Why My Heart Wouldn’t Burn

On worship, self-centered hope, and what it takes to make much of Jesus.

Scripture: Luke 24:13-35 · Adapted from a sermon.

It is possible to sit in a room full of people worshiping and feel like the only cold thing in a warm room. Everyone around is swaying, some weeping, hands raised and faces wet, and one person stands there with arms at his sides, watching. The music is good and familiar, the teaching is strong, and still nothing reaches for Jesus. The honest question that rises out of a night like that is not comfortable to ask: why will my heart not burn? The easy answer blames the room, the style, the volume. But the easy answer is almost always wrong. A cold heart in worship is rarely a problem of the setting. It is a problem of what sits at the center, and the reason is written into a story about two people who stood next to the risen Christ and felt nothing at all.

Not the first to feel nothing near Jesus

Luke tucks the account between the resurrection and the appearance to the eleven, on the road to Emmaus. Two men walk home the afternoon of the resurrection, talking over everything that happened, and by verse twenty-one you can hear that hope has drained out of them: we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. They had a picture of how it was all supposed to go, and when it did not go that way, they were empty. Then Jesus himself comes near and walks with them, and they do not recognize him. He says something no one would dare say from a stage, calling them foolish and slow of heart, which means lacking judgment and hard to persuade, and they had earned both. The women had come back with a physical testimony, the tomb is empty, and a spiritual one, angels saying he is alive. But when the men checked, their report in verse twenty-four stops at what they could see: the body was gone. No angels, no word that Jesus lives. Their account ended at the edge of their own eyesight. They were leaning on themselves, and a person leaning on himself will not recognize God standing next to him.

The objection: maybe it really is the setting

The appeal of blaming the environment is strong and worth taking seriously, because sometimes a room genuinely is a distraction and a style genuinely does not fit. But the Emmaus road demolishes that as the main explanation. These two had the finest worship leader who has ever lived. The risen Christ himself walked them through Moses and all the Prophets, interpreting in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself, and they still did not catch fire until much later. If the presence of Jesus in person, opening the very word of God, was not enough to warm them, then the problem was never the acoustics. It was that their eyes were fixed on their own lost hope, on how they wanted the story to end, on what they had come expecting to get. That is the oldest trap there is, a self-centered hope wearing the clothes of devotion, and it explains the cold heart in the warm room exactly. A person can come to worship to make much of his own experience, and here is the fixed rule underneath the whole thing: no one can make much of himself and much of Jesus at the same time. Whichever one is at the center crowds the other out.

Hearts need tuning

If the center is the issue, the remedy is not a better playlist but a tuned heart, and the old hymn names it: tune my heart to sing thy grace. Anyone who has watched a guitar being tuned knows the picture. Every time the instrument comes out of the case it needs tuning, and left on a stand for a few days it needs it again, because the wood shifts with the humidity and the strings stretch and settle, and a guitar left alone always drifts flat. Hearts are no different. A week of being knocked around and pulled in a hundred directions leaves the strings slack and sour by the time a person gathers to worship again. Hearts always need tuning, and then they need re-tuning, which means the work cannot wait until the music starts. A heart that makes much of Jesus on Sunday is a heart that has been walking with him from Monday on, so some of Sunday's worship actually happens during the week. Center before arriving. Read a little Scripture, sit quiet, put the songs on for the drive. Come early, because worship is horizontal as well as vertical and greeting one another is part of it. Give yourself to the first moments, the call to worship and the opening prayer and the first song, because sometimes the body leads the heart: lift the hands, or cup them, and let the posture turn the affection toward Christ.

What a burning heart does

Watch what happens when the center finally shifts. When Jesus broke the bread their eyes were opened, they knew him, and they said to each other, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road? It was late and they had already stopped for the night, but they got up in the dark and ran the seven miles back to Jerusalem to tell the others he is alive. That is the tell of a heart that has caught fire. It cannot sit still, it has to make much of Jesus, and it wants to be near others who are doing the same. The cold heart turns inward and asks why it feels nothing. The burning heart turns outward and runs. The difference between them was never the room. It was the question each was finally willing to answer, not what style moves me, but what am I centered on, and am I making much of Jesus. Come, Thou Fount of every blessing. Tune my heart to sing thy grace.