Sensates

Loving God with the Senses

Description

“Sensate Christians want to be lost in the awe, beauty, and splendor of God. They are drawn particularly to the liturgical, the majestic, the grand. When these Christians worship, they want to be filled with sights, sounds, and smells that overwhelm them. Incense, intricate architecture, classical music, and formal language send their hearts soaring.” These Christians delight in sensuous onslaught. “The five senses are God’s most effective inroad to their hearts.”

(23, 24, from Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas)

Suggested Activities

  • •Listen to worship-producing music
  • •Absorb worship-producing art
  • •Sing scripture
  • •Create a worship space for yourself: light a candle, set out meaningful articles, e.g., a cross.
  • •Use a "pocket piece" to remind yourself to reflect on and worship God throughout the day.
  • •Enter into a scripture passage. Be one of the characters. Experience the passage.
  • •Vary prayer posture: stand, sit, kneel, lie prostrate
Sensate worship

Scriptures to Reflect On

Luke 21:1-4

1As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury.

2He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins.

3"Truly I tell you," he said, "this poor widow has put in more than all the others.

4All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on."

NIV — New International Version

Study Questions

  1. How did Jesus notice what was happening around him?

    • –He observed the widow, even though she was poor and gave a small amount.
    • –Perhaps he heard the coins clinking and noted the sound of her offering which may have been different to the sound of a more average offering amount

  2. How did the disciples gain spiritual insight from Jesus?

    • –Jesus talked. He shared his insights.
    • –He shared insight thats inaccessible to the disciples. Only he knew the heart and circumstances of the widow.

  3. What did the disciples do?

    • –They followed Jesus into the temple (implied in context)
    • –They listened to Jesus when he talked

  4. How might God give insight through our senses today?

    • –God can speak to us in Scripture, through sending other Christians to give meaning like Jesus gave meaning to the disciples, through putting ideas in our mind when we pray, etc.

Takeaway: God speaks to us, but we must be attentive through our senses. Though sight is our dominant sense, we have many more that God can speak through. Sensates love to love God through their senses because they enjoy paying attention to God through their senses.

Reflection Questions

  1. 1.How do you feel when you are worshipping in a plain, unadorned church? How does it affect your ability to focus on God?
  2. 2.Have you been in a service that incorporated incense? an orchestra or pipe organ? ritual dance? signing? processions of banners or crosses? other? How is your worship experience enhanced or hindered by these sensory additions to the worship service?
  3. 3.Have you yourself participated in dance or some other physical expression during a worship service? How did it affect your whole worship experience?
  4. 4.How does having something to touch, smell, look at or listen to affect your personal worship time?
  5. 5.How do you react to the statement, "we must take care that our worship of God doesn't become worship of the worship experience alone"?

Well Known Sensates

Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle

Author & Christian thinker

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Composer

George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel

Composer

Resources

  • Whitfield and Stoddart, Hearing, Taste and Smell. Pathways of Perception. Nouwen, Henri J., Return of the Prodigal Son.

Sources