So, I was at church this morning, big shock I know a missionary at church. But there we attend two different "services." One is a youth Sunday school/bible study/service. They start off with worship then split up into groups for the equivalent of Sunday school.
We got ready to worship and there were a couple of girls up close to the stage and normally people would crowd around and stand close but for some reason today they were kinda far away, so the girls moved back. Being quick thinking I nudged Becca and we moved very close to the stage, and a couple of the girls came and stood by us. I was pretty pleased of myself for this quick maneuver. I just sang and praised and had fun with worship as normal for the first song & a half.
Then, something happened. The warm fuzzy feeling went away, that closeness to God I experience when I worship wasn't there anymore. This has happened before and it will happen again. The joy of worship goes away, it gets hard. But in these times when the music fades into this sound of mere clanging, and worship songs lose their fun & wonder. A new element emerges, the words, the lyrics, the true meaning behind why I am worshiping in the first place.
When I worship, it is normally to put me in the right heart attitude, I don't come into it with that wonder for God's greatness and love, but so when the song is over, the script is finished, the feeling of wonder & adoration go away.
The "silence" is there to remind me, that I'm doing it wrong (AGAIN!) I am singing to God, giving him my all, but what are the words I am singing? How do I feel about God at the moment? Am I lying to God when I sing those words? Sometimes I just stop & listen, reflecting on the lyrics, and you know what, during each service I find one line that I don't agree with, one thing that tilts me the wrong way. Now, I don't know if it's my problem, or the lyrics problem, and honestly I can't think of a example.
But my point, and there is one (I think) is that I don't need the noise, the lyrics. I don't need any of that stuff to worship God. Worship is not the songs and the guitar. Worship is the adoration of God.
God give and takes away. Sometimes I'll have that warm fuzzy feeling of God's prescence, sometimes I won't. I don't even have to sing, but I can worship. I can always worship.