Is Posture Important During the Worship Service?

For some of us, the idea of raising our hands (or moving our bodies much at all during the worship service) makes us uncomfortable. Maybe you came from a Christian tradition that emphasized emotion, and bodily movement. Sometimes dramatic displays can distract people from worshipping the Lord, or become ways in which we try to draw attention to ourselves.

This doesn't mean that all movement is bad, though. Actually, the psalmists frequently talked about bowing before the Lord (Ps. 5:7; 138:2), or lifting their hands to him in praise (Ps. 28:2; 63:4; 119:48; 134:2; 141:2). Throughout the Bible, we might say that there are various postures of prayer and worship. For example, did you know that typically the posture of prayer was standing? While today we might often sit to pray, or say our prayers lying down on our beds before sleep, the primary posture of prayer in the Old and New Testaments was standing upright, and often with hands raised. St. Paul told Timothy, " I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling." (1 Tim. 2:8) Other postures include prostration (used in times of great mourning); and kneeling (which was a posture of repentance and contrition). Among other things, these postures served to communicate the attitude of the heart, and they were also bodily movements that sought to align the heart with the proper "attitude" in worship. It worked both ways.

When I was in Calvary Chapel years ago, it was sort of a free-for-all during musical worship. I wouldn't call it disorderly (we were singing together), but we each did whatever we felt like with our bodies. Half of us would be standing in the sanctuary, while others sat, and a handful knelt down. The cool thing about this was that all the postures of worship were there, but the bummer was that we weren't worshipping as one unified body. In many churches, even corporate worship can be reduced to "my personal experience with Jesus." We need to avoid that while simultaneously recognizing that our bodies can help us to worship the Lord. After all, we're called to present our bodies to God in worship (Rom. 12:1-2), recognizing that the members of our bodies are tools for praising him (Rom. 6:13). We can raise our voices and our hands in unison to the Lord as a way of communicating several things.

In prayer and worship, raised hands signify both an openness to receive from God, and an attitude of surrender. We come empty handed, and unarmed. It is a position of need and vulnerability. We are saying with our bodies, "I need you, Lord, and I know that only you can fill my hands with that which I require above all else: grace."

Recently, I invited our congregation to raise their hands during the doxology at the end of the service. I'm going to continue to invite you to do so, but I'd like to include that same invitation for when we pray together the Lord's Prayer prior to taking the Supper. There's nothing magical about this. Indeed, God rebuked Israel for only having external shows of religion, without any real heart change (Isa. 1:15). The call for each of us is to bring our whole bodies (hands, feet, mind, and heart) to worship.