God's Call

Have you ever raised your hands in worship? Or maybe you have been in a church service where people lifted their hands while singing and it made you uncomfortable. Perhaps it could even be that you would like to lift up your hands while you sing, but don’t really understand what it means, so you hold back. I shared this thought on one reason we lift our hands in worship at the Unmasked conference at Crossroads Christian Church in March, but I have recently been asked about this topic a lot, so I thought that I would write it down.
When two nations are at war and one side wants to concede to the other, they know that the international sign of surrender is hands raised in the air. I have seen countless pictures of soldiers surrendering in this way. In essence, they are saying, “I give up control. I am giving up what I am fighting for and placing my life in your hands to be at your mercy.” It is a physical outward sign to show what is going on inside.
The next thing that I want to note about this position of surrender is that the hands are high above the head. Why is this so important? I believe one reason is that with the hands high, there is little to no chance that the soldier can reach down and grab at anything. They are completely exposed and bare.
Would you now look at this concept in the view of worship? When we worship God, we have to make HIM the entire object of our worship. But that is hard to do right? I mean, sometimes there are a thousand other things vying for our attention. Menial things perhaps, like what is for lunch or what you have to do before the week begins. Or maybe they are even more pressing. Maybe it is a struggle to worship because you have unconfessed sin in your life or you feel guilty because you are doubting God. Whatever it is, we are not truly worshipping if God is not the focus. So where do we start? Surrender! We have to step aside and lay down anything that is keeping us from looking fully at God and lifting Him up.
Lifting our hands in worship to our King can be an outward expression of what is going on inside of our hearts. We are saying, just like the soldier, “I give up control. I am giving up what I am fighting for and placing my life in your hands to be at your mercy.” Thankfully, we can do this and know that we are safe in the loving hands of our creator who would never harm us.
So hands raised high in focused surrender to God leaves little room for us to quickly reach down and grab at the things of our heart that keep us from Him. It shows the Lord that our goal is to give up our pride, our ego, our thoughts and our plans for His glory and whatever it is He desires for us. It helps to take the “me” out of worship.
Like I said, this is only one reason that we can raise our hands in worship. I am not saying that it is the only reason. But sometimes, broken down, it is easier to understand.
It is my prayer that you would worship God today. He loves to hear the praises of His people.

Mariah