The Spillover
Before We Gather by Zach Hicks
| Scripture
Read Psalm 139:1-18
| Devotion
I once heard a preacher say, “Worship begins when knowledge of God spills over from head to heart.” That has always stuck with me, and I find it to be not only simple and profound but also biblical. The author of the worship song Psalm 139 expresses this spillover when he exclaims, “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand” (vv. 17-18).
On the experience side, I’ve had many Sundays when worship just stayed up there in my head. There was no spillover, no moment when it seemed like the entirety of me kicked in. Some people are leery of spillover. “Emotions are dangerous; they can lead you astray,” they say. And while there is some truth to grapple with there, I’ve found it more dangerous, after nearly four decades of being a worshiper, not to have my emotions engaged. There’s something incomplete, something subhuman about robotically engaging worship only in your head. And I know this from experience.
The Scriptures corroborate this. The Great Commandment urges us to love God with everything-heart, soul, mind, and strength (Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37). Emotions and feelings have to be included in the everything, no doubt. The psalms teach us this too. They use evocative, emotional language to describe the way we should talk to God. They model what worshipfulness should look like. And yes, worshipfulness looks like that overwhelming spillover when knowledge of God moves from head to heart, when contemplation breaks out into wonder, when seeing turns into beholding.
How do we find and cultivate that worshipful spirit? Comparing seeing to beholding is a good way to get at that elusive whole-self engagement. I remember a time when I beheld my wife, Abby. It was on our wedding day. Of course, I had seen her many times before. I could have reported to you a bunch of knowledge about her I had from seeing her. Abby has blue eyes and blonde hair, she doesn’t like surprises, and she’s always looking for the fastest, most efficient way to get from point A to point B. But reporting all of these observations stays in the realm of seeing. Things were very different on our wedding day.
When I saw her walking down that aisle, my knowledge of her spilled over from head to heart. I couldn’t help it. I was over- whelmed. She reminded me of Jesus’ love for the church and the way he makes her spotless. Seeing her gave me an overwhelming picture of our entire hopeful life together–the kids we didn’t yet have, the stages of life, the grief and the joy, and the growing old together. All those things and more were bottled up in this one moment when I beheld Abby.
There is a similar dynamic at play for the worshiper who yields her or his imagination to the overwhelming wonder of who God is and what he has done. It’s one thing to assent to the fact that “Jesus died on the cross for my sins.” It’s quite another to, in the words of hymn-writer Isaac Watts, “survey the wondrous cross,” where “sorrow and love flow mingled down.”
Beholding certainly includes practical things like letting our guard down and letting ourselves feel. It also includes say- ing no to the ten-thousand distractions-whether it’s a squealy sound system, a phone buzzing in your pocket, a screaming baby, or an off-key song leader or out-of-tune instrument. Beholding often takes preparation and prayer, like what we’re doing right now: quieting our spirits to be centered, listening, waiting, and available. Beholding involves expectation, like the psalmist who is so eager to worship that he impatiently cries out, “I will awake the dawn!” (Ps. 108:2).
But before we start feeling too guilty that the spillover of worshipfulness tends to show up a minority of the time, we should also recognize that it’s human to go through dry seasons. Sometimes, they’re so long that we’ve forgotten the joy of behold- ing, and we need David’s faithful prayer, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation” (Ps. 51:12). The spillover of worshipful behold. ing is something God desires for us. Why wouldn’t he want us to be overwhelmed by him? What wouldn’t be good, right, true, and wholesome about that? Ultimately, the spillover can’t be manufactured. It only can be given and received. So let’s turn now to the Giver and ask for it.
| Prayer
Aim your prayers in this direction:
- Pray against all the barriers and distractions that create divided attention and allegiance in worship.
- Pray-even beg for the Holy Spirit to overwhelm your worshiping body with a wondrous sense of beholding the goodness, glory, and salvation of God through Jesus Christ.
- Pray for those sisters and brothers who have been in extended seasons of dryness. Ask the Holy Spirit to gently, but powerfully, meet them in gathered worship today.