Well, should we raise our hands during musical worship or should we keep them safely in our pockets? It's the question from a listener named Jeff. Pastor John, when you are singing at your local church, do you raise your hands? Is this something we should do when singing at church on Sunday?

When I read verses like 1 Chronicles 16, verses 23 to 31, and Psalm 95, verses 1 and 2, it makes me wonder why not everyone lifts their hands when we sing together as a church. If only 5% of the congregation in my local church is raising their hands during the worship time, but all are singing out loudly with a joyful noise, is this something we should teach on in order to encourage the raising up of holy hands, or should I just be thankful that we're all singing together?

As the worship leader at my local church, I want to be maximalist in my thinking and always find ways to encourage myself and our congregation to be more fully devoted and fully delighted in Jesus as we sing songs which are soaked in rich gospel lyrics. Pastor John, what would you say to Jeff?

I can remember in the late 70s when I was a college teacher, a specific chapel service in which I was sitting beside a fellow faculty member who, during a prayer, simply laid his hands, palms up, on his lap, and the almost disgust that I felt seeing him do that.

And I don't remember what was going on in my soul at that time, but what I feel now is nothing but shame and remorse at such an arrogant and judgmental attitude. And then about five years later, I had encouraged Bethlehem, so I moved from faculties to pastoring, and about two years into my pastoring, this happened.

I had encouraged Bethlehem to start up all-night prayer meeting once or twice a year in order to go hard after God together to maximize His blessing in the life of our church. And it was about 2 a.m., and there were about 20 or 30 of us still praying in the fireside room, which doesn't exist anymore.

It was torn down in one of the building projects. And I remember that Bruce Liefblad, who was worship leader at the time, was leading us in a simple 1980s song like, "Hallelujah, Hallelujah," just simple things like that. And we were singing one of those. I don't remember which one.

And suddenly, I found my hands lifted in the air, and it was as though I was watching myself rather than doing it. I had never in 36 years of my life lifted my hands in song until that moment. And to this day, I cannot explain what happened, except that it bore fruit in what felt and feels to me now like a release from a very significant bondage.

My approach toward lifting up of hands in worship since that time has been to simply try to create an atmosphere in which people feel free from the heart to lift their hands or not. And the reason I say or not is because coerced or constrained demonstrations of heart worship are self-contradictory.

Either it comes from the heart and is valuable as an expression of the heart, or it is a performance and has no worship value at all. I wouldn't, as a worship leader, ever say, "Come on, people, get your hands up. We just sang a song. Our hands are lifted up." I wouldn't scold people like that at all.

It creates an unbelievably hypocritical crisis for them because they're going to do what you say when they don't feel like it, and it will ruin authentic worship. Depending on the kind of service and who was present and what the nature of the music was, I would guess that over time at Bethlehem, in any given service, you might have 10 to 30 percent of the people lifting their hands in worship.

And we never tried to cultivate an atmosphere where it was expected that you're supposed to do this if you're spiritual. Although Psalm 63, 4 says, "I will bless you as long as I live in your name. I will lift up my hands." And Psalm 141, verse 2 says, "Let my prayer be counted as incense before you and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." And Paul says in 1 Timothy 2, 8, "I desire then that in every place men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling." Now, I doubt that Paul meant in that 1 Timothy 2, 8 passage that it's contrary to God's will for men to pray without lifting their hands.

Rather, I think probably what he means is it's contrary to God's will that they pray without holy hands being lifted if they lift their hands. In other words, I don't think it's a mandate that every time a man prays, his hands must be in the air, that if his hands are in the air in his prayer, they better be holy hands.

And let me mention one other cultural factor and a closing word of personal things. I was talking to a church leader outside America once who tried to explain to me that lifting the hands in worship in his city was a badge of bad theology. It was associated with certain churches that taught wrong things and that he felt it would be a compromise in faithful churches if the people raised their hands.

They'd be waving the flag of false teaching. That's the kind of thing you really need to be sensitive to when you're an outsider and you walk into a cultural situation you don't know anything about. However, I suggested to him that there's probably a better way to distinguish ourselves from false teaching than by letting the false teachers co-opt a beautiful biblical practice as their own while the true church goes without it.

I don't think that's a good idea. Perhaps one word to those who are finding the lifting of hands in worship to be artificial for themselves rather than real. Let's just all agree that whether we are very formal or more charismatic, we are all equally vulnerable to hypocrisy and artificiality and judgmentalism.

Hymns can be sung with just as much inauthenticity as worship songs. Organs can be played with just as much hypocrisy as guitars. Hands can be kept down for motives just as defective as they can be lifted up. As a hand raiser, I would just say to those who don't do it, for me, it is both a natural expression of inner admiration for God and an intensifier of inner exaltation as it finds expression in the body.

And I hope that those who don't find it to be so have their own experiences of released admiration and inner exaltation and intensification. And I believe that is possible. And I will assume that is the case when I am worshiping with you, if you're one of those. Really good thoughts, Pastor John.

Thank you. And carefully put here, because if the Bible says that we should do it every time, right? Well, maybe, maybe not. What about holy kisses as a practice, well described in the New Testament and mostly neglected by American churches? That was in episode 742, the holy kiss, relevant today or not?

Episode 742, check it out. In our online archive at our online home, you can explore all 1250 of our past episodes, scan a list of our most popular ones, read full transcripts, even send us a question of your own and even find episode 742. Go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn and to get new episodes delivered to you three times per week, subscribe to the Ask Pastor John podcast and your favorite podcast app.

Was holiness the fight against sin or is holiness the fight for joy in God? It's another great question from a perceptive listener. That's next time on Wednesday when we return. I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you then. . . . . .