There is no more obvious indicator of spiritual decay or deadness than disdain for the joyful worship of others. None.
I’ve seen it in church after church, and heard it from scores of worship leaders in multiple denominations. Every one of them has dealt with someone or a group of someones who bristle at the enthusiastic expression of others in worship.
I first noticed it as a teenager, when the excitement of the Jesus Movement finally made its way from California into sleepy southern churches in the south where I lived. Young people were filling up “youth choirs”, and dragging their drum sets onto the church platforms. However, this was usually only for a Sunday evening designated as a “Youth Service”. That was fare warning for all the crabby people to stay home, because things were about to get lit.
Eventually, we started wondering why that joy and energy couldn’t be a part of the regular Sunday morning experience. Over time, the drums stayed on the platform, sometimes tucked in a corner next to the organ. It was an odd juxtaposition, but it said something important: that worship is not just about tradition, but about ALL God’s people expressing their love for God.
But that juxtaposition often resulted in minor skirmishes or even out right battles in some congregations. The people who liked things the way they had been were unwilling to include the music of their young, excitable brothers and sisters in Christ. They began criticizing their pop-influenced soft rock worship songs as “lacking strong theology”. They assumed the standard for good worship songs is how many doctrines you cite in the lyrics.
Since worship is really for God and not us, I guess they thought He needed a refresher course in Systematic Theology…
The new worship choruses were often admittedly light on doctrine for a simple reason – most of those songs were not talking ABOUT God as much as they were singing TO Him. That’s yet another thing the crabby folks didn’t care for. Many of the new songs spoke boldly to God with spiritual passion, springing from the spiritual revival that was sweeping the country.
And one thing a true revival does is make the un-revived very uncomfortable.
When you’ve been comfortable in the darkness for a long time, there’s nothing more jarring than walking outside into bright, blazing sunlight. Just exit your movie theater after two dimly-lit hours and see how you react. So when people who’ve grown lazy in their faith are confronted with people on fire for God, their response is to assume the problem is that fire.
When faced with revival and spiritual heat, their motto is “Stop, drop, and roll!”
The worst part is when you are a mature, grown adult (like me) who’s been reading the Bible for 50 years, but you suddenly realize some teenager is experiencing more of the power of God in their life than you are! That’s too bitter a pill to swallow!
But it hurts your pride to admit the problem is really just your own spiritual anemia. So you attack the ones who make your lack of passion look bad by comparison. You say their worship lacks “reverence”, and look down on the kids who boldly jump up in the Father’s lap.
“How disrespectful! How emotional!” you say. But your worship has “dignity”, right?.
What we’ve really done is indict ourselves. Children who truly love their father don’t respond to him with fear and distance unless their father is abusive. Children in a loving relationship with a parent will run and jump in their arms. That doesn’t mean they don’t respect them. It simply means their love overwhelms their fear of rejection, and they are confident in their father’s love.
When we respond to God with distance, we are telegraphing to the world we’re either in spiritual decline or that God is not gracious. When worship is distance and emotionally barren, something not right. So like Adam, we hide from God in the garden.
When I’ve counseled worship leaders who are under attack by those “crabby people”, I usually remind them of King David in 2 Samuel 6:22. David has been celebrating the entrance of the Ark of the Covenant back into Jerusalem after being captured and held for years by the Philistines. The Ark’s return meant the manifest presence of God would be back with His people, so David’s turned the worship knob all the way up to 11.
As the Ark entered Jerusalem, David began dancing “with all his might”. So not just a restrained “minuet”, but a full on hoedown. He threw off his lavish kingly vestments and worshipped in a linen ephod typical of a common priest.
When his bitter, hateful wife Michal saw him, she was filled with anger toward him. How typical!
So what did she do? She said the same things about David that they will say about your worship when you do it to the glory of God:
She said he was undignified in worship.
– “Dignity” is the camouflage word for hearts without enough passion to truly praise. Dignity is the cloak a spiritually dead heart hides behind.
She said his worship was merely a performance and not authentic
– spiritually dry people could never imagine having that level of passion for God. For them to do it, it would be fake because they cannot muster that much love for God themselves. So they project their own barrenness onto you and assume your passionate worship must be fake.
She said his true motive was to attract the attention of others
– today, people will say you worship just to show off for people or to be the center of attention. That’s because they’re embarrassed by how your passion exposes their dryness in comparison.
I love David for his response to his bitter, spiritually barren wife:
”I shall be more undignified than this”!
In other words, “You think that was bad? You ain’t seen nothing yet!”
That’s why I don’t listen to people who want to argue about worship. When you get mad about how someone else worships, you reveal way too much about your own heart. Honestly, I’m embarrassed for them.
No one who loves God should ever discourage someone else’s expression of worship, unless that worship somehow violates the teachings of Scripture. But nothing is more unscriptural than dull, unengaged, dispassionate praise offered from a dry heart.
Interestingly, the Bible points out that after this, Michal never bore children. I honestly don’t know if this is because the Lord wouldn’t bless her, or if her attitude toward David indicated there was no more intimacy left in their relationship. Either way, what an indictment!
The fact it is included in this account about worship is a warning: resentment towards worship results in spiritual barrenness. It is one of the most profound warning signs of a believer’s spiritual life. It indicates one of two things about that person: either they are in a dangerous season of spiritual dryness, or they are in fact spiritually dead and not really a child of God.
So when people criticize your worship, you need to dismiss their criticism like David did. But you also need to pray for them, while they still have time.
They need to change, and fast.
What a terrifying way to enter eternity one day: resentful of the love others have for the very God you are about to face…
