WHY I LIFT MY HANDS WHEN I SING

I am very thankful to Sam Storms for his insights on the subject. 

In several of the churches I have visited on island, I have noticed sometimes hardly anyone but me lifts up their hands when they sing. I'm not really used to this because in San Clemente, in the church I pastored as well as the churches I visited, most people regularly worshipped in that it posture. When I worship, I like to stand and lift up my hands. On more than one occasion I’ve been asked: “Bill, why do you lift your hands when you worship?” My answer is two-fold.

First, I raise my hands when I pray and praise because I have explicit biblical precedent for doing so. Consider this smattering of texts.

“So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands” (Psalm 63:4).

“To you, O LORD, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me, lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit. Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary” (Psalm 28:1).

“Every day I call upon you, O LORD; I spread out my hands to you” (Psalm 88:9).

“I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes” (Psalm 119:48).

“Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the LORD!” (Psalm 134:2).

“O LORD, I call upon you; hasten to me! Give ear to my voice when I call to you! Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!” (Psalm 141:1-2).

“I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land” (Psalm 143:6).

“Then Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD in the presence of all the assembly of Israel and spread out his hands. Solomon had made a bronze platform five cubits long, five cubits wide, and three cubits high, and had set it in the court, and he stood on it. Then he knelt on his knees in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands toward heaven” (2 Chronicles 6:12-13).

“And at the evening sacrifice I rose from my fasting, with my garment and my cloak torn, and fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the LORD my God” (Ezra 9:5).

“And Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people answered, ‘Amen, Amen,’ lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground” (Nehemiah 8:6).

“Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven” (Lamentations 3:41:41).

“I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling” (1 Timothy 2:8).

I think this gives a biblical warrant for this kind of posture when we sing. Let me ask you who still are skeptical about expressive raising hands in worship. Why do you assume that the appropriate place for your hands is at your side and you need an explicit biblical warrant for raising them? Wouldn’t it be just as reasonable to assume that the appropriate place for one’s hands is raised toward heaven, calling for an explicit biblical warrant (other than gravity or physical exhaustion) to keep them low?

The second answer I give to the question, “Why do you lift your hands when you worship?” is: “Because it is freeing to use all my body to express my love to God." We are to worship God with our whole being. Paul couldn’t have been more to the point when he exhorted us to present our “bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our “spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). Paul also exhorts us to honor God with our body in 2 Corinthians 5:20. 

We are both physical and spiritual beings who are commanded to love to love God with all our being, body, soul, and spirit (Matthew 22:37). Someday we will have glorified bodies forever in which to honor and adore our great God. If we are commanded to dance, kneel, sing and speak when we worship, as we find throughout scripture, what possible reason could there be for not engaging our hands and arms as well?

The human hand gives visible expression to so many of our beliefs, feelings, and intentions. Our hands speak loudly. When closed or repressed, we tuck them with crossed arms under our armpits. When angry, we clinch our fists, threatening harm to others. When guilty, we hide our hands or hold incriminating evidence from view. When uneasy, we sit on them to obscure our inner selves. When worried, we wring them. When afraid, we use them to cover our face or hold tightly to someone for protection. When desperate or frustrated, we throw them wildly in the air, perhaps also in resignation or dismay. When confused, we extend them in bewilderment, as if asking for advice and direction. When hospitable, we use them to warmly receive those in our presence. When suspicious, we use them to keep someone at bay, or perhaps point an accusing finger in their direction.

Does it not seem wholly appropriate, therefore, in the most positive way, to raise them to God when we seek him in prayer or celebrate him with praise? So again, why do I worship with hands raised?

Because like one who surrenders to a higher authority, I yield to God’s will and ways and submit to his guidance and power and purpose in my life. It is my way of saying, “God, I am yours to do with as you please.”

Because like one who expresses utter vulnerability, I say to the Lord: “I have nothing to hide. I come to you open handed, concealing nothing. My life is yours to search and sanctify. I’m holding nothing back. My heart, soul, spirit, body and will are an open book to you.”

 

Because like one who needs help, I confess my utter dependence on God for everything. I cry out: “O God, I entrust my life to you. If you don’t take hold and uplift me, I will surely sink into the abyss of sin and death. I rely on your strength alone. Preserve me. Sustain me. Deliver me.”

Because like one who happily and expectantly receives a gift from another, I declare to the Lord: “Father, I gratefully embrace all you want to give. I’m a spiritual beggar. I have nothing to offer other than my need of all that you are for me in Jesus. So glorify yourself by satisfying me wholly with you alone.”

Because like one who aspires to direct attention away from self to the Savior, I say: “O God, yours is the glory; yours is the power; yours is the majesty alone!”

Because as the beloved of God, I say tenderly and intimately to the Lover of my soul: “Abba, hold me. Protect me. Reveal your heart to me. I am yours! You are mine! Draw near and enable me to know and feel the affection in your heart for this one sinful soul.”

Please understand: I’m not telling you how to worship, but simply sharing how I do and why. I’m at that point in life where I honestly couldn’t care less what the immovable evangelical is thinking or the crazy charismatic is feeling. What matters to me is that God have my all: my mind, will, feet, eyes, ears, tongue, heart, affections, and yes, my hands.

No, you need not raise your hands to worship God. But why wouldn’t you want to? I am happy and free with uplifted hands to my Lord and Savior.

Pastor Bill

DELIGHTING IN A HAPPY GOD

One of the most life changing moments in my life was when I read from the word with new eyes after reading John Piper and Jonathan Edwards. I discovered that God is the happiest of beings. So often I used to think of God as non-enthusiastic or even gloomy. The god of religion is cold, calloused, cantankerous, mean-hearted – in a word he, is just plain unhappy – and he is out to make your life miserable. But the true God of Scripture is revealed as being “the happy God”!

Unlike the religious views of God, our God is truly a God of joy. He is not an old angry man with a scowl upon His face. He actually is a happy God, and we have Scripture that teaches us this wonderful truth! He loves to be God, He takes great pleasure in all that He does, and He is enthusiastic about serving His people and working for their welfare. For example, God says in Jeremiah 32:41, "I will rejoice in doing them good." Jesus said in John 15:11, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you." And Paul writes in 1 Timothy 1:11 of "the glorious gospel of the blessed God." Blessed (makairos in Greek) can mean happy. So Paul is saying: "the glorious gospel of the happy God."

When I say God is happy, I mean that He is supremely or infinitely happy. He is the happiest being in the universe. God is infinitely happy because he is infinitely glorious and the good news is that He invites us to enter into his happiness. Did you know that God is happy when He thinks about you and the work He is doing in, to, through, and over your life? Do you believe this? Perhaps if you did, it might launch your life into dimensions and levels of joy and delight previously unknown in your experience.

Here is what Piper writes in The Pleasures of God

"It is good news that God is gloriously happy. No one would want to spend eternity with an unhappy God. If God is unhappy then the goal of the gospel is not a happy goal, and that means it would be no gospel at all. But, in fact, Jesus invites us to spend eternity with a happy God when he says, ‘Enter into the joy of your master' (Matthew 25:23). Jesus lived and died that his joy-God's joy-might be in us and our joy might be full (John 15:11;17:13). Therefore the gospel is ‘the gospel of the glory of the happy God."
 What makes God so supremely happy? Well, I'm sure there are many contributing factors. Here are a few:

God Delights in Himself
First, God is happy because he delights in himself. He finds happiness in Himself. One of the best ways to think about God's immense happiness is to think of it as the delight he has in his Son who is the image of His glory. When Jesus entered the world, God the Father said, "This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17). When God the Father beholds the glory of his own essence in the person of his Son, he is infinitely happy. "Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights" (Isaiah 42:1). God is happy because he delights in himself, especially as his nature is reflected in his beloved Son.

God Is Sovereign

God is happy because he is sovereign. Psalm 115:3 says, "Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases or brings Him pleasure." What this verse implies is that God's sovereignty is his right and power to do whatever makes him happy. Our God is in heaven—he is over all things and subject to none. Therefore, he does whatever he pleases—he always acts to preserve his maximum happiness. God is happy because his righteous acts, which are always done out of love to his own glory, can never be frustrated beyond his will. Isaiah 43:13, "I am God, and also henceforth I am he; there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work and who can hinder it?" Isaiah 46:10, "My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose." Daniel 4:35, "He does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, 'What doest thou?'" We may be sure, therefore, that God is infinitely happy because he has absolute right and power as Creator to overcome every obstacle to his joy.

It's worth asking as a parenthesis here how a good God can be happy when the world is shot through with suffering and evil. It's a huge and hard question. Two things help me. One is that it doesn't help much to save God's reputation by saying that he is not really in charge. If someone had tried to comfort me in April 2010 when my wife decided to divorce me, by saying, "God didn't will this to happen; you can still trust him; he's good," I would have answered by saying, "My consolation does not come from thinking that God is so weak he can't divert my wife from deciding to leave me" My God is sovereign. He let her leave me in his appointed time; and I believe now and someday I will see that it was good. For I have learned in Jesus Christ that God is good. The biblical solution to the problem of evil is not to rob God of his sovereignty.

The other observation that helps me with this question is that God's attitude toward tragic events depends on the focus of the lens. God does not delight in pain and evil considered simply in themselves. When his lens is narrow and focused just on that, he can be filled with abhorrence and grief. But when he opens his lens to take in all the connections and effects of an event, even to eternity, the event forms part of a pattern or mosaic which he does delight in, and which he wills. For example, the death of Christ was the work of God the Father. "We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted . . . Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief."(Isaiah 53:4,10).

It used to seem reasonable for a God who knows every problem -- even when a sparrow falls, or a hair is lost from a head -- to be quite serious. So I have not pictured God as someone who would have much joy or laugh much. Certainly God is not uncaring, or not touched by our problems. Yet it seems that He walks in faith and rejoices because He knows He will eventually solve every problem and make everything right. Therefore He is not burdened down with sadness and woe, but instead is able to laugh and rejoice.

Surely as God the Father saw the agony of his beloved Son and the wickedness that brought him to the cross, he did not delight in those things in themselves. Sin in itself and the suffering of the innocent in itself is abhorrent to God. But according to Hebrews 2:10 God the Father thought it was fitting to perfect the Pioneer of our salvation through suffering. God willed what he abhorred in the narrow view because in the broad view of eternity it was a fitting way to demonstrate his righteousness (Romans 3:25-26) and bring his people to glory (Hebrews 2:10). When God in his omniscience surveys the sweep of redemptive history from beginning to end, he rejoices in what he sees. Therefore, I conclude that nothing in all the world can frustrate the ultimate happiness of God. He delights infinitely in his own glory; and in his sovereignty he does whatever he pleases.

God's Happiness in His Mercy to Us

God's happiness spills over in mercy to us. Can you imagine what it would be like if the God who ruled the world were not happy? What if God were given to grumbling and pouting and depression like some Jack-and-the-beanstalk giant in the sky? What if God were despondent and gloomy and dismal and discontented and dejected and frustrated? Could we join David and say, "O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is" (Psalm 63:1)? No way!

Perhaps some of us relate to God like little children relate to a gloomy, dismal, discontented, frustrated father. They can't enjoy him. They can only try to avoid him and maybe try to work for him to make him feel better. Children cannot enjoy the company of their father if he is gloomy and dismal and frustrated. But not God, He's the happiest of all beings.

We have a God who is the opposite of the gloomy, dismal, disinterested father. Consider this encouragement from Jeremiah 9:24, "'I am the Lord who performs mercy and justice and righteousness in the earth, because in these things I delight' says the Lord." God shows mercy because it makes Him so very happy!

Listen to the heartbeat of your happy God in Jeremiah 32:40-41,

I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them; and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.

God does good to you because he enjoys it so much! He pursues the business of loving you with all his heart and with all his soul.

"Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." (Luke 12:32)
Oh what a happy God you have! Listen to these words:Isaiah. 62:5, “as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.”Psalm 35:27, "The LORD be exalted, who delights in the well-being of his servant."Psalm 149:4, For the LORD takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with salvation. ”
Psalm 147: 10-11, "His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor his delight in the legs of a man; the LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love."
Zephaniah 3:17, "The LORD your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing." ".

So, enjoy life! Wake up every morning and bask in the goodness and grace of “the happy God” Who loves you and lives in you. Embrace His happiness throughout the day, regardless of the situation or circumstances in which we may find ourselves.

Whoever trusts in the Lord, happy is he (Proverbs 16:20).

Happy in His happiness,
Pastor Bill