Compelling Love

1st John 4:10 says, "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
If you lead worship often, you'll notice that some congregations have a hard time getting into the worship. We watch videos of Hillsong, Elevation, Vertical Church, and so many other bands and we see everyone in the crowd raising their hands and screaming to the music. So this begs the question, "What makes this congregation than mine?" We first say that they are a younger congregation, so we pursue connecting with the younger generation. Then we see the music and lights and visuals and try to mimic their every move. We are trying so hard to do everything we can to create an environment that is worth hundreds of thousands of views on youtube.
The desire to see a congregation worship is one to be had by each and every worship pastor (even though the intentions may not be the best, Paul says that for someone to do ministry apart from intentions is still gain for the Kingdom Philippians 1:16-18). So I think the question that needs to be asked is, "What can I do to help my congregation worship more?" I hope to dedicate a whole blog post to the power of prayer and its importance in church leadership, but for now I will say if this is truly the desire of the worship pastor, the best thing he can do is pray for their hearts to be compelled by the love of Christ.
A personal pet-peeve of mine is when people would come to Liberty University and tell us that they use their platform to share the Gospel, but we never hear anything apart from their story. Their story is not the Gospel but what the Gospel is doing in their lives. The Gospel is the relational and redemptive story of God creating us to abide in Him and to have communion with Him. When we fell away, He had a plan to bring us back into fellowship with Him, which is why He sent His Son to die on a cross for the forgiveness of sins. Now, we have complete access to the throne of God to have communion with Him with the hope of having perfect fellowship with Him when He comes to get us. Amen!
So now that we have defined the Gospel within a paragraph (as a world map defines the city of New York), we can say that God's love for us is pretty intense. By no means is His love for us greater than His love for His own glory, but the abounding love He shows us is incomparable. Our prayer for our congregation is for the love of God to become real to them and even more so to ourselves.
The Holy Spirit's convincing of the love of God in our hearts is like pulling back the string of a bow to let the arrow fly straight into the target. We can't expect an arrow to go very far if the string that it is attached to isn't pulled back. How can we expect a congregation to engage in worship with their whole hearts if they don't first know that God loves them and that His love for them is greater than anything else they know?
When I say that they understand the love of God, I am not talking about their salvation, for I know that many know that God loves them but my fear is that some don't really know how much. The love of God stretches from creation (birth) to the cross (salvation) to grace and strength (sanctification).
We just sang 10,000 Reasons this morning in church. This song means nothing if there is someone in the congregation that doesn't have a reason to glorify the Lord. The purpose of the song is to think of all the things that God has loved us, through forgiveness and grace and His slowness to wrath. This song can get so old after a while because we lose sight of the way that God has loved us and the things He has done for us.
Therefore, my theory is that if the love of God is truly contemplated in a congregation's heart, through the work of the Spirit, then it will be truly compelling. This is not to say that the heart of the worship pastor is to see people physically engaged but spiritually transformed by worship. It never gets old to say that I'd rather see one heart transformed then everyones' hands in the air.
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky - The Love of God by Frederick M. Lehmman
Lets pray that our congregations would be compelled by the love of God - Forsake All