How to Worship God: Cultivating Godly Affections

Tune my heart

Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing Thy grace.

Just like that time-tested hymn – Come Thou Fount – so poetically suggests, our hearts are like an instrument in need of regular tuning. It doesn’t take much change of weather or extended playing for this faculty of our desires to move off center. Just because we’re hitting all the right keys or strings, it doesn’t guarantee the song will sound pleasant. The instrument must be in tune for the song to be right.

On this side of eternity, there is still a significant sin issue tugging and pulling at our heartstrings. It throws every honest and good intention off balance. In Romans 7–8 the Apostle Paul explains that even though Jesus Christ has ultimately achieved victory for us over our sin, a war still rages on in our inner being. There is a battle inside every believer to orient their desires and their wills in the same direction. In other words, the real struggle is in keeping consistent the faith we proclaim and the love we confess. We desire to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. But also, we are terribly burdened by spiritual inconsistency.

Reckoning with the enemy within

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”  - Jeremiah 17:9

We must reckon with the fact that the greatest problem with our spiritual willpower is the enemy within. That enemy is our own hearts. We tragically misunderstand ourselves, it seems, and so we are desperately helpless to affect personal change. Much more than a tune-up, what we really need is a complete renovation.

We are not abandoned in this, praise God. For He promises to give His people ‘new hearts’ in place of the stony, lifeless organs that we possess in our lostness and slavery to sin (Ezekiel 36:26). Where once we were led by indwelling sin, now we can be controlled by His very own Spirit (Galatians 5:18).

Understanding our passions

Cultivating a heart that is tuned to worship God rightly requires that we take a fair inventory of our heart’s emotions in our worship. To assess that accurately, we must understand that emotions fall into two categories, biblically speaking.

“There is a battle inside every believer to orient their desires and their wills in the same direction. In other words, the real struggle is in keeping consistent the faith we proclaim and the love we confess.”

In our spiritually fallen state, we are ruled only by passions, those natural and animalistic impulses of our flesh. Scripture often describes these emotions as appetites, pleasures, or lusts. These emotions are said to have their root in our ‘belly’ (Philippians 3:19). And those who live according to them reveal their true allegiance and their true intentions (Romans 16:18). The Christian will continue to fight against such passions, so as not to be ruled by them. For our passions are the sinful desires bound up in our flesh. They seek to overrule the Spirit made to dwell within us.

Understanding our affections

But (Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!), with His Spirit now bearing fruit within us, where once our hearts were dead in sin they can now begin to cultivate a will that strives to honor and worship God in righteousness and holiness. These ‘righteous motivations,’ which we otherwise call emotions, are distinguished as affections. Worldly mantras such as ‘going with the gut,’ ‘following your heart,’ or ‘trusting your feelings,’ align with the physical passions, evil desires, and impurity. In contrast, the Holy Spirit compels the believer to be ruled by the affections of compassion, humility, and kindness (Colossians 3:1-14).

A person driven by their belly will only ever clamor to serve themselves and their own passions, often at the expense of others. But one who is driven in a renewed heart given by the Spirit will cultivate affections that demonstrate the character of God, who has given them a heart after His own heart.

Emotional inventory in worship

Now, back to that ‘emotional inventory.’ What emotions does worship elicit from us? How do we know that what we feel in worship is a result of Godly affections, and not from the fleeting, fleshy passions of our own sinful desires?

Maybe there is a more direct way to ask the question. Is the truth about God as revealed in His Word sufficient for you to worship Him with your ‘whole heart’? Or do you find you need a certain worship style, or liturgical atmosphere, or sensational aid to get you really ‘in the zone’ of worship? If the latter is the case, you are likely worshipping according to worldly passions instead of spiritual affections.

“Worship according to the Bible cultivates our spiritual affections, not our passions.”

Worship according to the Bible cultivates our spiritual affections, not our passions. Assessing the rightness or wrongness of our worship based simply on our visible, emotional response is woefully misguided. If emotions could be flattened in such a way, how could we make sense of the Bible’s encouragement to be joyful amidst suffering (Romans 5:3), glad when persecuted (Matthew 5:12), righteously angry (Psalm 4:4), or peaceful in the face of certain tribulation (John 16:33)? Passions overrule the wills of those they have enslaved. This is not so with those who have been set free. No longer do their circumstances rule their emotional responses. Instead, they are led by the Spirit, and with the Spirit they can bear the fruit of Godly affections (Galatians 5:16-24).

How to worship God by preparing our hearts

How we prepare for and participate in worship will tell us much about our heart’s condition, intentions, and desires. If we earnestly long for God to ‘tune our hearts to sing his grace,’ then it behooves us to surrender to the means that the Holy Spirit always utilizes to stir and grow the affections – the word of Christ, dwelling richly within His people. In Jesus’ own words:

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” - John 6:63

The passions of the body are powerful indeed, but Christ is the conqueror. One of the most helpful reminders for every Christian in their worship of the Lord is the ongoing reality that they are prone to wander from the God they love, and yet they are assured that they are not helpless in their fight against sin.

May the Lord grant to each of us the wisdom to discern between our worldly passions and Godly affections so that we might grow in our love for Him and for one another. May we encourage each other with the reminder that the ways of the world are fleeting, but the Word of the Lord is eternal and stands firm. And may we look forward together in hope to that promised day when we’ll finally see our heart’s home.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it;
Seal it for Thy courts above.

©2022, 2025 Jon Gilmore. All rights reserved. Used with permission.