A Young Example

“Awe and sublimity are ingredients of worship if the worship is there. But we can be awestruck and not worship God. We can sense the sublime and not be worshiping God.”

“The heart that knows God can find God everywhere. But the heart that doesn’t know God can feel the emotions of nature worship without rising to spiritual worship at all.”

– AW Tozer, On Worship and Entertainment

I have the opportunity to lead worship on a regular basis. I’ve always had a passion for music, but a few years ago, the chance to lead for a college ministry was dropped on my lap. It’s been an incredible period of growth, challenges, failures, and lessons.

It’s important for me to look back on these few years in this way because I think I’m struggling on the cusp of a failure right now.

I’ve always loved music. More than a collector of songs or albums, I’ve become an obsessive connoisseur of the musical experience. My tastes are very specific. I don’t enjoy very technically proficient songs for their mere existence. I don’t venture into a large group of genres. What I value is sincerity, or more precisely, the emotionally broken, the hopeless romantics, the tortured wanderers. All clichés in their own right, of course, but I tend to gravitate toward music that reflects these well-worn tropes. I’m willing to sacrifice originality in musical expression for sincerity in conveying emotional trauma or jubilation.

So I find my voice in the raspy breaths of the folk artist. I find my rhythms in the snare cracks of sixties rock. I find my thoughts in the wall of delay crafted by the shoegazer. I find my soul in the movements of the orchestra as it echoes through the hall.

I am a fan of musicianship. I am a fanatic for expression.

This deep appreciation for the heart of music makes true worship – seeking the heart of God – a complicated thing, and I feel that in many ways, it has set me up for failure. It’s all too easy to settle for finding the heart of me in the music that I play or listen to. As unknowable as my true self might be, there is always the constant tug to find who I am in the song I hear. This can lead to a great musical experience. But it can also lead me away from a great worship experience.

It’s not difficult to get lost in the emotions of a song. Listen to The National’s “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks” and try not to become buried in melancholic introspection. It’s not easy. Play “Pounding” by Doves and do your best to be sad. You can’t. Great songs embody great emotions. And that’s okay. That’s good design. The clearer the expression, the greater the craftsman.

But worship is so much more than just music, even when funneled into the specific experience of a Sunday morning set. The temptation, though, is to make these worship songs we play submit to the personal desire for emotional satisfaction. In reality, “worship time” is our opportunity to make our emotions submit to the desires of God.

This is a struggle for me. In sincere confession, my love for music often rivals my love for God. On that stage on a Sunday morning, I’m fighting something in me, something that says, “Worship for yourself, for what you are and what you need.” What I should be doing, though, is worshiping God, for who He is and what he commands. In this way, the sincerest lyric to any song I’ve sang on a Sunday morning can be found in David Crowder’s “Sometimes.” Crowder sings, aches even, “It’s your love that we adore / It’s like a sea without a shore / We’re lost in you…” That has become a prayer for me. At work, driving in my car, mid-set on a Sunday morning, these are words that remind me that while the emotions of musical expression are valid, worship is deeper.

Emotions in music often connect us. When a band plays a crowd favorite at a concert, there are always those glances exchanged by random attendees, acknowledging that there is something to this song that connects strangers in a way that nothing else could. But emotions are fleeting. They’re vaporous. In our worship, being consumed by the emotional high of God’s presence is not a reason to forget that He is omnipotent.

As Tozer notes, “The heart that knows God can find God everywhere.” The challenge for the worshiper is to find God outside of mere music. It is to find Him in the everyday. To find Him outside of emotion. This is why Tozer says the heart of worship is called to rise. You cannot truly worship fixated on yourself.

Even without a soundtrack to my current introspection, I shudder to think of the many ways I often overlook this truth.