The "Goosebump" Factor

Have you ever noticed how with worship songs particularly you can sing some and feel nothing yet sing others and have your hair stand on end and tears fill your eyes or other assorted manifestations?  This can happen when you are at home listening to particular worship CD's or MP3's - it can happen if you are watching worship DVDS.  But it can also happen when you are in different churches.  You can go to some churches and be there for years but only once or twice experience - what Ern Baxter called - "the Goosebump Factor".

Stanley Jebb once called it the "Deep Bass Note of Worship" - many, many years ago in Dunstable.  There are of course many other ways to describe it and many attempts to explain it.  But the clearest example for me was yesterday (I'm still in Bristol) when I was showing my dad my discover on You-Tube of the wonderful Grapevine worship videos.  I was explaining how the video I posted yesterday along with my miracle moved me to tears.  I played him Chris Bowater's leading of "The Power of the Cross" - and we both agreed it had the "Goosebump Factor".  Here it is;

But out of interest my dad found and played Keith & Kristyn Getty's version of "The Power of the Cross".  And neither of us felt anything.  No goosebumps.  No hair standing on end.  No tears.  Nothing.  What does this prove or suggest about worship songs and the manifest Presence of God hovering and touching those individual worship songs?

Well if Jonathan Edward's is to be believed - it neither disproves or proves the Presence of God.  It can mean that the manifest Presence of God was touching those songs powerfully from Grapevine and not the more professional rendition of the Getty's.  But it can just be a psychological reaction to videos that we liked and those we didn't!  Just as I could have spent 2 years in a church and felt nothing of the Presence of God apart from once or twice purely because of my bad attitudes.  But on the other hand it could have meant that church wasn't open to or welcoming of the manifest Presence and power of God.  Ern Baxter used to say that Beethoven or Mozart can achieve the same results as powerful worship songs!

So what you may say?  Well it's just an observation that occured to me as I was thinking about driving back up to Birmingham and home!  But it made me grateful that God has built "Goosebump Factors" into us.  We are not just brains and intellect that must focus on theology and doctrine.  He has given us in His divine sovereignity emotions and feelings (or affections) that are meant to and designed to react and respond to His awesome Presence when it falls on a person or a movement or a nation.  May it be so soon in the United Kingdom again as You have promised!