In Luke 10:27, Jesus said, “…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind…” As worship leaders, we know that worship is more than songs, that worship is the right response of our whole lives to God’s revelation of Himself. Over the next four weeks, I will spend some time exploring what it means to worship God with our hearts, souls, strength, and with our minds.
The heart is the center of our beings. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks (Luke 6:45). From the heart flow rivers of life (John 7:38). The human heart is desperately wicked, and deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9). But as followers of Christ we have been given new hearts and with it new desires (Ezekiel 36:26).
Rene Descartes’ famously stated, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ But humans are not primarily thinking beings, but beings who feel and desire. As James K.A. Smith said, ‘You are what you love.’ As worship leaders, we have a responsibility to present deep and rich truths in our songs, verbal transitions, and liturgy that inform the minds of our people. But if truth only resides in our minds, without transforming our hearts and affections, we become proud and arrogant (1 Corinthians 8:1).
Living in the shadow of the enlightenment, we must work to help people apply the truth in their minds to their hearts and lives. Depending on your culture or context, seeking to apply and respond at a heart level may easily be confused with shallow emotionalism. But if we understand worship as the right response of our whole lives to God’s revelation of Himself, we will be transformed from the inside out both in our affections, desires, and our response to God. Worship will not just live in our minds as an intellectual ascent to specific truths about God, but will emanate from the center of our beings - the heart.
If we want to lead people in worship that is from the heart, we must be led by the Holy Spirit, as He opens our eyes to behold Christ, and live lives of worshipful response in the gathering and when we are sent out on mission.
I found this video from the Bible Project about ‘The Heart’ very helpful: