Here is another excerpt from One Thing (Storms, C. Samuel. One Thing: Developing a Passion for the Beauty of God. Fearn, Ross-Shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2004.). This is, to me, a compelling argument and one that flies in the face of the practices, in general, of my denomination. This truth, for me, has been reinvigorating and reviving in my walk. I hope it does the same for you.

I earlier spoke of the relationship between celebration and elevation or between exultation and exaltation and argued that the former in each case is both a prelude to and grounds for the latter. There is, however, one additional stage in our experience that is antecedent to both exultation and exaltation, namely, education.

If we don't know who God is and how he thinks and what he feels and why he does what he does, we have no grounds for joy, no reason to celebrate, no basis for finding satisfaction in him ...

Delight in God cannot occur in an intellectual vacuum. Our joy is the fruit of what we know and believe to be true of God. Emotional heat such as joy, delight, and gladness of heart, apart from intellectual light (i.e. the knowledge of God) is useless. Worse still it is dangerous, for it inevitably leads to fanaticism and idolatry. The experience of heaven’s inhabitants confirms that our knowledge of God (education) is the cause or grounds for our delight in him (exultation), which blossoms in the fruit of his praise and honor and glory (exaltation).

What this tells us is that the ultimate goal of theology isn’t knowledge, but worship. If our learning and knowledge of God do not lead to joyful praise of God, we have failed. We learn only that we might laud, which is to say that theology without doxology is idolatry. The only theology worth studying is a theology that can be sung! (81-2)