Is it Right to Feel Emotional During Worship?

By Vanessa Lewis

Have you ever felt "checked out" in worship, like you're just not feeling the Holy Spirit's moving during a song, or does the entire service feel like it's falling flat?

You might be waiting on emotions instead of the Holy Spirit's leading, and that's very common.

A few Sundays ago, someone asked if we could speed up our tempo because the song was lagging and dragging and had kept the worshiper from feeling the Holy Spirit.

That got me thinking, when does the Holy Spirit move and how much does His movement have to do with any particular song? 

Or does it? 

As I thought more, and consulted my worship books and Google, I came across a term, emotionalism. What is emotionalism? Turns out when a song causes intense emotion: nostalgia or sad/happy memories, (when memories come flooding back), happiness, sadness, excitement--any kind of emotional rush-- that is emotionalism. It's the sentimental over the spiritual, and it's a slippery slope.

The Danger of Emotionalism 
Emotions are tricky things susceptible to manipulation and misguidance. Every marketer knows that people buy on emotion and justify with reason and logic. 

I'm sure you've experienced the feeling of being moved by a song after the worship leader introduced it with a sentimental story, or perhaps a line in a song reminds you of what state of mind--or heart--you were in, before you were saved. 

Or, maybe there is something in the sermon that motivated you to answer an altar call. 

We're human, and so we have emotions and will respond to our emotions accordingly, but when the Spirit moves, it's our duty to answer His call. Sometimes He will use emotion (God is emotional, after all: Matthew 10:25; Mark 3:4-5; Luke 19:41-45, John 3:16; 11:35-36; 2 Pet. 3:9), and sometimes He will use conviction. Other times He will physically pull you towards the altar! 

So, how can you tell the difference between the Holy Spirit and human emotion? Here are a few questions to ask: 

Is this God's voice? 
We think 60,000 thoughts per day. We are bombarded by voices, often loud voices inside of our heads criticizing us and laying down "shoulds." Sometimes that's the voice of the enemy, other times it is our "inner critic" but God's voice is often soft yet powerful at the same time. God's voice feels like more of a knowing. Prayer helps us to better hear his voice. 

Am I following the Holy Spirit's lead? 
One of the points I came across while researching for this article was about pragmatism. Worship leaders, pastors, perhaps, any church leadership, and humans in general have a tendency to think "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." In other words, if something is working and it's the way we've always done it, we'll keep it that way. 

• If the song is always sung at a slow tempo, let's not speed it up. 
• If a set always opens and closes with a traditional hymn, why insert a hymn in the middle? 
• If a man usually sings lead on one song, why have a woman sing lead on it? 
• If a song is always played on piano, why switch to guitar? And so on. 

One Sunday after the sermon, during our pastor's closing prayer, I felt God asking me to sit down during this prayer. Normally, the closing prayer is our cue for the worship team to come back up and position ourselves to stand and sing the closing song. I somehow got the other girls' attention and so after we walked up to the platform, instead of keeping our usual positions in front of our microphones, we sat at the back of the platform. It was unusual, uncomfortable, and even a little embarrassing, but I felt God urging me to obey Him, and for our team to follow.

One of the best ways to follow our Lord's leading is to listen. Worship involves a lot of prayer, and prayer is a two-way street, where we have the chance to hear God speaking to us, as well as presenting our requests to Him.   

This is why I often advocate (although rarely get my way here!) to have more instrumental moments where we let the song "breathe" and stop singing for a few lines. :)

What is our focus of worship (Are we worshiping God, or the song)?
Every one of us has songs we like and dislike, and that’s a matter of personal preference. But there are many reasons for liking a song. 

In our 'old life' as we call it, my husband and I had to play / sing / dance to / entertain with as many as 60 songs per night... I can remember there were some songs I'd love and others I'd loathe. Some I was excited to do, usually because they were somewhat a challenge if they were new, and others I was just tired or bored of doing because we'd done them for months, or even years at a time.

But this was a business and it was our job to please our audience. Eventually I realized that for every hundredth time I'd sung or played the song that I was sick and tired of, there was one audience member who considered it their favorite song and it brought them back to where they were when they first heard it, or that was the song that got them to come out onto the dance floor...

It didn't matter what we thought, and t was all about what our audience thought, which leads to my final and favorite point: 

Worshipers serve an audience of one. 
Worship is not for us, it's something that God commanded us to (Ps. 95:6; 1 Chron. 16:29) and it is for Him, and Him alone (Ex. 34:14). Does that mean when He is pleased with our worship the Holy Spirit will move? Not quite, because that then becomes about works and because of how we worship, and that is dangerous ground. 

Still, our #1 responsibility as Christians is to obey God, and if worshiping Him is a command, we must do it. There are many ways to worship but we are talking about music and singing. Music is a part of worshiping God, but it was never meant to be the heart of worship. That comes from Bob Kauflin, in his book True Worshipers. He also said this: "It takes God to worship God." We begin by acknowledging our inability to worship God unless He draws us by His grace and reveals himself to us through his Word. 

And Jesus is the one who gives life-giving Spirit, who produces rivers of living water in a believer's soul. (John 7:38-39) 

Conclusion 
We need to enter worship with a posture of expectation, not demand. Expect that God will commmunicate His presence and welcome it when He does. And don't stop praising Him when you don't feel anything. Like with tithing, God loves a joyful giver (2 Cor. 9:7), so wouldn't He be pleased with a joyful, reverent, God-loving worshiper who expects the Holy Spirit to move as He sees fit? Music is a part of worshiping, God but was never meant to be the heart of it. 

When you think of what God has done for us, not because of us. When you think about His character and His love for us--His creation--by sending His only son Jesus to die on the cross for your sins and mine, knowing that we've done nothing to deserve this but it's only because He loves us so much that He made a way to reconcile us to Himself (John 14:6), why would you want to do anything BUT worship? 

But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. (John 4:23)

References: 
Kauflin, Bob. True Worshipers: Seeking What Matters to God, Wheaton, Illinois, Crossway, 2015
https://bible.org/seriespage/10-holy-spirit-and-our-emotions
http://www.davidsantistevan.com/spirit-or-sentimental/#more-15057
http://www.davidsantistevan.com/emotional/#more-13522
https://butgod.net/is-emotion-led-worship-the-same-as-spirit-led-worship/
https://www.compellingtruth.org/God-demand-worship.html

Photo credit:  Matt Botsford on Unsplash