There has been a lot of conversation going on within our ministry about the idea of hyping God. It has spurred a lot of questions and talk which is always a good thing. I’ve traveled and led worship in many different churches, venues, and festivals and have seen worship come in many different styles. After seeing all that I’ve seen, I do not believe you can hype God. Here are my reasons why:

   To hype something, in a basic term, means to make something bigger than it is. When you think of hype, you generally think of people talking something up bigger or more extravagant than what it is. With God, He is bigger and more extravagant than anything we can imagine. Therefore, we cannot talk Him up bigger than what he is.

   Where we often get mislead or confused is seeing a time where people come in to a service or event, shout, go crazy, jump, yell, etc, then leave and don’t act the same. Is this hype? If they aren’t living the lifestyle that they showed in the service, then what are they doing?

   I have seen people shout, jump and lose it during a service and walk away still messed up and broken making dumb choices. To me, this is all part of the walk with God. If we have the mindset that we can’t worship God because we have messed up or aren’t perfect, we don’t understand what worship is completely. We worship because God commanded it, not because we feel like it.

    God made all of creation to worship Him. Trees, nature, human beings, everything. We are the only creation that has a soul, feelings and emotions. This is why so many times, our shout is shut up in our worship.  The Bible is very clear on jumping, shouting, dancing, having quite intimate times, lifting hands, kneeling, etc; the outward expressions of worship. So when I am not lining up with those actions, which are commanded, I need to change my feelings to line up with the Bible. The inverse would be changing the Bible’s commands to line up with my emotions, which never ends good.

   I never want to be someone who judges another for his or her worship. That is between them and God alone. I would much rather see someone who is completely engulfed in sin, worship through it, jumping, shouting, and dancing in worship then see someone who has become so indoctrinated that the shout is shut up.

   There is a strong difference between hypocrisy and hype. We can’t hype God but we can become hypocrites. This is the person who jumps, shouts, dances and has no intention of changing his or her life to line up with Go; just doing it for the fun of it. Very rarely have I seen this. What I usually see is someone who may not understand all the way what they are doing in regards to worship in the beginning but eventually the heart lines up, which always is an amazing thing to witness.

   What do you think? Can we hype God? 

I wrote a blog a couple of days ago about making good choices. This is a follow up to that entry on how we can train ourselves to make good choices:

1) Learn your emotions and how to control them.  

Emotions can be a killer and we all have them. Fear, insecurity and anger are just a few that commonly effect our decisions. Learn what each of those emotions feels like and control it. When it rises up, wait until it passes to make your decision. 

2) Trust the advice of mentors.

         First, make sure you have mentors and people in your life that speak into you. If you are stuck on a decision that seems incredibly hard to make, talk to them and get their advice. Most likely, they will be able to give you better advice than what you can give yourself because they aren’t swayed by the circumstances within the decision you need to make. They are on the outside looking in and can give objective help.

3) Don’t make rash decisions.

        Have you ever heard the expression, “Don’t make decisions when you are tired or hungry?” This is SO true. We want to be in a normal. calm state of mind when we make our choice. If we aren’t, chances are we are going to be swayed to make a rash decision. 

4) Stick it through.

        When is it time to call it quits and when is the time to keep going? It’s always a hard thing to decide. John Maxwell wrote a blog recently that implored us to not change our lives when we are in a difficult time but only when things are successful. When we uproot and change our situations within a difficult season, we can’t fully see all that is really happening because we are engulfed by life’s circumstances. We must stick it through until we have returned to the mountain top before we make the decision to move on in life. 

5) Look to God’s Word.

         Reading scripture will bring us to Truth. You will be shocked at how applicable God’s Word is to today’s situation. Getting lost in studying this Word will shape our character to make good decisions naturally. 

Every small decision you make will add to what your life becomes. We must remember this with every choice we make. 

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