What Made Them Dance?
- mpenman31
- Aug 10
- 5 min read
A Devotional Reflection on the sermon“Gimme That Ol’ Time Religion (Or They Don’t Dance No Mo’) All They Do Is This”
Sermon begins somewhere around the 42:30 mark
Scripture Focus: 2 Samuel 6:12–19
“And David danced before the LORD with all his might.”2 Samuel 6:14a
At times when life is going well enough that we forget how much we need God, we need to check ourselves.
That is where David stands when the ark begins its journey toward Jerusalem. The battles have been won. The tribes are united. Jerusalem is his capital. His position is secure. David has become the king Israel wanted.
And perhaps that is precisely when the soul is most vulnerable.
Not only when everything is falling apart, but when enough things are finally coming together that we begin to believe we are the ones holding everything together.
Then the ark comes.
God’s presence moves toward David’s city, and the procession raises a deeper question:
Whose city is this, really? Whose kingdom? Who is actually in charge?
David is king, but David is not the King.
So David lays aside royal dignity, puts on simple linen, and dances before the Lord with all
his might. His body begins to confess what his mouth already believes: God alone is sovereign.
The Body Tells the Truth
We can say God is first while arranging our lives as though something else is.
We can confess that God provides while money determines whether we have peace. We can say God directs our steps while our careers consume nearly all our energy. We can say we belong to God while another person’s approval determines how freely we live.
Our bodies often reveal our real allegiances.
What owns your attention?
What controls your schedule?
What keeps your shoulders tense?
Whose opinion can ruin your day?
What can make you abandon what you know God has called you to do?
The question is not whether money, work, relationships, responsibilities, or politics matter. They do.
The question is whether something that matters has quietly become something that rules.
David did not dance to prove that God was sovereign. David danced because, in God’s presence, his body could no longer behave as though David himself, anybody else, or anything else had the final claim upon him.
That is freedom.
Freedom is not simply God making us feel better. Freedom is God loosening the grip of everything that has been pretending to be a god over us.
What Made Them Dance?
That is why “ol’ time religion” cannot simply mean returning to an old order of service.
The sermon is not asking us to imitate somebody else’s dance. It is asking whether we still expect to encounter the God who made them dance.
Our Black worship tradition remembers generations who refused to leave the body outside their spiritual lives. They prayed, sang, clapped, rocked, shouted, and moved because faith was never merely something happening in the mind.
God wanted the whole person.
The body that works.
The body that grieves.
The body that raises children.
The body that gets tired.
The body that worships.
The body that serves.
Paul calls it presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice.
The deeper question, then, is not, “Why don’t people worship the way they used to?”
It is:
What has such a grip on me that I am no longer free before God?
Freedom Has Somewhere to Go
But David does not only dance.
After worship, David begins feeding people.
That matters.
The proof that his body has become available to God is that his body becomes available to his neighbor.
That may be the most uncomfortable test of worship.
Not:
Did I enjoy church?
But:
Who gets something from my encounter
with God besides me?
Does worship make me more generous? More patient? More compassionate? More willing to forgive? More available to someone who needs help?
Does the hand I raised in worship become a hand somebody can hold on Monday?
Do the feet that moved in praise move toward somebody who is hurting?
David dances before the Lord, then turns toward the people.
The presence produces freedom.
Freedom produces availability.
Availability becomes service.
Work flows out of worship.
That is ol’ time religion.
Not preserving yesterday’s church, but recovering yesterday’s expectation that God can still come near enough to rearrange us.
Near enough that fear loses authority.
Near enough that status loses authority.
Near enough that money loses authority.
Near enough that everybody else’s opinion loses authority.
Near enough that our whole lives remember:
Like the songwriter says, "Heart belongs to God." But not only my heart, mind, my soul, my entire body.
And when we remember that we belong to God, we become free enough to give ourselves to the work God is doing in the world.
Prayer
Sovereign God, come close enough to expose everything I have allowed to compete with You.
Show me where fear governs me, where approval controls me, where comfort confines me, and where possessions possess me.
Teach my whole life to worship You.
Free my mind. Free my hands. Free my feet. Free my time. Free my resources. Free my body from every lesser god that has made a claim upon it.
And Lord, do not free me merely so that I can feel free.
Make my freedom useful.
Let the hands that praise You serve somebody. Let the feet that move before You move toward somebody who needs me. Let the life I place upon Your altar become bread in somebody else’s hands.
Until my worship says with my whole life what my mouth has confessed:
You alone are God.
Through Jesus Christ, who gave His body for us, rose bodily from the grave, and lives and reigns forever.
Amen.
Reflection Questions
1. What has the strongest practical claim on my life right now? If someone studied my calendar, spending, anxieties, habits, and emotional reactions, what would they conclude I actually believe is sovereign?
2. Where am I still guarding myself from God? Whose judgment, expectations, or approval am I living before? What might change if I became more conscious of living before the Lord?
3. What does my body reveal about my relationship with God? Where do exhaustion, hurry, tension, overwork, or neglect reveal that I have surrendered myself to something other than God?
4. Who should experience the effects of my worship? If worship is making me freer, more generous, and more compassionate, how should the people closest to me be able to tell?
5. Am I longing for an old style of church, or for a fresh encounter with the living God?When I say I miss the way things “used to be,” am I missing familiar customs, or am I longing for the kind of encounter where false gods lose their grip, bound people become free, and freed people rise to serve?
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