confusion

While visiting my best friend, I attended a worship session at the Chicago House of Prayer. It turned out to be not at all what I expected. When I had visited before, I was at entirely different places in life. I used to love IHOP. This time I left with insanely mixed feelings. I really hesitated to even talk about this, because I don't want to hurt anyone. But I process things through writing, and through discussion. So, I write this through a need to process the things that I felt while attempting to engage in the IHOP form of worship and for the most part failing miserably.

First off, I have questioned for some time the way that God shows up in our world. Or at least the way that we perceive his presence. I wonder sometimes about the idea that every time I get emotional and come to a conclusion based on those emotions that God is speaking to me. Because to be completely honest, I feel as if that is how many Christians operate: on an entirely emotional level. The reason I believe this is because I lived that way for so long. I would go through "dry" times in my faith and then come into an highly emotionally charged time of life when God felt close, and I felt close to God. I felt as if the times when I was the most emotional was when God was obviously talking to me. Or at least the times when I should make decisions, because those decisions would be based on God's will.

Before I go on, I want anyone who either: a) attends IHOP or b) loves IHOP, to forgive me. I am not trying to discredit your way of life and the way that you worship and connect with God. It's just that I am so conflicted and need to have this chance to be honest in a public forum. And, at the end of the day, this is more about things wrong with ME that I want the chance to honestly lay out here so that I can face the lies that I have been believing in order to find the truth.

Sooo, I was sitting at IHOP this past week, listening to the worship team lead the worship, and I found myself doubting more than I have in months. I found this fact highly ironic, since I was in a place said to be most saturated in God's presence. But I couldn't get past so many things.

One of the things that really bothered me was the choice of topic. As I recall, one or two phrases were repeated over and over for about a half hour. The overriding theme of this time and the phrases sung was a desperation for God to show up. Then the phrase switched, and we sang an actual song. And then some more phrases. But what I got out of it was the idea that God's presence is something intoxicating that we should desire with everything we are.

I think what frustrates me so much about this is that, at least for me, God's presence has always been marked by a high level of emotion. I would get really angsty/emotional (usually more on the happy end of the spectrum), and interpret that to mean that the Spirit was moving. And, maybe that's my problem. Maybe God actually shows up for other people and I've been missing it my whole life. But, there have been times in my life where I thought God was speaking to me in some way or I felt strongly that something should or would happen due to my emotional state, and things went wrong as I acted on that impulse. I've made some big "mistakes" in life when I thought at the time I was doing what God wanted. Does God want me to make mistakes? I believe God works all things to the good, and I believe there is much to be learned from mistakes. But, I do not know if I can believe that I would be led by God to do something that would hurt someone else simply so we could both learn from it. That sounds...horrible. Sin has consequences. Sin is sin.

Anyway, this whole struggle has made me really question the idea of emotionally charged worship based off of repeating the same phrase over and over until one is forced to either completely zone out or become incredibly emotional. At the same time, I recognize the value of repeating something over and over - each time it is repeated it takes on slightly new meanings as one processes the implications of the phrase.

And then there's the whole idea of preaching based on the idea of prophecy. The night I was there was teaching night, and the "pastor" figure decided that God didn't want Him to speak that night, so he didn't. He wasn't "getting anything" from God, and so he didn't preach that night. I guess it's hard for me to comprehend, given my upbringing.

The pastor at my home church doesn't operate like that. He preaches every Sunday, whether or not he is feeling it, and he prayerfully asks God to speak through him. He is faithful to study God's word, and faithful to deliver to the best of his ability, his human interpretation of God's word, all the while praying that God will speak through and beyond his own human weakness.

I guess I find myself moving toward a different form of worship. I choose songs that focus on God's attributes, and I find myself skeptical of songs that are overly focused on God's ability to make life easier or better. I have come to the conclusion that emotion is a natural out-flowing of a heart that is in love with God, but I don't necessarily think that emotion means that God is present in an extraordinary manner. And I'm not saying this because I think it's right. I'm saying this because it is what I find myself believing, and I'm pretty sure I'm wrong, at least in some aspect of it all.

Here is the main thing that disturbs me about the way that I find myself looking at the world post-college: I do believe that God is present in the world today, and that He loves me. I believe that He speaks. So how do these beliefs, which are absolutely crucial to my Christianity, match up with the other things I find myself thinking, such as my skepticism that emotion equals the presence of God? How DOES God speak or lead, if not through emotionally charged worship sessions?

I welcome any & all discussion on this topic. For anyone who may be offended, I beg you to understand that I did not write this to offend, or to assert the wrongness of a charismatic/Pentecostal/IHOPian view of God and His working in the world. I wrote this because as I sat at IHOP, I was confronted over and over again by the fact that what I believe does not match up with what I was seeing at IHOP. And that disturbed me more than I can describe.

Finally, I apologize for what is probably horrible writing. I don't have the energy to proofread this. So it's going up in draft form.