Can we be aware of success in worship by a physical sense of elation?
Very frequently when we worship our emotions are involved. Moreover, sometimes another thing gets involved, and that's sensation. I have friends—I shan't tell you who they are, but when they listen to a particularly moving bit of music their skin goes up like gooseflesh. It's funny how you get the same sensations from different kinds of emotions. I've noticed that when some people get afraid their flesh goes up in goose pimples. The emotion of fear and the emotion of deep enjoyment and wonder have both led to a sensation of the body.
It very often happens that if people are moved to worship, it will affect their emotions and sometimes their sensations. I've seen people shed tears, genuine tears, for joy as well as for grief, when they have been at their worship of the Lord. Now we must make a very important distinction. Worship that is acceptable to God must be in spirit. It should start that way round, with the emotions. Then what we feel comes next, and if there are going to be any sensations, afterwards. Sometimes we get confused about this and try it the other way round. The whole thing is artificial, and in the end barren and carnal.
So let me use an analogy. Do you like paintings? Perhaps not. Some people do. If you go into a picture gallery and see a beautiful painting for the first time you're overwhelmed, and before you know what you're doing your emotions are being aroused. Why? Because you enjoyed the painting and saw the wonder of it, and that in turn began to affect your emotions. When you go home you say, 'I really enjoyed that. I wonder if I could work up those feelings and enjoy that picture again.' So you try to work up the feelings. But that's stupid, you know you've got to look at the picture to enjoy it again. Suppose the next time you see it, you enjoy it but it doesn't produce quite the same emotion, does it matter? The picture is still as good as it was, but now if you're going to move further into the enjoyment of it you might have to study it quite hard and begin to think of what the artist was doing when he painted it.
That might exercise the old brain, and you might come away quite tired and exhausted by your study, and your emotions wouldn't have been moved. But you've come to understand the picture a bit more. So perhaps the next time you see it, it will be even more wonderful and, who knows, you might get more emotions. But whether you get the emotions or not, it's the picture that counts.
When we're worshipping God, if we're really worshipping him, it's God that counts. It's the glory and the wonder of God, and if it moves my emotions that's a very good thing. If it doesn't, that can't be helped. It's God I'm meant to be concentrating on and not my own emotions. We need to watch that, because sometimes, though we know we shouldn't, we go rather for the emotions and judge whether our worship has been good by how we've enjoyed our own emotions.
Let's come down to smaller things, the matter of giving of thanks. You've been given a lovely Christmas present and you feel like a young gentleman I met just recently, who said, 'I feel so bad; I wanted to say thank you in a proper way, and then I didn't really say it very well.' He was all worried about this. Some people get so worried that they can't say thank you the right way round, so they never say 'thank you'. But does it matter how you say it, so long as you are grateful? When we're giving thanks, what are we trying to do?
So you say, 'I'm going to give thanks for the beautiful present you've given me. Now watch me. Don't you admire the way I'm thanking you?'
To talk like that would be stupid. 'I thought he was meant to be thanking me, not admiring himself and the way he did it.'
Then you say, 'I didn't do that thanks well. I don't feel satisfied.'
That isn't the point. Did you get the sense that you're grateful across to the other person? One of the things that genuine worship does is to begin to break that endless self-centredness that we are so often guilty of. It's our feelings that we're cultivating; wanting to feel that I'm a success even in my prayers. Whereas, the secret of worship is that it's not about me and what I say, it's about God. Is he wonderful, and does he deserve my gratitude?
Please beware of trying to work up sensations. Some people feel that they've had such a blessed time if their sensations get moved and one or two people cried a bit, and so on. I'm not saying anything against tears and emotions, but be careful.
Isaac's sensations
The Bible has a very interesting story warning us about sensations. There was a man called Isaac and God blessed him with two sons. There came a point in his life when Isaac had to bless his son. He intended to bless Esau, but Jacob came and stole the blessing. Do you know how he managed to do that? Well I'll tell you.
His father, being an ordinary human being, had five senses. Two of them were a bit dim. So, taught by his mother, Jacob dressed himself up and put some animal skins on his hands so that they felt hairy like his brother Esau. Then his mother cooked a dish and spiced it up to make it taste like venison, when it wasn't. All the time it was just ordinary plain mincemeat. Jacob went in to his father and his father said, 'Who are you?'
'I'm Esau,' he said. Because his father couldn't see very well, and that eliminated his sense of sight.
'The voice sounds to me like the voice of Jacob. Are you sure you're not Jacob?
'Oh, no, I'm not Jacob. I'm Esau.'
'Let me touch you. Yes,' he says, 'you're Esau all right. I can feel you're hairy.'
Isaac didn't trust his hearing, poor man, so he let himself be guided by his other senses.
He said, 'Give me that venison,' and it tasted like venison. He got such a good feeling inside. Then, still thinking it was Esau, he said to Jacob, 'See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that the lord has blessed!' (Genesis 27:27).
So he relied on his touch, his taste and his smell, and was horribly deceived. What ought he to have relied on? He ought to have relied on the word of God and the Spirit of God to guide him.
We do well to watch it in our estimation of God's blessings. They can be material things, but when we're thinking about worship we must think particularly of spiritual blessings. We receive them by God's Spirit and through his word. The order is therefore, that God communicates his word by his Spirit to my heart. I believe his word and I have the blessing, whether the emotions come or not, or the sensations come or not.
Why am I pressing the point? In some families, I'm told that very, very occasionally husband and wife fall out and they have an argument, and then of course, in all well-ordered households they make it up. I've no way of knowing, but I'm told that the making up is marvellous. The joy and the relief and the sensations are beautiful. So here's a man and wife who have made it up and they've enjoyed it. A week later, the good lady finds the man sitting on the settee, and she says, 'What on earth are you doing, Bertie?' 'I'm trying to recapture that feeling of when we made it up,' he says.
That's very stupid, and yet you'll find believers trying to recapture feelings, perhaps repeating lines from hymns: 'Where is the blessedness I knew when first I sought the Lord?' 'Oh happy day! when first we felt our souls with sweet contrition melt'. Yes, you did. It was very appropriate at the time, but you can't regain and rehash old emotions. What you need to do is to go on further with the Lord. Was it marvellous when he forgave your sin and you found something of his forgiveness? Praise the Lord for that, but what about now going on and finding something further about the Lord, and letting that move you?
Well, here's a man who's just sat down to have dinner. He's very hungry and it's not just doing him good, he's enjoying the lovely, delightful feeling of this food going into him. What would you think if he's still sitting there an hour later, and he's long since finished his dinner? So his wife says, 'Are you finished? Would you like some more?' No, he doesn't want any more. 'Why are you sitting at the table, then?' she asks. He says, 'I was just trying to keep that feeling.' Stupid man. The feelings only come as the result of being hungry and being fed. It's only a side result of actually enjoying the food, and he would be an even more foolish man who tried to work up the feeling without the food, wouldn't he?
And so let it always be God's word made real to me; his person made real to me by his Spirit. Let me believe it and let me thank him for it. Let me open my eyes to see how wonderful God is and let me tell God how wonderful I find him. If I feel emotion, praise the Lord for that; and if I don't, never mind. If I get sensations, I can't help it; and if I don't, don't let me try and manufacture them, for our worship of God also is a matter of faith.
