Inhibited Worship

I am a victim and God is the unfortunate recipient of practicing inhibited worship.

First, let me define the term inhibited or its distant cousin, uninhibited. When I think of being "inhibited" I think of myself at a Junior High dance fifteen years ago when I didn't really have any cool moves to woo the ladies and I was kind of embarrassed to put on any sort of display. My movements were restricted to a side-to-side, back-and-forth stepping motion and clapping my hands together on beats two and four, which, occasionally I would fail at if I was paying too much attention to what my feet were doing. When I wasn't out on the dance floor working my move I could be found on the sidelines with my hands in my pockets watching everyone else feel the beat of the rhythm of the night. I felt comfortable observing because it didn't require anything from me but there were a lot of times when I just wanted to be out there dancing and enjoying myself like the rest of them. When I was on the dance floor I felt awkward, uncreative, inadequate, and reserved. Most of my pubescent peers did whatever came natural in the spirit of fun without any reservations. But me, I was inhibited.

Looking back on my youth I recall certain times when I was uninhibited. Unfortunately, most of those instances involved alcohol and for the sake of not glorying in my past sin, I won't spend much time writing about it. In my rebellious days (yes, I was a closet rebel) I liked to drink to the point when all my inhibitions would melt away. Incidentally, I recently watched a documentary about reality TV show and learned that television producers intentionally provide lots of alcohol in their "reality" environments to loosen people up and get rid of their inhibitions. To me alcohol was a potion that had a Jekyll and Hyde effect only my Mr. Hyde was an outgoing teen who wasn't afraid to put himself on display and have a little fun. I was uninhibited.

By nature, I am an inhibited person. I am constantly fearful of doing something that will draw the attention of others and make me feel embarrassed. I'm cautious about expressing any emotions or displaying any sort of physical response that is out of the ordinary. I don't exactly know why that is but I think it has something to do with my upbringing. I am a descendent of German ancestors and I've heard and observed that Germans are mostly reserved people (sans alcohol, of course). Also, my father isn't an extremely outgoing fellow so I imagine I learned a great deal from him.

In light of the discussion on inhibited/uninhibited worship, I must further define what worship is. Worship has been defined for me as responding to all of who God is with all of who I am. In my experience, for the first 25 years of my life worship was mostly something you did in your head and a little bit with your mouth and it usually manifested itself in the form of singing loudly out of a book (after all, the quality of worship was in direct proportion to the volume of your singing... so I was taught) and thinking about how great God was. Worship was normally restricted to the church building and any outward gestures that displayed emotion were discouraged. The raising of hands was from the Charismatic Movement and was not welcomed in our House of Worship.

However, this did not jive with the definition I was given about worship and what I’ve learned during the last five years because, after all, if worship was responding to God with all of who I am, I should not be restricted to singing loudly and intellectually engaging with good thoughts about God. I have emotions along with intellect; I have arms and hands as well as a voice. I have tears and knees, shouts and whispered prayers. I learned that my sacrifice of praise to God is no longer a thimble of songs and thoughts that can be contained and measured but a river of expressions, thoughts, and emotions that moves and changes as I respond to the different aspects of God's immense Being.

There is a reason I illustrated my inhibitions with dancing and drunkenness. For me, these two practices demonstrate unbridled, unreserved emotions and how one can feel and respond without any inhibitions. I couldn’t dance because I was reserved and embarrassed. I drank alcohol to be free to express myself.

There is another reason I specifically chose dancing and drunkenness. God wants us to worship Him in complete freedom and without reservation: uninhibited. Responding to all that who God is with all who we are is like expressing yourself on a dance floor or being drunk with alcohol. Tear away those inhibitions and forget about what others might think. Don’t stand on the sidelines with your hands in your pockets wishing you could be a free worshipper. Be under the influence of the Spirit as you express yourself to God with unreserved and uninhibited worship.

This is extremely hard for me to learn because of my nature and what I experienced in the church for so many years. With God’s help I can break down some of these historical, emotional, and intellectual barriers; continue learning to praise Him with the adoration He deserves; and sacrificing my all, even my inhibitions, for His glory.