One of my biggest pet peeves are the lyrics to contemporary worship music. For instance: fill me up, God; fill me up, God; fill me up, God. What does this even mean? What are we singing? What are we talking about when we sing this? Do we even know?? First, we dont get more of the Holy Spirit; He gets more of us. We are filled with the Holy Spirit indefinitely. We dont get more of Him; we dont get less. Its not like we have 1/4 of the Holy Spirit and were trying to get the other 3/4. This is a totally wrong understanding of the Holy Spirits work in sanctification. We receive the Holy Spirit when we receive salvation. Also, this tricks us into thinking that we can get more of the Holy Spirit and become more sanctified by just saying fill me up over and over. Have we forgot about the whole dont pray like the hypocrites do; do not babble like the pagans, for they think theyll be heard with their many words? If we want to progress in our sanctification, then we need to die to self, resist temptation, mortify the flesh, have the Word of Christ richly dwell within us. We need to buffet our body and make it our slave. We dont just get the Holy Spirit by saying fill me up; and we dont just magically progress in our sanctification by saying fill me up. The song isnt even a prayer either, because its not actually communicating to God, because it completely ignores all of the criteria God gives us for praying and communicating with Him. So like, what the heck? But you turn the room-lights down, you use some cool spotlights, maybe even put some fog or smoke in the room, get some pads, ambient guitar, deep drums, repeat the phrase over and over again with a iii-V-I-II chord progression, and you can totally make it sound spiritual, because you can manipulate the crowds emotions with the kind of music and atmosphere. The lyrics are also very sensual and romantic. Mix the sensuality of the lyrics with the emotionalism of the music and atmosphere and ambience, and you have totally got people to turn off their minds, disengage their thinking, and just focus on their emotions. This is complete disobedience to how God told us to communicate with Him, it is a distortion of Gods character and Who He is, it is complete untruth, it is going directly against John 4:24, and etc. It is not worship; it is emotionalism. But Elijah, how can you tell people what worship is? Worship is deeply personal. You dont know peoples hearts. Stop judging them and being such a pharisee. If thats what you think worship is, then you dont know what worship is. You can say that youre worshipping, but that doesnt mean youre worshipping. I can be laying in my bed eating popcorn and watching TV, and say Im doing differential calculus, but that doesnt mean Im doing differential calculus. Scripture is clear about what worship is, and how worship must be done. If what you are doing does not meet those criteria, then you are, by definition, not worshipping. Do not mistake emotionalism and cognitive disengagement with worship. Do not mistake pagan practices that have originated from Hinduism (thats exactly what contemporary evangelical worship is) with worshipping God. Focus on God and His truth, and worship Him how He has commanded us to worship Him. Get rid of these silly songs that want to play Christian without the reality and power and truth of God Almighty.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 17:34:08 +0000
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