Sea billows

Most of the time when we are singing praise and worship to our King, our God, to the Savior of the world, we can get emotional. No matter the emotion it evokes, there is some kind of emotion. Lots of times when we feel these emotions our faces mimic the feelings romping around inside. If not our faces then our eyes, I know especially for me, they can tell you how I feel at the moment. I realize we all lift up praise differently, and that's okay.

But when I look around and I see tired faces with trained lips spitting out empty words that actually mean a whole lot, with bored eyes, it doesn't sit with me well. It's more than just another hymn or song. As long as it stands firm in doctrine, shouldn't we just be overly excited? Especially in a country that we can dance on the streets freely singing these songs (we might be acting like fools to some...). Aren't we supposed to be fools for God, yet not being foolish with his name, or his covenant with us?

Some churches begin worship as such:

Turn to hymn 215 singing only the first, second, and last stanzas, standing as we sing.


Why stand if we only think in our minds how we want to sing back down because this is a particularly long hymn? We sang this song in church and it stirred emotion in me:

Since Jesus came into my heart
Since Jesus came into my heart
Floods of joy o'er my soul like sea billows roll
Since Jesus came into my heart


I pondered sea billows, seems like powerful waves just jumping and heaving in the ocean. If floods of joy comes over my soul like sea billows, then why am I not acting like it? Looking around at the congregation I cannot say what was going on inside of them, but it seemed to me by the expressions on their face that sea billows did not overtake them as they worshiped. Like I said I cannot be their judge on how satisfactory their worship was to the Lord, and I'm no holier than thou worshiper by any means. Sometimes I am sickened by my lack of emotion during worship.

I think about the lack of emotion I had the first time I was in a worship service completely in a different language that I had never studied at all in life. My mouth was just trying to form the words and my brain was working over time to help my mouth spit out the words correctly. But when I stopped to look around, when I stopped my meaningless jumbled thing I called "worship" to look at those who knew what these words meant, I saw worship. They weren't jumping around, they stood by their seats, maybe a hand or two lifted, eyes closed, faces racked with the emotions that stirred inside. Being the one that didn't understand these words made me feel like a non-believer might feel in an American worship service;

What is this talk of blood of the Lamb?
Can anyone tell me who Hosanna is? I don't know her.
Oh ok, Jesus I know that guy. Man, these people seem really legitimate about this. Kinda nice.


This is not a post against traditional or contemporary or non-instrumental whatever. It is about the way we treat this beautiful celebration we call worship. Don't think for a moment that I am a dynamic worshiper, if there can be dynamic worshipers. I just love to worship my Lord, sometimes it might be hollow, other times, most times, I can't help but think of the implication of the words coming out of my mouth.

UP FROM THE GRAVE HE AROSE!!! With a mighty triumph o'er his foes.


Yes! Be excited! Jesus rose from the grave! He triumphed death! He is victor! So when you sing of it will you not be excited? He is worthy of your singing, dancing, flailing, raised hands, closed eyes, emotion filled soul. He is worthy.

Let the floods of joy like sea billows overtake you.


All to God