{"id":13681,"date":"2021-09-18T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-18T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/?p=13681"},"modified":"2026-03-10T18:12:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T22:12:30","slug":"am-i-a-bad-christian-if-i-dont-feel-like-praising-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/am-i-a-bad-christian-if-i-dont-feel-like-praising-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Am I a Bad Christian if I Don\u2019t Feel Like Praising God?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cYou\u2019re obsessed!\u201d My friend Elise laughed at me as she sat down on my bed. The month before, my mom, step-dad, and I went to watch a movie called JoJo Rabbit<\/em> for my twenty-eighth birthday, and I fell in love with it. This was not one of those situations where the trailer was better than the movie. This movie was a breath-taking work of art that was funny, moving, creative, and it inspired you to endure life\u2019s hardships nobly\u2014and Elise needed to know about it and have the same experience I did. In fact, everyone needed to know about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found myself telling people over and over again about this movie. I also found myself inwardly frustrated because they\u2019d look at me with dead eyes and give unfazed responses, like, \u201cHuh,\u201d or, \u201cInteresting,\u201d when I passionately explained the plot to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“While we often think of love as leading us to care, care can also lead us to love.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We all have things we\u2019re obsessed about. Things we just talk about because we love them. My friend WayAnne loves organic, sustainable gardening. She listens to podcasts where people literally just discuss different types of dirt. She thinks people who use MiracleGrow are barbarians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve heard some people say that when we really love God, we\u2019ll talk about Him with the same kind of enthusiasm WayAnne has for dirt and I have for JoJo Rabbit<\/em>. They say things like, \u201cWhen you truly<\/em> love God, praise and sharing just flow out of you, effortlessly. No one has to explain to you how to talk about the things you\u2019re passionate about. You don\u2019t have to think about it. You just do it. It\u2019s the same way with God.\u201d And this is often true, I guess. I\u2019ve had times where I didn\u2019t have to think hard about telling someone what Jesus was doing in my life. I wanted to talk about it, and I felt it deep in my soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not always the case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you look at the full scope of the Christian experience, a constant state of bubbling over about how \u201cblessed\u201d you are doesn\u2019t ring true with most of us. At least it doesn\u2019t with me. I\u2019ve had lots of times where I felt embarrassed to talk about God, I didn\u2019t know what to say; I wanted to watch TV instead. Talking about Him just felt like exercising: a nice idea in theory but exhausting in practice. If you\u2019ve had both of these experiences\u2014effortless praise and no feelings\u2014you may have wondered, \u201cWas I ever really converted? Do I really love Jesus? I used to want to talk about Him. Is something wrong with me when I don\u2019t feel like talking about God?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

David and Solomon have two passages that help answer these questions and can help us know what we should do when we\u2019re struggling to praise God. Let\u2019s look at David\u2019s passage first:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Psalm 103:2, David writes, \u201cBless the Lord, O my soul\u2026\u201d At first glance, this sentence is not super unusual. Afterall, David is the guy God used to take out a giant, save Israel, outsmart a murderous king, and kill wild predators. Of course, it\u2019s super easy for him to praise God. But then David says something curious: \u201cBless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t forget?<\/em> If praise to God should just flow out of anyone, it should be David. But in this Psalm, we see that David had to be intentional about contemplating what God had done for him and talking about it. He had to remind<\/em> himself. Maybe he even scheduled it in between hiding in caves and collecting Philistine foreskins. In other words, praise wasn\u2019t always spontaneous. It didn\u2019t just flow out of him. Does that mean his praise was inauthentic? Did the lack of spontaneous emotion make it insincere? David didn\u2019t seem to think so. He goes on throughout the rest of the Psalm to describe in some of the most eloquent, heartfelt language how good God is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one has to explain to you how to talk about the things you\u2019re passionate about. You don\u2019t have to think about it. You just do it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

David understood that human beings, because of our sinful bent, are forgetful of the blessings God gives us. It\u2019s our default to focus on the negative and to only see the bad. So we shouldn\u2019t conclude that praise has to be spontaneous in order to be authentic, and we shouldn\u2019t necessarily assume we must not love God if it doesn\u2019t flow out of us naturally. Our hearts need<\/em> to be guided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how do we guide them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I follow a woman named Amy Meissner on Instagram who ran a mending and clothing repair workshop in Alaska before the pandemic. In a newsletter I subscribe to, she\u2019s quoted as saying, when you take the time to repair something, if you didn\u2019t have an attachment to the thing you\u2019re fixing beforehand, you definitely will after you\u2019ve \u201ctaken the time to care for it.\u201d1<\/sup> Or, as another artist I follow put it, \u201cWhile we often think of love as leading us to care, care can also lead us to love.\u201d2<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, we can be passionate because we love something, but when we take time to notice and care, we also become<\/em> passionate. Sometimes we talk about something effortlessly because we love it, but we can also love something because we\u2019ve made the effort to notice it, contemplate it, and care about it. As one of my friends likes to say, we can feel our way into acting, but we also act our way into feeling. Solomon talked about this principle in Proverbs 16:3: \u201cCommit your works to the Lord, and your thoughts will be established.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, praising God when you\u2019re not feeling excited about it is, sometimes, more authentic than speaking from emotions, because our emotions are often affected by many factors that have nothing to do with where we\u2019re at spiritually. So a lack of emotion doesn\u2019t necessarily indicate a lack of love for God. It could just indicate a lack of sleep or food or a bunch of other things. On the flipside, strong emotions aren\u2019t always a marker of sincere passion for Jesus, especially if those emotions only come out when someone is listening to a lot of worship music. But if you choose to praise God, regardless of whether you feel it, your praise is coming from genuine belief and trust. It\u2019s not just a full-stomach or a good mood talking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not to say that if you listened to a certain song and it made you feel like praising God, your praise was insincere because the music simply manipulated your emotions. Music is a gift to help us express and to feel. But genuine praise goes much deeper than emotions. It isn\u2019t confined to them. Genuine praise is expressed because we know<\/em> God is good, not because we feel<\/em> that He\u2019s good. Feelings are great when they\u2019re there, but if they\u2019re not, it\u2019s not necessarily an indicator that something is wrong. It may just be an off day. As the saying goes, emotions are kind of like toddlers: you don\u2019t want to let them drive the car, but you also don\u2019t want to shove them in the trunk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Genuine praise is expressed because we know God is good, not because we feel that He\u2019s good.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Not only can our actions bring our feelings back in line, but not letting our feelings lead is really the only way to grow<\/em>. It\u2019s a principle that runs throughout all of life. If you only practice violin or study a new language when you feel like it, you\u2019ll never make much progress. Spiritually, if we\u2019re waiting to feel close to God and get goosebumps or something before we praise Him, then we\u2019re not really in love with Jesus. We\u2019re just in love with our feelings. Just as in every other area of life, we have to take action toward where we want to go spiritually, to be disciplined, or else we\u2019ll always be victims of our own emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, take the pressure off of yourself to always feel something. Expecting to always feel excited about your faith is unrealistic. Thinking the ideal Christian never has to intentionally think about praising God or sharing Jesus is dishonest and goes against the reality that we were designed to worship God with our heart, soul, and mind<\/em>. Focus on understanding who God is and praise Him anyway. Tell others what you\u2019re grateful for. Journal about His character. Sing about it. Your emotions will eventually catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being hooked on a feeling is overrated. Being hooked on Jesus is so much better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Austin Kleon, October 12, 2020, https:\/\/austinkleon.com\/2020\/10\/12\/we-love-because-we-care\/<\/a><\/li>
  2. Ibid<\/li><\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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