Naturally, when Christians come together they meet not God but each other. They were raised in twelve years or so of the school-type atmosphere, so they're used to assembling in a school-type manner... Maybe because of this, many Christians never worship. They spend...
“Love” is more than a feeling. Love is a form of sweet labor: fierce, bloody, imperfect, and life-giving—a choice we make over and over again. If love is sweet labor, love can be taught, modeled, and practiced. This labor engages all our emotions. Joy is the gift of...
Unless we are exchanging deeply committed levels of love with a few people, we will die slowly on the inside. This is precisely why so many people feel almost nothing at all. If we don’t learn to exchange love with family and friends, we will eventually grow numb and...
We shouldn’t limit ourselves to major key songs! The Psalms reveal that much of the Christian life might be spent in a minor key, and it’s time that the church became honest about this reality as well. The church needs to be able to lament together, and minor key...
As many philosophers and theologians have observed, music is close to “spirit”—a non-material medium of receiving and conveying a sense of the world. In our deepest attentiveness and encounters with certain forms of music, we are opened to a depth of awareness; a...
Feelings are great liars. If Christians only worshiped when they felt like it there would be precious little worship that went on. Feelings are important in many areas, but completely unreliable in matters of faith… We think that if we don’t FEEL something there can...
The most common mistake Christians make in worship today is seeking an experience rather than seeking God. They look for a feeling, and if it happens, they conclude that they have worshiped. Wrong. In fact, God often removes our feelings so we won’t depend on them....
We do not always think of repentance as worship, but it can be much easier to sing a rousing hymn than to turn away from our favorite sin. A sinful act involves worship of the wrong kind, submitting ourselves at that moment to serve the appetites of our pride or lust,...
Why should a church teach hymns? One basic reason is that hymns are a means of communicating the message of the church. Some hymns are paraphrases of Scripture and others are based on specific Scripture verses. Hymns also effectively convey the church’s theology....
Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.