The Weirdness of Lifting My Hands
May 24th, 2006 by admin
I remember when I was in college, I had a great struggle (well, in retrospect not too great at all): Should I lift my hands during worship through song? I struggled with what people thought of me. Would they think I was overly emotional? Would they think I was ‘too spiritual’? And if I should raise my hands, how high should they be? Was there some method to this physical act of worship? The problem, as you can see, is that the act itself was so caught up with what I thought of myself or what I thought others thought of me, that I failed to see what God thought of me through this whole thing. In light of my mental state, I don’t think God would have been glorified at all by my lifting of the hands. This did not mean I should never do so, which would only be an extreme response. But it meant that God is deeply concerned about my heart and and actions devoid of right motives is meaningless to God. In fact, it is an effrontery, as even fasting was to God in Isaiah 58.
I appreciate, thus, what Bob Kauflin has to say on this subject. He notes that worshippers are not “disembodied spirits” that have a mental focus on God without any use of our bodies. He adds:
Physical expression should flow from a heart that desires to bring God glory, and that outward expressions are no sign one way or the other that someone is offering God acceptable worship. God strongly rebukes those who think physical expression makes up for an idolatrous heart or disobedient life. Moving our church into greater physical expressivness that’s not rooted in a clear view of God’s glory will hinder, not help, true worship.
Without this type of heart, the lifting of the hands is valueless. BUt with this heart, the lifting of the hands can be as expressive of one’s heart as a song sung, tears wept, or even a moment of silent meditation.
- Physical Expression in Worship Again
- Body Worship and Crown-Casting Is Christ Exalting!
- Embarrassing Moments leading Worship
- True Love for Whom?
- Before the Throne of God Above
Sam, I have been thinking about this alot recently. The strange thing to me is that we can pay lotsa $$ to go watch morally repugnant entertainers who are grossly overpaid and overvalued kick, pass, hit, and otherwise move spheroids of various types over courts and fields of various types. And we do this with thousands of other people and we jump and exalt and raise our hands and slap-5 to these gods. Yet on Sunday morning the one who weeps before The God or raises his/her hands in His worship is viewed as excessively emotionally or unbalanced. The problem is not just our motive; the problem is who/Who or what we worship.
I just ordered “The Mortification of Sin.”
BroSam, BobK’s series on his blog is excellent - highly thought-provoking. Thanks for pointing it out.
Another error is worship as an activity not focused on God. It is easy to get caught up in good musicianship, decibel-level, beat/tempo, and just feelin’ good - without worshiping God Almighty in His Triunity. This points to the critical role of the worship leader. The worship leader’s every word and action should be directed to WORSHIP of GOD (emphasis intentional). Syrupy self-confession and feel-good self-revelation by the leader brings a focus on man and detracts from looking a the glories of Father/Son/Holy Spirit.
Typical churches gather corporately less than 90 minutes/weekly for public worship and proclamation of the Word. That’s a paltry percentage of a week’s time. “Worship” that centers on anything less than God is both symptomatic and causative of the rampant spiritual anemia which infects the contempory church.