There are some days I wake up and my entire body hurts (a consequence of getting older). The dog leaves me a nice present on the steps (use your imagination). My favorite shirt has a hole in it. And I spill coffee on my pants on the way to the car. Most of the time, this happens on a Sunday morning on the way to church. And when I get there I’m supposed to be kind, friendly, and demonstrate the love of Christ. 

Can I get an amen?! ✋

Sometimes the feelings just aren’t there. But does that mean I turn around and go home? Does that mean I’m excused from worship? 

When the Feelings Aren’t There

Sometimes worship is hard. 

When you’ve been hurt by the church. 

When you’ve lost someone close.

When everything in your life seems to be turned upside down.

Lori Behrens and I had a great discussion in the Well Worn Pages Book Club this week that encouraged me. In Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, John Piper puts into words what I’ve always suspected: the struggle is normal. I don’t need to manufacture the good feelings. I simply come to God as I am and allow his presence to fill the gaps — to bring me to the place where I can worship him with all my heart. 

It’s a progression of recognizing who God is and who I am in relation to him. It’s a dawning realization that he chose the hard way for me.

He Asked for Another Way Too

That night in the garden, when his disciples were dozing off, Jesus asked for another way. Isn’t that just how it is? We feel abandoned and alone in our most difficult places. And as sweat drops of blood dripped from his face, he recognized something important. There was no other way. His surrender meant torture and death for himself, but life for me. Instead of trying to figure out another way through the difficult journey ahead of him, he inhaled and exhaled these words: “Not my will, but yours.”

The same is true for me. I can seek for another way — the easy way — the path to my own selfish desires. But until I willingly give up my life for him, until I walk the road to my own cross and die to myself, life is impossible. This is what it means to worship. And in the process of dying to myself, I discover joy.

The Joy That Comes Through, Not Around

But here’s where it gets harder. Hebrews 12:2 says, “Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame.”

This joy didn’t arise because he was immune to the hardship. It came because of it. In the Old Testament, joy is associated with victory in battle or when God restores what was lost. In both instances, joy is tied to a difficulty. We have to pass through the trial, the battle, the loss in order to know joy.

Just like we can’t smile at the brightness of the sun without experiencing the dark night. We can’t relish in the warmth of a fire without cold temperatures. 

The truth is I don’t want to go through the hardship. I’m afraid of the dark. I don’t like pain. But without it, I can’t experience the joy.

Those who have been ransomed by the Lord will return. They will enter Jerusalem singing, crowned with everlasting joy. Sorrow and mourning will disappear, and they will be filled with joy and gladness. — Isa 35:10

And if I’m honest, this is the part I resist most. True self-sacrificing love flows outward —choosing to love someone when they don’t deserve it, offering forgiveness with no strings attached. That’s where the cross stops being theology and starts being my life.

When I walk out of church those mornings with coffee still on my pants, something has shifted. Not the circumstances. Me.

Am I willing to choose the hard way without thinking about how it will affect me? Could I count it all joy just like Jesus?

This kind of love is more than a feeling. It’s a decision.

It’s the way of Christ. 

Not easy. Not fun. But pure joy.

Have you ever shown up to worship with nothing left to give? Tell me about it in the comments. What did God meet you with in that hard place?