Many have found the life of the church to be irrelevant and boring, and so an effort to meet the needs of these people has driven some radical changes in how we worship God.

Perhaps the most evident model developed over the last half century is that model defined as the “seeker-sensitive model.” Seekers are defined as those people who are unbelievers and are outside of the church but who are searching for meaning and significance to their lives. The good intention of reaching such people with evangelistic techniques that include the reshaping of Sunday morning worship fails to understand some significant truths set forth in Scripture.

In Romans 3, Paul makes abundantly clear that unconverted people do not seek after God. Thomas Aquinas understood this and maintained that to the naked eye it may seem that unbelievers are searching for God or seeking for the kingdom of God, while they are in fact fleeing from God with all of their might. What Aquinas observed was that people who are unconverted seek the “benefits” that only God can give them, such as ultimate meaning and purpose in their lives, relief from guilt, the presence of joy and happiness, and things of this nature. These are benefits the Christian recognizes can only come through a vital, saving relationship with Christ. The gratuitous leap of logic comes when church leaders think that because people are searching for benefits only God can give them, they must therefore be searching after God. No, they want the benefits without the Giver of the benefits. And so structuring worship to accommodate unbelievers is misguided because these unbelievers are not seeking after God. Seeking after God begins at conversion, and if we are to structure our worship with a view to seekers, then we must structure it for believers, since only believers are seekers.

When we look at the early church, we see that the Christians of the first century gathered on the Lord’s day, devoting themselves to the study of the apostles’ doctrine, to fellowship, to prayer, and to the breaking of bread (Acts 2:42). This was not an assembly of unbelievers. It was an assembling together of believers. Of course, as our Lord warned, there are always present among believers people who have made false professions of faith. There are always the tares that grow alongside of the wheat (Matt. 13:36–43). But one does not structure the church to meet the felt needs and desires of the tares. The purpose of corporate assembly, which has its roots in the Old Testament, is for the people of God to come together corporately to offer their sacrifices of praise and worship to God. So the first rule of worship is that it be designed for believers to worship God in a way that pleases God. 

The Old Testament has manifold examples of His severe displeasure that was provoked when the people decided to structure worship according to what they wanted rather than to that which God commanded. Perhaps the most vivid illustration of that is found in Leviticus 10, in the narrative account of the sudden execution of the sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, for their attempts at offering strange fire upon the altar. These young priests “experimented” in a manner that was displeasing to God, and God’s response that He spoke to Aaron through Moses was this: “Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified” (Lev. 10:3). Corporate worship is not the place to celebrate the profane or the secular. It may be more attractive to Generation Xers to turn Sunday morning worship into an imitation of Starbucks, but it hardly can be thought to be pleasing to God. 

Another erroneous assumption made in the attempt to restructure the nature of worship is that the modern generation has been so changed by cultural and contextual influences — such as the impact of the electronic age upon their lives — that they are no longer susceptible to traditional attempts of being reached by expository preaching. Early in the twentieth century, the liberal preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick pointed out that people were no longer interested in coming to church to hear what some apostle or prophet wrote a couple thousand years ago. Such words and messages were completely irrelevant according to Fosdick, and so the focus of preaching has moved in many cases away from an exposition of the Word of God. We assume this alteration is necessary if we’re to reach the people who have been trapped within the changes of our current culture. The erroneous assumption is that in the last fifty years, the constituent nature of humanity has changed, as if the heart can no longer be reached via the mind. It also assumes that the power of the Word of God has lost its potency, so that we must look elsewhere if we are to find powerful and moving experiences of worship in our church. Though the intentions may be marvelous, the results, I believe, are and will continue to be catastrophic.

Live Before You Die - day 17

God may challenge us to think differently about things or to reach out to new levels of faith, but He doesn't create confusion or the doubt and strife that often accompany it.

Jesus's voice comes with an awareness of heavenly peace. Sometimes the Lord speaks words of correction and rebuke.  There are also situations when the word of the Lord is time sensitive and immediate action is required.  But most of the time when God speaks, it is not a driving, demanding, high-pressure, "You have to do this right now or else!"

The voice of our own longings, interests, and opinions can easily be confused with God's voice.  To make sure what we are hearing is from God, we must identify our desires and self-interests and, as an intentional act of our will, neutralize them.  Conversely, the quieter the voice of our own will, the louder God's voice will be.  Therefore, if what you are sensing grows quieter as you silence your desires, then it is not from God.  But if what you are sensing grows stronger as you neutralize your own desires, then it just might be from the Holy Spirit.

God seldom speaks to strangers who have no time for Him, and even if He did, they would not recognize His voice.  He loves to speak to people who love Him and desire to live their lives in His presence.  He draws near to those who, as an act of their will, have drawn near to Him (James 4:8).  The more time we spend alone with Him seeking His face through prayer and worship, the easier it becomes to hear and immediately recognize His voice in our hearts.

We can all hear the voice of God if we will learn to listen. "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Rom 8:14).

Daniel Kolenda, Live before you die