Manipulative worship impatiently skips the slow and deep persuasion of the human spirit (knowing full well that it will not be popular with the masses). It will give us the intensity our bodies crave, regardless of the object of our worship. When it comes to what Pentecostals call “intensity,” we would do well to distinguish persuasive, spirit-centered zeal from a manipulative, sensually-controlled passion.

Pentecostal worship places great emphasis on intensity. By intensity, they mean a strongly felt experience of emotion, intimacy, joy, wonder, or happiness. Indeed, this is a close cousin of the ecstasy in ecstatic utterances. The experience sought is one where active seeking gives way to a passive experience of overwhelming pleasure or emotion.
Critically examining emotional experiences like this has all the fun of ruining someone’s birthday surprise or spoiling a joke by blabbing the punchline before the narrator has finished. We don’t like people like that, who appear to find joy in lessening the joy of others. Not surprisingly, when a critique of someone’s spiritual experiences begins, the response is often an impatient sentiment along the lines of “Can’t you just let people have their fun?”, or, “What’s it to you if someone has a different worship experience to you?”
But in matters of Christian worship, we cannot be content if worshippers merely make the claim to an ecstatic experience. That’s precisely because the experience of worship is not the goal of worship. Worship is not successful simply because the worshippers enjoyed their worship. Christian worship is rooted in truth, and therefore everything that claims to be Christian worship must be a truthful response to a truthful revelation of the true God. In other words, you can get worship wrong, even if it felt right. Many people feel good about an exam they wrote, and find out they failed; some feel terrible and find out they passed with flying colours. The indispensable necessity of Christian worship is a true revelation of God from the Scriptures, and a truthful—that is, appropriate and corresponding—response to that revelation. The First Commandment restricts worship to the true God. The Second Commandment restricts the responses of worship to those He has commanded, which correspond to His being. The true God worshipped the true way constitutes biblical worship.
This brings us to a rather dispassionate discussion of felt emotions in worship, one that is sure to annoy all fans of scrunchy-face worship. Philosophers and thinkers have written much on how human emotions differ: their categories, their manifestations, and how they are evoked. Dating back to classical Greece, philosophers have often placed emotions into two categories: those evoked by reason, and those evoked by physical sensation. Different nomenclature has been used, but a similar idea prevailed for centuries. Pre-modern theologians spoke of the affections and the passions. Nietzche coined the terms Apollonianand Dionysian. Our own era has collapsed the two into the word emotion, but the distinction is worth reviving and keeping.
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While Christians might well want candidates that are more moral, more pure, more faultless, and more pristine, they need to be reminded that Jesus is not running in this election – or in any election. In a fallen world we are ALWAYS left with less than ideal choices. But some are clearly better than others.

We have known for quite some time now that the Democrats in America are overwhelmingly an anti-God and anti-life party. This has been the case for decades now. They had not always been this way, but the hyper-left is now firmly in control of the party, and it seems that these two ‘A’s now reign supreme: atheism and abortion.
All this is easy enough to document. As but one example, consider this: In just this past week Kamala Harris has demonstrated even more of her intense hatred of Christianity:-She and her party makes a blasphemous TV ad mocking Holy Communion.-She tells pro-lifers who said “Jesus is Lord” that they are at the “wrong rally”.-She deliberately refuses to go to the 60-year-old Presidential Catholic charity dinner in NYC.
And some “Christians” think they should support her?! Go figure.
But let me speak to each of these a bit further. The ad featuring Michigan Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer feeding feminist podcaster Liz Plank a Dorito was blasphemous at worst, and just bizarre at best. Christians, and certainly Catholics, know exactly what it was meant to parody. If you have the stomach to view this cringe-worthy and awful ad, you can see it here, with a bit of sensible commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiDJerqeaCc
As to the Christian pro-lifers not welcome at her rally, she had said this: “I think you guys are at the wrong rally. No, I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.” Kamala in effect kicked Jesus out of her meeting, just as the Dems long ago kicked God out of their party. And this was the real Kamala speaking: an unscripted moment with an off the cuff remark. This Christophobe is simply diabolical.
Concerning the presidential dinner, the last person who failed to attend was Walter Mondale some 40 years ago. And as Trump reminded the audience, that did not go so well, as he went on to lose 49 of the 50 US states in the election. It is reported that Kamala was told by her handlers not to go to the Al Smith dinner because it would alienate her liberal base – all the pro-aborts and pro-alphabet people. Hmm, another disastrous call.
When other Dems recognised that refusing to go to the dinner was actually a massive mistake, she went into panic mode and hastily made a video for the event. That too was utterly cringe-worthy and weird. Yet Walz calls Vance and the Republicans weird!
Just how dumb is Kamala and her hardcore progressive machine? While folks in San Francisco and New York might love her anti-God and anti-life agenda, most Americans do not see things that way. There are plenty of Catholic voters in places like Pennsylvania, one of the key swing states that she needs to win.
And her ugly attack on the Christian pro-lifer was in La Crosse, Wisconsin, another place where plenty of conservatives and Christians reside. But she does not give a rip about ordinary Americans. She is hellbent on pleasing her radical leftist supporters at all costs. Appointing Tim Walz as her running mate was another crystal-clear demonstration of this.
If this misotheist baby-hating candidate does win the election in a few weeks’ time, we will simply see much more of this. Consider just one recent case in point. A Tennessee Christian, Bevelyn Beatty Williams, has been prosecuted by the Biden/Harris administration for praying in front of an abortion clinic.
The 33-year-old pro-life activist and mother was convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. For daring to stand up for the unborn, this woman has been sentenced to a three-and-a-half-year prison term! I kid you not. More details can be found here: https://dailydeclaration.org.au/2024/10/18/pro-life-mother-imprisoned-3-years/
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To be free from the possibility of discouragements would be more “spiritual” than Jesus—and therefore not truly spiritual at all. Psalms 42 and 43 teach us the biblical approach to discouragement: we feel it, we recognize it for what it is, and we analyze the reasons for its presence.

From time to time over the centuries some Christians have taught, sometimes with tragic consequences, that a truly spiritual person never gets discouraged. To be cast down is, by definition, to be “unspiritual.” Unless we are well-grounded in Scripture, it is very easy for us to be overwhelmed, confused, and even more discouraged by such teaching.
This teaching certainly seems logical: if the gospel saves us, it must save us from discouragement! It also appears to be wonderfully spiritual. After all, are we not “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom. 8:37)?
But this is not biblical logic, nor is it true spirituality.
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