Who else gets distracted while worshiping God in public places? It's such a horrible thing to say, but I sometimes do. I sometimes quiet my voice if I hear an off-key note or if I am surrounded by people that look like they could potentially want me to be quiet... When I lift my hands up, I rarely don't care what people think and when I close my eyes, my imagination rarely transforms beyond my blank eyelids. I think it's funny when people talk about worship and reference Jesus' quote to the woman at the well in John chapter 4. "My people will worship in spirit and in truth." I think people misrepresent this terribly when they speak of how we should worship Christ, in our spirits. That's silly to me.
I believe that part of the beauty of being human in earthen vessels is having the limitations of humans and challenging and exploring those limitations without getting hyper-spiritual. I think that we worship with our senses to honor the bodies that God made us with. They are, after all, what enable our spirits to act; I believe that any limitations of the spirit are only those of the body (but this is tangential). And here's back to my original point, inhibition in worship. I've felt it and so have you (if you're anything like me).
Is it supposed judgment? I'm not really sure to be honest. There's a few things I have learned though. I know that sometimes I will think to myself during a song, "I wonder how "so-and-so" likes this song" or "I wonder what he's thinking." That's one of my main inhibitions, thinking about other people when I have my time a lone with God. It seems only natural as worship is communal and guided/instructed by a leader that freedom would be hard to experience, but it doesn't have to be that way. Did God intent for there to be litany in services? For songs to go through once and the chorus to repeat twice and the last two lines to repeat again and perhaps again...? I believe God does, at times, direct the praises of His people, only so it is performed "in a fitting and orderly way" (1 Cor 14:40).
I know that if you do care about the people around you in worship, one of the best things you could possibly do for them sometimes is to ignore them and have your "alone" time with God (clearly, worship isn't always alone time). That's sometimes where your imagination comes into play; it doesn't exist so you can shut everybody else out of your worship; imaginations, sanctified imaginations exist so we can invite God into our worship. Psalm 22:3 does say that God inhabits the praises of His people--and that suggests that people praising together was how it was meant to be. Extolling the NAME of Christ is fulfilled when God catches you up in that moment and you open your eyes and realize that this is what Christianity is about. It's not about the inhibitions, but it's about the unity of believers lifting up Christ's NAME.
I know there's so many questions regarding worship, expectations and no expectations. I just know that in worship, I remember what my faith is all about. It's so encouraging to to see people really trying to do what's right. As a side and closing note, I think I'm starting to realize something: when someone is really offering his/her life in a single act, he/she will not refuse help. Worshiping God is hard. When someone refuses help, it's just he/she doing his/her own thing. Don't let it discourage you; commonly people do their own thing most of the time.
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