God is Greater than My Heart

Psalm 108: 1-5 – “My heart is steadfast, O God! I will sing and make melody with all my being! Awake O harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn! I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations. For your steadfast love is great above the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the clouds. Be exalted O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth!”

I remember a time when a someone who was part of a worship team called me aside during an assembly and said, “Please pray for me. My heart really isn’t in this today.” You could be judgmental and call this person a hypocrite for leading worship songs about the greatness of God without feeling passionate in their heart at that moment; but if you do, you would have to call David a hypocrite when he wrote Psalm 108.

David was definitely a passionate follower of God but he never let his emotions or lack thereof get in the way of his love and worship of his God.

Read the verses above once more. David begins by declaring his commitment to God but from that point on, it is not his emotions that direct his worship…it is his will. David wasn’t really feeling it that day, but he was steadfast in his devotion to God whether he felt it or not.

He says:

• ‘I will sing…with all my being!’
• ‘I will awake the dawn!’
• ‘I will give thanks to you O Lord among the peoples;’
• ‘I will sing praises to you among the nations.’

What motivated David to use his will to worship God when he really wasn’t feeling it? Verse four: David remembered the fact of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness to him personally.

So when David cried out in verse five, ‘Be exalted O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth!’ That wasn’t his emotions bursting forth in passionate worship. That was a deliberate act of David’s will. In spite of the fact that his emotions were not engaged on that day, he considered the truth he knew about God’s love and faithfulness and David made a choice…a decision that he would worship God regardless of what his heart was doing.

And God honored and accepted it!

Remember what John said in I John 3:20: – ‘…for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.’

So the message today is, if you feel it, worship the Lord, and if you don’t feel it, be like David and worship Him anyway, because God still loves it!