Every day I call upon you, O LORD; I spread out my hands to you. Psalm 88:9
Every day I call upon you, O LORD; I spread out my hands to you. Psalm 88:9
A twelve-year old friend joined me Saturday for a night of worship. An hour in, Ally leaned over in the pew and whispered,Should I lift my hands, too?
Great question, Ally.
How would you have answered Ally? Do you lift your hands in worship? Should you?
No Gift More Urgent
I stretch our my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Answer me quickly, O LORD! My spirit fails! Hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the pit. Psalm 143:6-7
June is my Psalms month.
Bible read-throughs always land me here mid-year. Their a staple year round, but in June I bathe in them. I read a handful when I rise. Sarah McCracken’s soul-folk and Sons of Korah’s acoustic-emotive versions of them, and Wendell Kimbrough‘s celtic remix fills my playlist by day.
When the sun sets, I rendezvous with Lewis’ Reflections on the Psalms. This bit is from the chapter called “The Fair Beauty of the Lord.”
The old poets do not seem to think they are meritorious or pious for having such [appetites for God] nor, on the other hand, that they are privileged in being given the grace to have them…It has all the cheerful spontaneity of a natural, even a physical, desire. It is gay and jocund. They are glad and rejoice (9:2). Their fingers itch for the harp (43:4), for the lute and the harp-wake up, lute and harp!-(57:9); let’s have a song, bring the tambourine, bring the “merry harp with the lute,” we’re going to sing merrily and make a cheerful noise (81:1-2). Noise, you may well say. Mere music is not enough. Let everyone…clap their hands. (47:1). Let us have clashing cymbals, not only well tuned, but loud, and dances too (150:5).
There in the Psalms, I find an experience fully God-centered, asking God no gift more urgently than his presence, the gift of Himself, joyous to the highest degree, and unmistakably real. What I see (so to speak) in the faces of these old poets tells me more about the God whom they and we adore. (Reflections on the Psalms, pp. 157-158)
Those who look to the Lord are radiant. Their faces are never covered with shame. And David danced before the LORD with all his might. But we get stuck in ourselves. Self-awareness hinders.
Our Struggle With Self-Awareness
A few days that night of worship, I ran across this panel discussion. It was recorded at the 2008 Desiring God National Conference. Words and worship were the focus.
Bob Kauflin, songwriter and producer at Sovereign Grace Music answered this one:
Bob, do you want to follow up on that at all with regard to the aspect of using your body in worship? Lots of people find the idea of raising their hands when they’re singing to be very uncomfortable. I think we touched on that briefly, but do you want to say anything more about that?
Kauflin: I think we begin with what God desires and how God desires to be praised and what pleases him. I was having a conversation with Mark Dever, the pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. Mark is not the most physically expressive guy in corporate worship, and yet he is a man of God, theologically brilliant, loves the gospel, loves the church.
I said, “Mark, what about this? What if I were to ask you, ‘If there is any physical action in Scripture that God says pleases him – raising hands, kneeling, dancing, bowing – that you’ve never done, wouldn’t it be a good question to ask why not?’” He said, “Yeah, that’s a good question.”
I think many of us struggle with this self-awareness as though everybody in the room is really looking at us. It’s crazy. But that’s the human heart. That’s the desire for our own glory and our own praise. I think it’s good just to acknowledge it as sin and confess it and say, “Well, Jesus, that’s why you died. You died because I love my own glory. Even now I’m supposed to be praising you. All I can think about is if anybody’s looking at me, and I can’t shake it. Thank you for dying for this sin.”
Then I think of “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection” by Thomas Chalmers, the idea of directing your love somewhere else rather than to yourself. The thing that’s been most helpful for me is just to think about the words we’re singing…When I am thinking about how great the Savior is and what he did for me and how glorious God the Father is and how the Father has sent his Spirit through the Son to live in me, I just have to respond some way… It’s often just lifting my hands, saying, “Thank you” or “I need you.”
My third thought is I want to do with my body whatever makes Jesus Christ look glorious. If people observe me, I want them to be able to say he knows a great Savior — not an okay Savior, not an average Savior, not a Savior that you can kind of take or leave. I want them to be able to tell from my countenance. Psalm 34:5: “Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.” I want them to know from my body that this is what I was created for — to bring him glory.
What can people tell about your God from the way you worship Him? Does He look glorious? Do you raise your hands? Should you?
The Puritans can teach us a lot on how to worship this way- with heart and mind, in spirit and truth. They knew that the Spirit moves in step with the word and so their worship wasn’t haphazard. I don’t know if they raised their hands or not.
But I do know that they prepared for public worship. During the week, in private and in family circles, they fixed their minds on God’s glorious truths. Then Sunday, they sang in the assembly. They worshiped. They adored their Lord and pitched all affections on him.
That is why, 350 years ago Puritan Stephen Charnock could describe worship this way, as,
An act of the understanding, applying itself to the knowledge of the excellency of God, and actual thoughts of his majesty…It is also an act of the will, whereby the soul adores and reverences his majesty, is ravished with his amiableness, embraces his goodness, enters itself into an intimate communion with this most lovely object, and pitches all his affections upon him. (Works, I, 298)
However that looks.
