When a guy and girl fall in love, get married, and go on their honeymoon, they are riding on cloud nine. Their hearts are exploding with feelings of love and they think, “This will never end; I’ll feel this way forever!” I know because I felt that when I got married. But at some point, the honeymoon does end. (Corinne, sweetheart, if you’re reading this, we haven’t reached that point, yet . . .) There comes a point in time when being “in love” must be supplanted by love.

What’s the difference? Being “in love” is a thrilling experience of feelings - wonderful beyond imagination. But love is deeper than what we feel. Marriages that last don’t last because the partners were “in love” the whole time. They last because the partners loved, even when they didn’t feel like it. Feelings come and go and are fickle and subjective. But love is faithful through it all.

Okay, so I’m not intending to write about marriage - what’s my point? Simply this: many things in life begin with an emotional rush, a glorious ride on cloud nine, a thrill of feelings. I have a four-year-old niece. She’s so excited to start school she can’t stand it. A few years from now, she’ll be faking a headache so she can stay home - the thrill wears off. Often (not usually with school, but frequently in marriage), when the thrill dies down, it is replaced with something far deeper - love.

Getting to the point . . . when you first have faith and enter into a relationship with God, you experience a thrill beyond imagination. Your sins are gone, the Creator of the Universe is your best friend, you come to worship and float around the sanctuary on cloud nine. But at some point, your feelings go. The thrill wears off. Now you are at a crossroads. Will you replace the thrill with something deeper or try to recreate the emotional high? My suggestion is to let the thrill go and move on to deeper waters.

Emotional thrills are, by definition of the word emotion, temporary. It has been my experience when you let the thrill go and move to a deeper, more meaningful relationship, God will bring you other thrills. Unfortunately, we tend to get addicted to our thrills and spend a lot of time trying to go back, instead of forward. The church I grew up in never moved forward. We spent all our energy trying to recreate an emotional high in worship instead of building a depth of relationship with God beyond our feelings. As a result, when the thrill could not be recreated, many fell away. Just as many marriages end in divorce when the couple no longer feels “in love,” many of my friends fell away when their “honeymoon” with God was over.

Don’t misunderstand me, I think emotion and passionate expression in worship are very important. But don’t let the emotional experience be your goal. In my church as a kid, if the service wasn’t filled with extreme emotional experiences, people felt like God wasn’t there. How ridiculous! Don’t focus your worship on trying to feel something or experience some emotional high. Thank God that sometimes He does overwhelm us with His presence and we actually feel Him. In those moments our hearts burst, our tears are loosed, our feet dance, our spirits soar. But God is just as present when our feelings are gone, just as much involved in our lives, and just as worthy to be worshiped.

Worship is not about an emotional experience. It’s not about feeling some thrill. It’s not about getting caught up in the moment and singing the same song for 30 minutes. Worship is about living with God. It’s about the deeper path beyond our feelings. It’s about loving Him even when we don’t feel like it.