Conditioned Response

Back to the ol' blogging fun! for another week- then i'm a burried- i mean.. uh... married guy! yahoo.

Ok, so i've been thinking about this a lot recently- and I've thought about this for a long time now. Pavlov. A scientist. He had his dogs. you may have heard of his experiments. He would ring a bell every time he fed his dogs for a period of time. And then, he began to ring the bell, but not feed the dogs- the dogs would still salivate- expecting food. Their brains were triggered by the bell that food was coming soon.

Now bear with me- this will come in handy in a minute.

I used to be in a "mega-church" and work with a youth ministry that was usually anywhere between 150 and 200- yeah- bigger than the church i work at now. But, anyway- we had a really impressive worship band for a few years that I had the blessing of playing with- they even recorded an album (which i play on a little). Every time the band plays, student will come up to the front and join in worship- sometimes jumping up and down, or holding their hands up and whatever. And we thought- wow, our kids love to worship. And rightly so- I'm sure they do.

We would go on retreats and the same thing- and sometimes our students woudl have a really emotional experience- they would often times cry, or be happy, or- whatever. doesnt' matter. The big thing is- we observed our students really entering in.

Maybe.

huh? wha? maybe? whattya mean, maybe. Well, I am posing, that, just as Pavlov could condition his dogs to respond in a certain way, many of us are conditioned to respond in a certain way. We hear the type of music start and it triggers in our brains- dancing time, hand raising time- singing time- whatever. And then we go and "worship," but it makes no difference in our lives. I've seen students so touched emotionally at a retreat and then going back to the world and living in sin.

I pose to everyone that worship is NOT music- it is NOT a genre of music, it is NOT just singing songs- it is NOT JUST MUSIC! music is the prominent form that worship takes in our corporate setting, but, without getting into the specifics, worship is a lifestyle. So if you sing your song, and you go out and live wrong- there's a disconnect there! There is a disconnected wire- in the song, I sing that I love God, but then I go out and deny that by disobdience or not spending time with Him. I sing that I want to be holy, but then I never strive toward it- that does not make sense! Actions speak louder than words, and so true worship is sung and lived.

I believe that too many people are conditioned to respond to worship music in a certain way- especially musicians- because we are wired for music, we are automatically driven to give our all in a musical performance, or something like that... but we forget what we are singing. I can memorize songs so well, but sometimes that means that I don't know what I'm singing. Conditioned response- rote memorization.

I write this because i struggle with it, too. I was leading worship this morning, and the song that we did in closing after the message really tied in to the message- "How Deep the Father's Love" and I was singing it and for the first time in a while, I began to remember what the words really said, what they meant- and what that meant to me- and I could almost not finish singing because I was gettting bleary eyed. It all of a sudden hit me- and I don't think I can not be changed remembering what that song reminds us all of...

I'm not saying everyone doesn't worship, I'm just saying it bothers me that so many people "worship" on sunday morning, but we're not truly living it- we're not changed by it and it doesn't affect us. But we appear to be real on it.

My senior pastor and I struggle because there are many issues leading to this end- the people in our church do not often engage in real worship- sure they sing, but they stand there often times stock still and worship does not move them. But you know what- they're honest, at least. The ones who really aren't into it too much aren't paying lip service to it at least. Actions speak louder than words, but at least these actions are in syncronization with their words.

so when the music starts up on sunday morning again- don't be enticed into grooving because you feel like it- le the Holy Spirit work in you- let the music and the lyrics- the worship- really affect you. And let it be your lifestyle, not just a song on Sunday morning.