Contemporary Worship
I find that in contemporary worship services emotions are frequently disproportional to the meaning of the words themselves. We are encouraged to have deep feelings without proper truths to base those feelings on. It seems like we walk into the service and people are having these life changing emotional breakthroughs when we are simply repeating the same chorus over and over and over again. The music is fantastic, but there needs to be truth rightly expressed in meaningful words before we have the proportional feeling.
This is why the hymns can be so great because the emotion can be attached to meaningful truth. The hymns, typically, express and explain the truth of Christ's death and resurrection, God's glory, etc, so that there can be emotion expressed in proportion to the truth. This is better than weeping over the same chorus repeated four times in a row. We need to engage the mind of the worshiper so the heart can follow.
On the other hand, traditional worship services, while usually involving tremendous truths, can lack any sort of emotion that should be rightly attached to those truths. Singing an incredible hymn like “Amazing Love How Can it Be?” by Charles Wesley, but with a dead and lifeless heart is no better than singing a basic chorus that expresses little to no meaningful truths.
Dying to self, specifically forsaking one's own wants
So sick of hearing this idea of dying to self, dying to our own desires, etc. I have often heard that we must die to self as if we should forsake our own wants or desires in order to follow the desires of Jesus. I don't think when Jesus spoke of dying to self he was speaking of a denial of the desire to be happy. Rather, I think there are quite a lot of evidence, both Biblical and extra-biblical to support the pursuit of pleasure and happiness. John Piper talks about this extensively in Desiring God. In the same book he quotes Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher and mathematician (I think), who says that men do all things out of the desire to be happy, even when they hang themselves. C.S. Lewis wrote in his famous sermon, “The Weight of Glory” that there are a lot of incentives given to potential followers of Christ of the joy they will find in Him. Lewis' conclusion is that our desires are not too strong, but too weak. The idea is that if we should wholeheartedly pursue happiness, (with the idea that fulfillment will only come in God/Christ).
Jesus talks about how “I came that they would have life to the full”. He tells the parable of the man who for joy, went and sold everything he owned that he might possess the kingdom of God. Paul talks about, (Philippians?), how he works together with them for their “joy”.
We need to be more clear when we talk about “dying to self” and what that means. Obviously there is a Biblical precedent for this idea but it needs to be understood in context. It's interesting that nowhere in the Acts to Revelation do we hear about the need to die to self, (I don't think). Paul talks a lot about how we died, (past tense), to self and how we are called to “put off” the old man/self and put on the new man in Christ. But there is no call, anywhere, (I think), to die to self. Self, the old man, effectively died with Christ on the cross and we were raised up with Christ, having new life in Him/The Holy Spirit. To talk about dying to self, in the perspective of the writers of the Epistles, would seem stupid. Self was already dead. We are to reckon this as true and live in light of this truth, not force it to be true.
I don't love my wife, forsaking any selfish desires. I love my wife very selfishly, because loving her makes me happy. Loving my kids makes me happy. Having a healthy home life is an incredibly selfish desire for me. I pay the bills each month because I want to keep the lights and heat on. Is this selfish?
I don't think it makes any sense whatsoever to focus on how we must rid ourselves of our own desire to be happy. It ain't gonna happen. That would be like telling a fish not to swim, or a worm to dig. We are wired to be happy. We are wired to pursue our happiness.
I think of Hebrews 11, particularly v6, “without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him”. Abraham was looking forward to a better country, a heavenly one, etc. Jesus for the “joy set before him”, etc. Moses “considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward”. Jesus, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God”, (Heb. 12:2).
