The most common mistake Christians make in worship today is seeking an experience rather than seeking God. They look for a feeling, and if it happens, they conclude that they have worshiped. Wrong! In fact, God often removes our feelings so we won’t depend on them. Seeking a feeling, even the feeling of closeness to Christ, is not worship.
When you are a baby Christian, God gives you a lot of confirming emotions and often answers the most immature, self-centered prayers—so you’ll know he exists. But as you grow in faith, he will wean you of these dependencies.
The most common mistake Christians make in worship today is seeking an experience rather than seeking God.
God’s omnipresence and the manifestation of his presence are two different things. One is a fact; the other is often a feeling. God is always present, even when you are unaware of him, and his presence is too profound to be measured by mere emotion.
Yes, he wants you to sense his presence, but he’s more concerned that you trust him than that you feel him. Faith, not feelings, pleases God.
The situations that will stretch your faith most will be those times when life falls apart and God is nowhere to be found. This happened to Job. On a single day he lost everything—his family, his business, his health, and everything he owned. Most discouraging—for thirty-seven chapters, God said nothing!
How do you praise God when you don’t understand what’s happening in your life and God is silent? How do you stay connected in a crisis without communication? How do you keep your eyes on Jesus when they’re full of tears? You do what Job did: “Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.’”11
Tell God exactly how you feel. Pour out your heart to God. Unload every emotion that you’re feeling. Job did this when he said, “I can’t be quiet! I am angry and bitter. I have to speak!”12 He cried out when God seemed distant: “Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God’s intimate friendship blessed my house.”13 God can handle your doubt, anger, fear, grief, confusion, and questions.
Did you know that admitting your hopelessness to God can be a statement of faith? Trusting God but feeling despair at the same time, David wrote, “I believed, so I said, ‘I am completely ruined!’”14 This sounds like a contradiction: I trust God, but I’m wiped out! David’s frankness actually reveals deep faith: First, he believed in God. Second, he believed God would listen to his prayer. Third, he believed God would let him say what he felt and still love him.
Focus on who God is—his unchanging nature. Regardless of circumstances and how you feel, hang on to God’s unchanging character. Remind yourself what you know to be eternally true about God: He is good, he loves me, he is with me, he knows what I’m going through, he cares, and he has a good plan for my life. V. Raymond Edman said, “Never doubt in the dark what God told you in the light.”
When Job’s life fell apart, and God was silent, Job still found things he could praise God for:
That he is good and loving.15
That he is all-powerful.16
That he notices every detail of my life.17
That he is in control.18
That he has a plan for my life.19
That he will save me.20
Trust God to keep his promises. During times of spiritual dryness you must patiently rely on the promises of God, not your emotions, and realize that he is taking you to a deeper level of maturity. A friendship based on emotion is shallow indeed.
So don’t be troubled by trouble. Circumstances cannot change the character of God. God’s grace is still in full force; he is still for you, even when you don’t feel it. In the absence of confirming circumstances, Job held on to God’s Word. He said, “I have not departed from the commands of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread.”21
This trust in God’s Word caused Job to remain faithful even though nothing made sense. His faith was strong in the midst of pain: “God may kill me, but still I will trust him.”22
When you feel abandoned by God yet continue to trust him in spite of your feelings, you worship him in the deepest way.
Remember what God has already done for you. If God never did anything else for you, he would still deserve your continual praise for the rest of your life because of what Jesus did for you on the cross. God’s Son died for you! This is the greatest reason for worship.
When you feel abandoned by God yet continue to trust him, you worship him in the deepest way.
Unfortunately, we forget the cruel details of the agonizing sacrifice God made on our behalf. Familiarity breeds complacency. Even before his crucifixion, the Son of God was stripped naked, beaten until almost unrecognizable, whipped, scorned and mocked, crowned with thorns, and spit on contemptuously. Abused and ridiculed by heartless men, he was treated worse than an animal.