One of my favorite books is The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. I first read it in high school, and for whatever reason, it stuck with me. I’ve read it practically every year since. A few years ago, Emily bought me a first edition copy, which is one of my favorite gifts I’ve ever received. I keep it close by, and there’s something about the fall that makes me want to pick it up and read it again.
What’s interesting is that the story doesn’t change. The words are the same. The characters are the same. I know exactly what’s going to happen. But every time I read it, I find myself noticing something different. And I think part of the reason is that I’ve changed. My experiences, my priorities, and the things I’m paying attention to have changed. So I return to something familiar and discover things I hadn’t noticed before. I wonder if something similar happens in our relationship with God.
Sometimes the problem isn’t that we need something new. Sometimes we’ve simply stopped paying attention to what we’ve already been given.
We Become Attached to What We Pay Attention To
I think it’s fascinating how much emotional energy we’re capable of giving to things we care about. We can become completely invested in a sporting event. We can spend hours thinking about something happening at work. We can get excited about a vacation, a new opportunity, or something our children have accomplished. And none of that is necessarily wrong.
But sometimes we can have enormous emotional responses to those things while feeling almost nothing when it comes to our relationship with God. We can sing about His goodness and feel disconnected. We can read Scripture and struggle to engage. We can pray and find our minds wandering toward everything else we need to accomplish. And when that happens, we often assume something must be wrong with our faith.
But I wonder if sometimes the issue is simply that our attention has been divided for so long that we’ve stopped nurturing our affection for God. Because the things we consistently give our attention to have an extraordinary ability to shape what we love.
Learning to Remind Ourselves
There’s a beautiful passage in Psalm 103 where David begins by speaking to his own soul. He tells himself to praise the Lord and not forget all His benefits. I love that. David isn’t simply describing an emotional experience that suddenly happened to him. He’s intentionally reminding himself of who God is and what God has done.
He goes on to remember God’s forgiveness, compassion, love, and mercy. He describes a God who knows our weaknesses, remembers that we’re dust, and loves His people with extraordinary faithfulness. And what’s fascinating is that David seems to understand something we often forget. Sometimes we have to remind our hearts of what our minds already know.
We don’t always naturally feel gratitude. We don’t always wake up excited to pray. We don’t always experience some overwhelming sense of God’s presence when we open Scripture. But that doesn’t mean we have to wait until those feelings arrive before we begin worshiping. David chooses to remember.
He intentionally directs his attention toward the goodness of God, and in doing so, he begins nurturing the very affection he’s expressing.
Worship Is Bigger Than a Feeling
I think one of the challenges for people who have grown up around church is that we often associate worship almost exclusively with music. And I love music. I love the moments when a room full of people is singing together, and you can sense that something meaningful is happening. But worship is much bigger than that. Worship is our response to who God is and what He’s done. It’s expressed through gratitude, obedience, generosity, service, prayer, and the way we live our everyday lives. And that means worship isn’t something we can only participate in when we feel particularly inspired.
Sometimes worship begins with choosing to act in response to God’s goodness before our emotions have caught up. We pray even when prayer feels ordinary. We express gratitude even when life is difficult. We choose obedience even when another option would be easier. We open Scripture and allow it to challenge us even when we don’t particularly want to be challenged. And as we consistently practice those things, something begins happening inside us.
Our attention changes. Our priorities begin shifting. We become more aware of God’s presence and more grateful for His faithfulness. Not because we’ve manufactured some emotional experience, but because we’ve intentionally made room for our affection for Him to grow.
Putting This Into Practice
If your relationship with God has felt distant or emotionally disconnected lately, I don’t think the solution is to try harder to feel something. I think a better place to begin is by intentionally directing your attention toward Him.
1Practice remembering God’s faithfulness.
Read Psalm 103 this week, preferably more than once. Then take ten minutes and write down five specific ways you’ve experienced God’s goodness. Think about people He’s brought into your life, difficult seasons He’s helped you navigate, forgiveness you’ve received, or blessings you may have started taking for granted. Be specific. Gratitude becomes much more meaningful when we’re remembering actual experiences rather than simply thinking positive thoughts.
2Create one daily moment of intentional worship.
Choose a consistent time each day to direct your attention toward God. You might read a Psalm, spend a few minutes praying, listen to a worship song, or simply thank Him for what He’s done. Don’t evaluate the experience based on how emotional or spiritual it feels. The goal is to develop a consistent rhythm of turning your attention toward Him.
3Express your worship through one tangible action.
Identify one way you can respond to God’s goodness through the way you live. Maybe it’s choosing generosity, forgiving someone, serving a person in need, or taking a step of obedience you’ve been avoiding. Do it intentionally as an act of worship. Remind yourself that your relationship with God is expressed through more than what you feel during a church service.
I think one of the most encouraging things about this is that we don’t have to wait until our emotions are perfectly aligned before we begin moving toward God. We can begin today. And over time, as we intentionally remember His goodness and respond to His love, we may discover that our hearts are becoming more attentive to the One who has been faithful all along.
