“It is quite right that you should feel that ‘something terrific’ has happened to you (It has) and be ‘all glowy.’ Accept these sensations with thankfulness as birthday cards from God, but remember that they are only greetings, not the real gift. I mean, it is not the sensations that are the real thing. The real thing is the gift of the Holy Spirit which can’t usually be—perhaps not ever—experienced as a sensation or emotion. The sensations are merely the response of your nervous system. Don’t depend on them. Otherwise when they go and you are once more emotionally flat (as you certainly will be quite soon), you might think that the real thing had gone too. But it won’t. It will be there when you can’t feel it. May even be most operative when you can feel it least” (C. S. Lewis).

I think feelings are great, especially when they’re connected to worship. But it’s dangerous to make feelings a barometer of my worship experience. Worship that comes without feelings can be just as genuine and real because you’re still declaring the worth of God from a place of one who has experienced the goodness of God, even if you’re not currently feeling it.

On the converse, it’s just as dangerous to make the abundance of feelings equate with good worship. Feelings are good, but they’re not God. Feelings can and will mislead you because they are influenced by so many factors outside of yourself and God — how hungry you are, how tired you are, how stressed you are . . . . Feelings can lead to wrong beliefs about God if those feelings aren’t subjected to the Word of God, rather than the other way around.

Jesus told us that true worship happens in spirit and in truth, with the heart and with the mind. Sometimes, that means feelings and sometimes not. But it is still worship if it focuses on God and not what you feel.