Lifting Holy Hands, Part Three, by Pastor Josh Larsen

The Purposes Of Lifting Hands In Worship

          If worship is truly our response to the truth of God (and I am referring specifically to praying and singing, although I realize that worship involves much more), I would see lifted hands as symbolic of three God-ward responses. The first response would be our blessing the name of our God. If the act of blessing someone was so closely associated with the hands in both the Old and New Testaments, we should follow the Psalmist’s example when he says, “So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands” (Psalm 63:4). Whether we are in the midst of suffering granted by God, or we are enjoying the pleasures of God, we should be able to lift our voice with Job and stretch our hands heavenward crying out, “Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21)!

          Secondly, the act of raising our hands should symbolize a receiving from God. How many of our people thirst for God so much that it literally feels like they are thirsting to death (Ps. 143:6)? I believe that if we taught them to adopt a posture before God of being ready to receive life-sustaining nourishment from the Fountain of Living Water (Jer. 2:13), worship might take on a new meaning for them. If they engage themselves physically in the act of worship, and not just intellectually, worship might be more fulfilling and an expectant meeting with God.

          A third God-ward response that outstretched arms and uplifted hands in worship should signify is surrender. “Lord, I hold nothing back. Everything I am and have is yours to control. You are worthy of more than I could ever give, so I give you all I possibly can. Take all of me.” We all grew up singing the song “All To Jesus I Surrender”, and most of our church members could sing it in their sleep. What a meaningful way to demonstrate that the song is not just coming from their minds, but from the very center of their hearts!

The Profit In Lifting Hands In Worship

          So why bother? So what if the early church lifted their hands in worship? So what if the Jews in the Old Testament magnified God with outstretched arms? So what if it symbolizes some appropriate responses to God’s revealed truth? Why should we encourage people to do this? In conclusion, I have what I believe to be two strong cases for the profitability of encouraging Christians to lift their hands in worship.

          The first reason actually just turns one of the arguments against the lifting of hands on its head. We should encourage the lifting of hands because it engages the affections of the worshiper. It seems to me that many fundamentalists (myself included) have become people who honor God with their lips, but whose hearts are distant. We have reacted so strongly against the excesses of the Charismatic movement that we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. In an effort to guard against emotionalism, we have stripped our worship of emotion. E. M. Bounds quoted Alexander Knox as saying: “ ‘There is, I conceive, in the great laws of the moral world, a kind of secret understanding like the affinities in chemistry, between rightly promulgated religious truth and the deepest feelings of the human mind. Where the one is duly exhibited, the other will respond. “Did not our hearts burn within us?”’”[1] You cannot have a response to truth that is void of emotion. John Piper writes:

The fuel of worship is a true vision of the greatness of God; the fire that makes the fuel burn white hot is the quickening of the Holy Spirit; the furnace made alive and warm by the flame of truth is our renewed spirit; and the resulting heat of our affections is powerful worship, pushing its way out in confessions, longings, acclamations, tears, songs, shouts, bowed heads, lifted hands and obedient lives.[2]

          My final argument for the profitability of encouraging the lifting of hands in worship is that it acts as a reminder of the necessity of the worshiper’s purity before God. Going back to 1 Timothy 2:8, I am left wondering why the verse must be interpreted either literally or figuratively. Is it not both literal and figurative? In light of the prevalence of the lifting of hands in the early church, could not Paul have been saying, “Make sure the hands you raise when you pray are representing holy living.” It is not a command to pray with hands lifted, it is an assumption that people already are. Even John MacArthur, who advocates the position that the lifting of hands is figurative, not imperative, says in his commentary on the passage, “The Old Testament saints frequently prayed lifting up their hands.”[3] In other words, Paul’s readers were familiar with the illustration because it was a regular practice that dated back to their ancestors. The command is to take note of the heart behind the worship so as to avoid Jesus’ rebuke, “…their heart is far from me.” We encourage partakers of communion to search their hearts to make sure they do not receive the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner. Why not introduce a gesture that calls attention to the necessity of that very circumspection in all of worship? By raising one’s hands in worship, a person should be signifying that he has searched his heart before God and is lifting holy hands with a conscience void of offense.

           At the culmination of my study, I have arrived at the conclusion that not only are the arguments against the lifting of hands in worship feeble, the arguments for the gesture are substantial. This is not to say that every Christian must lift their hands when they pray or sing. A couple of cautionary statements need to be made at this point. First, people should be warned not to raise their hands just because people around them are. “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.”[4] Secondly, I do not intend to belittle those who choose not to lift their hands in worship. Those who choose to raise their hands should not presume that they are gaining more favor from God because of their gesture, and neither should they disdain those who choose not to raise their hands. Those two warnings aside, while it is not clearly mandated in Scripture, there is sufficient precedent in both the Bible and the early church as well as ample spiritual benefit to warrant the encouraging of worshipers to lift their hands while praying or singing.

End of series.

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[1] E. M. Bounds, Power Through Prayer (Springdale: Whitaker House, 1982), 74.

[2] John Piper, Desiring God (Sisters: Multnomah Books, 1996), 77.

[3] John MacArthur, Jr., The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 1 Timothy, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1995), 75.

[4] Romans 14:5