Worshiping beyond Biblical limits

1. The Bible, the only Rule of Faith and Practice.

The Bible is to be the only source of doctrine and practice. Biblical teachings prevent us from trespassing secure limits established by the Lord for the development of our spiritual lives. However, the tendency of many sectors of the Charismatic movement has been to minimize the importance of the biblical boundaries for lack of knowledge of the safety the Bible provides each and every believer. Moreover, they tended to base some of their faith and practice on experience and not only in the Bible.

2. Possible Mistakes.

In the area of worshiping, these attitudes towards the Bible have allowed other mistakes to be made: a) Ignoring the importance of the praise of the faithful Church throughout history. For lack of knowledge of Church history, some believers tend to think that true worship appeared in Church as a result of the Charismatic movement; and b) Basing the doctrine of worship on “experiences” of people they consider to be (or indeed are) very spiritual.

3. The danger of the prophane fire.

The show-like worship (on a stage) together with the performance of songs with a view to stimulate emotions and “spiritual” feelings started to replace the true fire of the Holy Spirit. It is a kind of praise that excites emotions regardless if the Holy Spirit is working or not; it is a form of worship that stirs emotions no matter if it is sung in a true Christian church or in a temple of another religion. It does not matter either if the performers are living in sanctification or in sin.

Yet the Lord is not pleased with emotions through those means. The Lord calls those “prophane fire” (Lev. 10:1-3). The Holy Spirit alone is supposed to touch the emotions of the faithful; the Holy Spirit is enough to stimulate feelings of praise and adoration in the hearts of the believers, generating thanksgiving and a proper desire to exalt the name of the Lord Jesus.

4. Mysticism.

As a consequence of these mistakes, the Church was unable to offer true worship. Consequently, the Church started to suffer from a few problems. First of all, the lack of spiritual worship within Biblical limits started to take many believers into mysticism. By mysticism we mean allowing experiences in the spiritual realm that are not sanctioned by the Scriptures.

Welcoming those mystical experiences without any Biblical warranty about its holy origin had the undesirable result of allowing deceiving spirits to be manifest in their midst. The only assurance against mysticism and its evil consequence is to keep oneself within Biblical limits.

Finally, mystical experiences may even, at a first stage, please innocent worshipers that may even feel well about them. But in the long run they will result in oppression to the believer no matter how “sincere” he or she may be.