How Should We Sing?

I invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Colossians chapter 3 as we again find ourselves in verse 16 for what should be our third and final week looking at this passage. Over the past few weeks we have been on an extended examination of the subject of singing in church because that is what is given to us in Colossians 3 .16, a charge to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

And so we have in a sense taken somewhat of an aside from our study of Colossians and dove a little deeper into this subject of corporate worship, particularly corporate worship through the medium of song.

And we have asked the question, well we've asked three questions. We have said why do we sing and that was our first week. And then we asked what do we sing, that was last week. And I mentioned at the end of last week that I had an entire section that I had left to discuss and I pondered whether it was needful to finish or if I should just move on to verse 17.

Well after the service a few of you came to me and just to give you the power of your influence over me at times, I appreciate your input and you said I want to hear the rest. And so I said well I guess it's worth at least another week.

And the way that sermons work, at least when I write sermons based on how I've come to understand, we begin with the text and studying the text and then we interpret the text and then we apply the text.

And so it's the old simple exegesis is read the text, interpret the text, apply the text. That's all preaching is. It really is a very simple, when you boil it down. And so what we have come to today really is the application of everything that we've learned.

Now normally we would spend a lot of time on the interpretation, a lot of time on the textual part of it, but today is more of that third aspect of it. And some don't think we should focus too much on application, let the spirit apply the word and that's fine, but there are times where we can miss some of the practical aspects of what we've learned.

And so today hopefully will be a practical message in the sense of asking the question how do we sing? How should we sing? And by this I'm not referring to the means by which we make vocal noise, that certainly is the how on a practical level, but rather I'm speaking of the attitude, the emotion and the posture even of how we sing.

Paul tells us that we are to sing. And he even tells us how in this passage. And I think that it's interesting that today is Father's Day, though we haven't said a whole much about that. Happy Father's Day to all of our fathers, I'm not doing a Father's Day message, however this specific message is going to at a point address the fact that men, it is our role to lead our families, not just in the study of the word, but in the worship of God through song.

I didn't get but one, but that's okay. And do we see that as our role? I often hear men, I'm the pastor in my home, and that's fine, but are you the worship leader in your home? Does your family look to you to lead them to the throne of grace?

So let's stand together and read the text and then pray. Okay, verse 16 says let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Father in heaven, I pray, first of all, Lord, that you would even now from this moment keep me from error as I preach your word. I pray for humility as I preach, Lord, that Christ would be exalted and that I would be humbled, and I pray, God, that you would open the hearts of your people to hear the truth that the word of God would be challenging and comforting, that it would be as it is the two-edged sword that is able to cut and divide us, but Lord, also that it be the balm that is able to heal us, and Lord, teach us from your word what it is you would have us to know about proclaiming your truth in song and the how of that particular activity.

I pray, oh God, again that you would in your mercy open the ears of your faithful people, your believers, your flock, to hear your word, and Lord, for those who do not yet know Christ, I pray that they would hear the gospel in this message today and through that be saved.

And we pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. Okay, so we've spent two Sundays looking at this passage, making observations and applying some interpretations to the text, and I do want to again remind you some of what we have learned.

The text says to let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. And as I have noted, the word dwell is what we call the main verb, it is the active imperative of the clause, the statement is that the word of Christ is to dwell in us, and as I said last week, could also be translated dwell among us.

And then that active imperative main verb is then given three supporting participles. And those three supporting participles tell us how that word of Christ is to dwell. How that word of Christ is to dwell, and it is to dwell first by teaching.

The word of God is to be taught, and when it is taught it dwells, and it is to be used for admonishing, admonishing means to correct and to counsel, and so the word of God is to do that among God's people and within God's people.

And the word of God is to be sung. So the word of Christ, let the word of Christ dwell in you, teaching and admonishing in all wisdom, and singing, and this singing is then given a three-fold description.

The three-fold description of our singing is that we are to sing with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. And last week I said that we know what the psalms are, it's referring I believe to the canonical psalms, but also the words hymns and spiritual songs opens up the door to other types of music, not just limiting us to the canonical psalms, though there are those who would say that we should only sing canonical psalms.

I don't think that that can be bared out from the text, at least not in my opinion. And I will say this, the ones who produced the notes for the Geneva Bible, and if you're not familiar with the Geneva Bible, the Geneva Bible predated the King James Bible, it was the Bible of the reformers, and it was one of the earliest what we call study Bibles because it had notes attached to the text that gave interpretations of the text, and I want you to hear what the Geneva Bible says at Colossians 3 .16, because this was the reformers Bible.

This is what it says. It says, by psalms, he means all godly songs which were written upon various occasions, and by hymns all such as contain the praise of God, and by spiritual songs, other more special and artful songs, which were also in praise of God, but they were made fuller of music.

So at least we can say this based upon that description, they were not limiting themselves to the canonical psalms. They were saying that the songs to be sung in worship can include the psalms and should include the psalms, but also can include hymns and spiritual songs, and therefore Paul is expressing a variety of what we sing.

But for a moment I want to show you something. If you have your Bible still open, hold your place in Colossians and turn over to Ephesians chapter 5, and go to verse 18. In Ephesians chapter 5, we have what is known as the parallel passage, meaning there's a passage in Ephesians that's very similar to what's in Colossians, and I believe that Ephesians and Colossians are sister books anyway.

They say so many things the same way, so Paul certainly had some of the same things in mind, writing one as he did writing the other. And in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 18, the apostle writes, Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.

What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? He goes on, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. The same phrases. And then he says, Singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

So we see here again the threefold description of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, but we see a new addition, something we have not really addressed in the weeks prior, though I have mentioned it in passing.

We see the phrase singing and making melody. And the phrase making melody, I would argue, is in reference to the use of instruments. I posted a small clip of last week's sermon on social media, and I was immediately responded to by people who told me how wrong I was and how incorrect I was because I said that we should use musical instruments in worship.

And they said there's no New Testament command for the use of instruments in worship. And they weren't Church of Christ people. We know the Church of Christ has held that position. These were Reformed guys who are holding to the position of Spurgeon with white-knuckled strength, saying no instruments because the New Testament does not command instruments.

Well, in this text, it uses the word solo. The word solo is the root of where we get the word psalm, and it literally comes from the word which means to pluck a string or to make melody with an instrument.

So my position is we are well within the commands of the new covenant to use instruments in worship because Paul says we are to both sing and make melody with our hearts to God. And somebody says, well, the making melody is only in your heart.

Well, if that were true, then the singing would only be in your heart too. Both of these are expressions of things we do with all our heart. These are things we do with all of our heart. So this is getting to the heart of how we sing.

Because we've talked about what we sing, well, how do we do it? Well, we sing with our voices, we sing accompanied with instruments, and we do it with our heart. But I want you to also notice that both in the Ephesians passage and in the Colossians passage, they both end with an additional how as part of the text.

And the additional how is the how of thankfulness. Since we're in Ephesians, just look again, Ephesians 5 .19 says, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.

And remember, the verse breaks are not in the original, so it goes right into the next phrase, giving thanks always. Now go back to Colossians, very quickly, just flip, I told you to hold your place, I'm gonna expect you to get there quick.

Go back to Colossians, what does it say? It says in Colossians, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with what?

With thankfulness in your hearts to God. So both the Ephesians passage and the Colossians passage give us a foundation for the how of singing. And the foundation for the how of singing is that we are to sing with thankfulness.

The first principle of how we sing is that our singing should be in a spirit of gratitude. Now that does not mean that every song that we sing is going to have the theme of thanksgiving. There are songs that we sing that are songs of lament.

Don't we sing songs of lament? Though he slay me, yet I will praise him. It's a song of lament, but yet still undergirded with thanks. We sing songs that ask questions. Is he worthy? Is he worthy? He is.

Right? Undergirded with thanks. We sing songs that express deep theology, and yet our songs of theology are not simply bare words, but they are words of thanks for the God behind the theology. A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing, right?

We sing with thanksgiving even the great theological truths of the faith. And all of these bring out differing dispositions, but we should sing first and foremost with a disposition, or what I'm going to use a phrase, a heart posture, because we're going to talk about physical posture in a moment, but the physical posture doesn't matter if your heart posture is not right.

You can lift your hands, you can do jumping jacks in the pews, you can get down on your knees with your hands outstretched, but if your heart posture is not right, the Lord who looks upon the heart will not be moved by the movement of your hands.

And therefore, it must begin with a posture of the heart. And right away, this should challenge some of us, because some folks look like they're sucking on a vinegar flavored lollipop every time we have to sing a song.

I wrote that, that's in my notes. During the COVID pandemic, there were some municipalities around the United States that forbade churches from singing. Oh yes, there were churches in the great state of California, I use great with a...

There were churches there and other places which said that because of the airborne nature of the virus, that they did not want people to sing in crowds because singing would be more able to spread the virus.

Thankfully, many churches pushed back against those demands and engaged in civil disobedience and they sang anyway, and they did so because they believed that singing is not optional. And I hope that I've made that argument the last few weeks, that singing is not something we can just have or not have, choose to do or not to do, singing was not optional.

And they said, when we come, we're commanded to sing and we must obey God rather than men, therefore we will sing. But I imagine there were some folks in those churches that would have been just as happy not singing because they didn't want to.

Beloved singing should not be a chore. Singing should not just be an annoyance that we have to get through and then sit through the annoyance of the sermon. Singing should not be something that we can just do without.

If we truly have the disposition of gratitude, we will want to sing. And that will come out in our singing. We won't look like we're drinking persimmon juice. We will look like we're grateful in our singing.

And that leads me to really the heart of the how, because we know the how is singing grateful, singing with gratitude, singing gratefully. But that leads to this question. I'm going to write a word here.

And that is the question of emotion. Because quite frankly, brethren, this is a huge battle in churches. The question of emotion in worship. Because there are those who would argue that our worship should be without emotion but should be sterile and stoic.

And maybe they don't say so with their mouths, but they demonstrate so with their positional posture. And there's a reason why we call some folks the frozen chosen, my Calvinistic brothers. You didn't earn that unneedfully.

But there is a frozen chosen out there that think that the way to best express their Christian fervor is through standing as still as possible and looking as miserable as possible. But yet there is on the other end, those who worship without any form of restraint or bounds.

And as I've talked about in the weeks prior, there not only is their music unfiltered and does not go through any rigorous theological grid, but also their worship is sensual and almost like an orgy of activity with nothing but sensuous gyration and no sense but sensuality.

So as we talk, don't we always talk about the two ditches, right? This is my new little picture here, right? We've got the ditch on the one side and the ditch on the other. And the ditch on the one side, let's start by talking about the frozen chosen.

Brothers, we are not Stoics. And if you don't know what the Stoics were, the Stoics were a philosophical band that believed that all of life that is to be enjoyed or to take pleasure in was wrong. And therefore they divorced themselves from all pleasure and all emotion and tried to arrive at a position where they felt nothing and they enjoyed nothing because those enjoyments and those feelings were bad.

They were worldly and therefore Stoicism is a divorcing from the emotions. Beloved, Jesus did not divorce from his emotions and neither should you. I can't express that any clearer. If the Lord of glory can weep at the graveside of a friend, you can weep when someone you love passes away.

I've heard people say, oh, we shouldn't weep. What planet are you from? What planet are you from when you don't weep, when you don't grieve? There's no sense in that. There's no biblical. When Abraham lost his wife, he grieved for months.

I'd say he grieved the rest of his life, but the scripture specifically says he grieved, right? And you walk through the text. When Israel lost their father, they grieved and over and over. And when Israel thought Joseph was gone, he grieved, right?

Christianity is not emotionless. If your Christianity is emotionless, you don't have Christianity. You have some fake version that you've created or you've been taught that just ain't so. Now, I know some of you have seen this and it may be cartoonish, but I like it.

But I want you to imagine a train and you say, we ain't in VBS. I know you ain't in VBS. Don't give me no hard time. We can all learn something from this. But there are three aspects of our faith that always have to be considered.

And the three aspects of our faith are faith, facts, and emotions. Some people don't care about the facts. That's bad. Some people don't care about faith. That's bad. But how is it it's okay to not care about emotions?

There are some who would go there and say that's fine. No. All three have an important place. But the reason why I draw my little train illustration is this illustration does help us put things into consideration.

Because what we have is we have the engine, we have the boxcar, and we have the caboose. And in this little illustration, what I'm asking is which one is the engine? What is the engine of Christianity?

And the engine of Christianity, a lot of people say is faith, but it's not. The engine of Christianity is facts. Because if what you believe ain't true, it ain't worth believing. So the engine of everything is the facts.

Jesus died and rose again. Paul said if that's not true, you have of all men are most to be pitied, right? So it's got to be based on the facts. The truth's got to come first. So facts is the engine. Facts pulls the train.

But we got to believe those facts. So faith comes after that. And faith in the facts is absolutely imperative. If you don't believe the truth, it doesn't matter, right? Because the truth ain't going to save you if you don't believe it.

So faith does matter. But faith doesn't make something true. So the facts pull the train. The faith is also there and is important. But emotions don't get left behind. They're not buried in a cave somewhere.

The emotions are still there. And let me tell you something. If you believe that Jesus Christ died and rose again, and that does not affect your heart, there's something wrong with your heart. And that's why this train illustration, I think, is so helpful.

Because we want to draw a hard and fast line right here and be emotionless. And that is wrong. If we fall into this ditch of frozen chosen and we have no, if we bring none of our heart, none of ourselves into worship, and it's all a sterile activity that we do once a week because God hath thus commanded it.

And there is no heart and no sense of closeness and fellowship with our Lord. What we have is sterility, not Christianity. So when we sing, should there be an aspect of emotional in our song? I would say absolutely.

I believe God designed us and them to do so. You realize how powerful songs are at stirring the emotions? I mean, do you really understand? I tell you what, man, this is going to sound weird. I cry at the end of Rocky.

Take it for what it's worth, man. But when you got a man, and that whole movie is about what? It's about perseverance, getting back up after you've been knocked down. The whole thing at the end, and he doesn't win.

Spoiler alert, if you haven't seen the 50-year-old film, he doesn't win. But when that song, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, you didn't think you'd hear that today. There's something in you like you have to stand up.

Mike knows what I'm talking about. You just want a heavy bag. You just want to crash because it draws that emotion out of you. And, beloved, how can we do that with that and then come into worship and say, how great thou art?

You see the juxtaposition of what matters to us? How great thou art. See the difference? How we sing can be just as important as what we sing. Because we're singing to our God. We're singing of our God.

How great thou art. You see, emotion is not bad. It is woven into the fabric of our song and should be woven into the fabric of how we sing. But, as I said earlier, there is a danger, beloved, and the danger is in the other ditch.

And that is when we turn the train around and the emotions become the engine and facts and faith get pushed to the caboose or left off entirely. See, this line here doesn't just stand for those who are the frozen chosen.

This line can just as easily be applied to those who only focus on the emotion and the emotion is everything. Edward Lipman wrote a book called Musical Thought in Ancient Greece. The book was written in 1964.

And he summarizes the ideas that the ancient Greeks had about music. And I think this is interesting because, again, we're talking thousands of years ago. But listen to how he summarizes the Greeks' view of music.

He said, first, music has the ability to change people's moods and shape their characters. So much so that Plato believed that the law should govern what music could be played in public. Because it had so much power to influence the people, either for the good or the bad.

Or for the bad. And when Plato was arguing for this, he said, think of a mother's lullaby to the child. How the mother's voice and the power of the mother's singing is able to convince the child to calm and to rock the child to sleep and to lull them into a state of passivity.

Both Plato and Aristotle both believed that music had to be censored. Because music can so powerfully influence behavior. Now, again, Plato and Aristotle are not our standard. The scriptures are standard.

But it shows us something that even in secular wisdom, even in secular philosophy, there is an understanding of the power of music. And the dangerous power of music. Music can have a dangerous place when music is writhing the senses and being used to manipulate the people.

How many churches... Now, we could talk about Bethlehem Hill song, and we could talk about how they use songs that often are very manipulative. But let's just keep it within the wheelhouse of maybe more conservative circles.

How many churches, when it's time for the altar call, will dim the lights and begin just as I am in a certain key? Because that is how somebody gets saved. You see the dangers of that. When the song becomes the manipulative tool, when the song becomes...

When the emotion becomes the drive, you've got your train backwards. And so often that is the problem. That's the problem. That's called emotionalism. There was a... Last year, two years ago, maybe now, we did a conference on worship.

Brother Andy, Brother Mike, and myself preached. And I preached on singing. And I played a song. Brother Andy made me stop. He said, that's enough, brother. Because I played a song that was used in Bethel.

And if you listen to the song, it's over and over and over the same words in a hypnotic circle. And the people are just writhing upon one another and rocking back and forth. And there's no thoughts. And the words, listen to the rhythm of heaven.

That's all they say for 20 minutes. Listen to the rhythm of heaven. Listen... And they... Over and over and over. To what end? To the edification of the saints? No. To the instruction of the word? No.

To the glory of God? No. To the manipulation of the emotions. That's what it's for. Amen. And therefore, there is a dangerous ditch on the other side. Must we divorce emotions? We must not. But we must also not adopt emotionalism.

Because emotionalism is not what God has called us to. And this brings up a practical question. And this one might seem like it's inconsequential. But I think it's important. So I hope you don't check out on me.

Check in with me. Don't check out on me. But the concept of raising our hands when we worship. Oh, some of you got nervous. So let's deal with it. Because some of you may say, well, that's unimportant.

I think it's very important for two reasons. You've got two ditches. You've got those who would say, and I've heard it come from people's mouths. I heard this say specifically this way. Because I remembered it as it was said.

Raising hands in worship is the hallmark of bad theology. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Again, when you come to the conclusion that the best way to worship God is as a frozen chosen, never lift your hands, never raise your voice, never do anything.

You begin to see everything else as a compromise to emotionalism. They say raising your hands in worship is the hallmark of bad theology. That's one side. Trust me, that ain't the side I take. But that's one dangerous side.

The other side, though, is that unless you raise your hands, then you're not truly giving yourself in worship. And that's not true necessarily either. The Bible does give us a series of passages which refer to the raising of hands.

I mean, I could take you through, and I have them here. I have a dozen or more scriptural verses from the Old Testament which talk about the raising of hands in worship. And in the New Testament, there's not as many.

But we do have specifically 1 Timothy chapter 2 which talks about the men of the church raising their hands when they pray. It says, raise, this is what it says. It says, I desire, this is Paul. I desire that in every place the men should pray lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.

That we should actually be raising our hands. Do you realize that most of you, I watched this morning just so I was right. I came up here and watched you all pray. I was praying with you, but you can pray with your eyes open.

Most of you do this. Some of you do this. No one did this. You know where this comes from and this comes from? I don't either. And actually, I looked it up. There's really no. There's not really a nail down on that.

There are some who argue that it comes from a position of submission in Roman culture. Where in Roman culture, the way to submit was to put your hands together. I'm not sure if that's true. That's just one of the many positions.

I do know this. It rose to more use within the church during the medieval period. Most of us are used to this prayer position. Or this prayer position. Not because it's biblical. You can't find any place in the Bible where Jesus said, okay, everybody clasp your hands.

You won't find that. But you will find throughout the Bible, raise your hands. And yet we don't do that. Why? Because we're more comfortable with the familiar. Never heard of a church that says, don't do this.

But churches say, don't do this. And when the Bible says, do this. Now, I'm just saying from a practical position. Doesn't that sound silly? But we get comfortable with the comfortable. And this is comfortable.

This is comfortable. This is not. And they'll say, this is an expression of emotionalism. I want to quote John Piper. And I want you to hear this. Because this is gold. I can say that because I didn't write it.

Now, this is, John Piper said this. Coerced or constrained demonstrations of heart worship are self-contradictory. Either it comes from the heart and is valuable as an expression of the heart, or it is a performance and has no value at all.

So if what you are doing is coerced, that's not good. So if I tell you, Rick, you got to raise your hands, buddy. I don't have the right to tell you that. But also, notice what he says. Coerced or constrained.

If I say, Rick, keep those hands down. You just happen to be sitting there. I don't know. It could be anybody. You understand what he's saying. Either one of those would be wrong. Coerced or constrained demonstrations of heart worship are self-contradictory.

He goes on to say this. Whether we are more formal or more charismatic, we are equally vulnerable to hypocrisy, artificiality, and judgmentalism. Hymns can be sung with just as much inauthenticity as worship songs.

Organs can be played with just as much hypocrisy as guitars. And hands can be kept down for motives just as defective as hands which go up. So the question is not whether or not you raise your hands. The question is why.

And I love, I'm going to tell you something. You guys are going to think I'm going charismatic. I'm quoting John Piper. He's kind of a little quasi-charismatic. I'm going to quote Sam Storms. You're going to lose your mind.

Sam Storms is a little more charismatic. But he's good. Get mad at me. He says good things. But he's got 10 things. He wrote an article called 10 Things About Lifting Hands in Worship. You can look it up.

Just look up Sam Storms, 10 Things, Lifting Hands in Worship. I want you to hear this. Number one, I raise my hands when I pray and praise because I have explicit biblical precedent for doing so. And he lists a series of verses both in the Old and New Testament.

But he goes on to say something else. He says when I'm asked why I raise my hands in worship, I say because I'm not a Gnostic. What does that mean? The Gnostics believed that everything spiritual was good and everything physical was bad.

And therefore to engage the body was to engage in something bad. He said we're not Gnostics. Not only are we not Stoics, we're not Gnostics. We're not divorcing the body from worship. We're actually worshiping with our bodies.

The Bible says what? That we are to offer our bodies a living sacrifice. None of you would want to sing sitting down. Well, maybe you would. Let me back that up. Most of you understand the value of standing while we sing because we're standing in the presence of God.

We're standing up to hear the word. We're standing to sing. We won't have a problem with that. Why do we have a problem with this? Now again, I'm not telling you to raise your hands. You don't want to raise your hand?

Don't raise your hand. Don't be coerced. But don't be constrained. Not in something the Bible certainly calls us to do. Again, don't get too scared. I'm not riding the charismatic train to glory. But I am saying these are areas where we become so satisfied in our contemporary conservatism and our Calvinism that we begin to say only this and never that.

Beloved, it's not healthy and it's not biblical. I want to read one last thing from Sam Storms and I'm going to move on from this. He said, for those many years when I kept my hands rigidly at my side or safely tucked away in the pockets of my pants, I knew that no one would take notice of my praise of God or my prayers of desperation.

No one would dare mistake me for a fanatic. I felt in control, dignified, sophisticated, and above all else, safe. But those things no longer matter to me. Amen. That's thoughtful. That's thoughtful. Should we raise our hands?

We certainly have every biblical precedent for doing so. I want to draw to a close with a thought that's, I'm actually very thankful for this part because I'm going to close with a thought about how we worship in regard to a very interesting aspect.

And that is the issue of singing manly. I know that sounds strange, especially for the women. But one of the things that has happened in contemporary worship is there has been a feminization of Christian music.

I mean, we've joked about it for years, the Jesus is my girlfriend type songs. Where everything that's sung to him or about him could be just as easily applied to a lover as it is applied to a savior.

And the songs have taken on a feminine quality and abandoned the masculine nature of worship, which the Bible points us to. And I think this is one of the reasons why men pull back from the singing because the songs are not songs that we feel comfortable expressing in our masculinity.

I'm going to quote, and then I'm going to tell you who I'm quoting. I'm going to wait until after I finish to tell you. This came to me in an email. I think it's worth noting that the songs have a strong manly quality to them.

Musically, rhythmically, lyrically. I think it's helpful to choose songs like these because the songs lead us as good men do to worship God in a manly way. 1 Corinthians 16, 13 says, be on alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men and be strong.

Not just that the lyrics must be sound theologically, but that the music itself should lead the mind, the heart, the body, and the emotion. Of course, Hillsong and Bethel leads you, but it leads you to emotional experience, sentimentalism, sketchy theology, and certainly does not call you to repentance.

It's affirming. It reassures you that you're good. God is on your side. So take it easy, baby. Forget you're in a spiritual war and think of repentance as a cool pie in the sky theological idea. Good congregational worship is not limp-wristed.

It is not soft. It does not manipulate an emotional experience. It is firm. It is bold. It is, of course, biblically sound. It does as it should lead you in the worship of faith. And faith is like putting our neck out there, knowing that the only thing that can save us from failure, ruin, and embarrassment is God coming through and making good on his promises.

So we raise our hands. We stand up straight. We lift our eyes. We lift our holy hands. And we are often tempted to worship by sight, which makes us timid, fearful, naval gazers with slumped shoulders and blank stares, failing to consider the greatness of God.