Not Knowing Worship

"You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 4:22-24)

I have continued to ponder the deeper meaning of this phrase you do not know. I don't want to just stop at a surface reading of this assuming that Jesus was only talking about the fact that this woman was a Samaritan and therefore needed her theology changed because she belonged to the wrong church. It was true that her theology was less accurate than the Jews. However, the evidence seems very strong that very many of the Jews also seemed to be missing the boat when it came to true worship.

I suppose that some people would seem it silly to spend so much time on a few verses about worship. After all, what's the big deal with worship anyway? You show up at church once a week, go through some exercises and formalities and you have put in your time, fulfilled your worship obligations, right?

So maybe the argument is about which church has “better worship” than the next church. This generally is decided much more on the basis of personality and preferences than on a careful comparison about how a church aligns with the standard of the Word of God. And nearly all churches are going to fail that test when it is brought into closer examination.

But what if a church does actually follow the Bible truth as far as one can tell? Is it still possible that many people in that church may still be worshiping what they do not know? And is it even necessary at all to go to church to be a true worshiper? I know that can certainly arouse a great deal of heated discussion, but I still believe that it is a valid question that deserves much more exploration than most religious people are willing to give it.

I had this discussion just a few days ago – in church no less. I told some friends that I cannot find anywhere in the Bible that we are supposed to show up each week in a designated church to go through the routines that we label “worship” in order to be in compliance with the will of God. I am not asserting that this will not take place in the life of a true worshiper. But I am simply saying that we are basing a great deal of our assumptions about religion on traditions far more than on a careful reading of the Word.

Along this line I remember what one respected teacher shared about his own experience and beliefs. He said that when he came under conviction to take serious the call of God to follow Him that he decided to start reading the Word for himself and see what it really said and did not say. He came to some strong conclusions that were not in line with some of the traditions of religion that he incorporated into his own life. For instance, he said that he could find no evidence whatsoever for the practice of folding the hands, closing the eyes and bowing the head whenever a person prays. These routines appear to be totally based on culture or traditions and so he decided that if it was not in the Word then he was not going to do it.

This kind of out-of-the-box thinking and living generally puts other people around in a position of awkward discomfort. Because a respected leader and recognized authority on the Bible does not comply with what almost everyone accepts as standard religious behavior, one is forced to either want to pressure him to comply with what we “feel” is supposed to happen or we are forced to reconsider the basis of our own practices – which is not something most people relish doing.

I sense that it is much harder to challenge our own assumptions and traditions than most people are willing to do under normal circumstances. It is often not until a crisis event that exposes some of our false ideas about God or about worship that we are forced to reconsider what feels so familiar and comfortable to us. And I believe that God allows us to come into just such circumstances in our life to do that very thing, to flush us out into a place where we have to realize how faulty and shallow our ideas about religion and life really are.

I suspect that a person who worships what they know not as this text states, will usually not realize very clearly that they don't know what they worship. I suspect most of us think we are worshiping God when we go to church or other kinds of worship activities but I really wonder how much of what we call worship is true worship. And I believe that until we are willing to honestly ask that question and allow conviction to take hold of our hearts that we will continue to worship what we know not without knowing it – which is the same thing I suppose.

But just because I am convinced that the church I attend likely has the most “truth” as far as Bible accuracy is concerned does not mean that I still am safe from worshiping what I know not. Just having more truth does not guarantee that one is going to be one of His worshipers. We can be so smug in our possession of truth just like the Jews did that we completely miss the importance of our need to worship in spirit like God intends for us to worship. This passage makes it very clear that much of what passes as worship may not be seen that way from heaven's perspective.

I believe that the only way we can come to realize we are in fact worshiping what we know not is through a revelation or conviction by God Himself. Then if we don't resist that conviction but are willing to open up to God's Spirit, He will reveal to us the shallowness of our religion, the misguided focus of our worship and will come to realize our need to get past the outward formalities and begin to learn how to really worship God both in spirit and in truth.

His True Worshiper

An hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. (John 4:23)

I noticed some things here.

If there are true worshipers, then it stands to reason that there must also be false or counterfeit worshipers. Jesus says that true worshipers have to worship both in spirit and truth and that they are going to worship the Father. Can one worship the Father without worshiping in both spirit and truth? Or can one worship someone other than the Father while doing so in both spirit and truth?

And what about this reference to His worshipers? What other kind of worshipers are there? Can one believe that they are worshiping the Father and yet not really be His worshiper? Is this a parallel to the places where Jesus talks about the judgment when people suddenly find out that all their worship and works for God and their efforts in His name have earned them nothing but a big fat zero as far as spending eternity with Him? How easy or common is it to worship without being His worshiper?

Is the Father seeking people who are willing to be a specific kind of worshiper? Is this really talking about the forms of worship, the style of worship or something very different? Not everyone who worships is a true worshiper of God. In fact, if the truth be known I suspect very few worshipers are really worshiping God in spite of how earnestly they may believe they are doing so. How often do I think I am worshiping God but find that I am really worshiping my worship? This reminds me of a quote I recently read from Oswald Chambers.

Your god may be your little Christian habit, the habit of prayer at stated times, or the habit of Bible reading. Watch how your Father will upset those times if you begin to worship your habit instead of what the habit symbolizes—‘I can’t do that just now, I am praying; it is my hour with God.’ No, it is your hour with your habit. There is a quality that is lacking in you. Recognize the defect, and then look for the opportunity of exercising yourself along the line of the quality to be added. (Chambers, Oswald: My Utmost for His Highest May 12)

But maybe I am being too judgmental. Maybe there are very many people who are worshiping God ignorantly like those in Athens when Paul visited there. I believe that there are millions of people who have never even heard the name of Jesus who will be found in heaven and will need serious educational remediation to get them up to speed about God's plan of salvation. And this is because God is going to save people based on the condition of their heart in relation to the light given to each person by His Spirit, not on the volumn of religious information they have achieved.

I am constantly challenged to move my own basis of worship more away from the externals, the routines and exercises that have been labeled as worship all of my life, to the kind of radically different worship that I catch a glimpse of here in this passage. The kind of worship described here is definitely a heart kind of worship that is solidly based in the deeper part of my being and in the spirit. Of course, to experience this kind of worship I also have to become more familiar and comfortable with being in touch with my heart and learning to pay attention to the spirit side of my makeup.

I have spent a number of years trying to familiarize myself with what is going on in my spirit and the spirit of those around me. As I have done so I have discovered that my ability to discern God's Spirit has dramatically improved though I know it needs much more efficiency. But as I have been willing to be more honest about what is in my heart no matter how painful or frightening it is to face those things, I find that I am better able to enter into the kind of worship that can transform, that can bond me with the hearts of others and with God and that often serves as a channel of life-giving power back into the dark areas of my soul.

I am also aware of my own need to admit when there are other gods masquerading and itching for worship inside of me, the kinds of gods like the habits described above. There are times when I become aware that my habits even involving worship times, either personally or corporately can become so important to me that I miss really connecting or being aware of the more valuable experience of worship that God is inviting me into that must go far past the forms that I have in place for “worship”. My preferences for music, my critical attitude inside about how other people pray or speak or their theology can act as strong interferences to prevent me from experiencing the kind of true worship that requires both engaging my spirit and also believing the truth. In fact, my desire to be right and to have the truth can itself sometimes block my spirit from entering into real worship and being one of His true worshipers.

I want to always keep open to having my worship challenged by God and revised by His Spirit to draw me closer into His presence and His heart. I want my heart and spirit and mind and beliefs to all be engaged in worship even in the most unexpected times or places. I want to become free of all resistance to spontaneously responding in true worship whenever God's Spirit invites me closer into His presence. I know that is a far cry from where I am right now, but again that is God's problem to heal me and I want to fully cooperate with His plans for my healing so I can be one of His true worshipers.

After God's Heart

...True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. (John 4:23)

The Lord has sought out for Himself a man after His own heart, and the Lord has appointed him as ruler over His people. (1 Samuel 13:14)

This last verse comes from the story of Saul, the first king of Israel. He had started out his career with a spirit of humility and had been gifted with an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a significant way. He had prophecied with prophets and had been blessed of God and empowered to have everything he needed to be a successful king under the guidance of God.

But his sad story is a reminder that just because a person is “saved” according to the current thinking of this term, and even though that person may even be genuinely filled with the true Spirit of God and display all the evidences of having that Spirit control them in extraordinary ways, it is no guarantee that they cannot later turn their hearts away from that grace and ultimately be lost. There simply is no validity in the once-saved-always-saved theology as taught by many Christians today. If that theory were true then it would follow that any person thus treated would lose their freedom of choice. And freedom of choice is the most important part of our makeup if we are to ever be able to experience and relate to others with real love.

While Saul's story is a stern reminder of the danger of failing to repent and humble ourself before God throughout our life, David is a very good example by contrast of one who clung to God at the heart level despite many mistakes or confused notions about God that marred his life story. The more one carefully studies the story of David the more amazed one may become that God continued to identify him as still His chosen man after all the bloodshed and intrige and even outright deceptions that sometimes marked David's interactions with those around him.

But as God pointed out to Samuel in the very beginning of David's story when Samuel went looking for the one God had chosen in Bethlehem, God looks at people very differently than we do most of the time. We judge the value and integrity of people almost exclusively based on their appearances and their behavior. We sometimes justify that as “fruit inspection” believing that our analysis of others is something Jesus instructed us to do. But most of the time we are actually making judgments of people and determining many things about them that only God is qualified to do. Instead of asking God's opinion and waiting to hear from Him about others, we too often size them up ourselves believing that we have enough wisdom and discernment to figure things out and determine whether they can be trusted or not or even if they are likely to be saved in heaven.

What both of these verses reveal about God is that He puts far more emphasis on people's hearts and their attitude towards Him on the inside than He does on their looks or actions. Our behavior after all is simply the outworking of our confused ideas of reality that each of us contains inside. How others interpret our motives based on outward appearances can never be all that accurate since there is no way they can ever know all the factors of our experience and perceptions that go into causing us to do and say what we do.

But God saw in David a heart that had chosen to seek after knowing the heart of God. David had already chosen for himself, even as a boy looked down on by his brothers and viewed as incompetent and unimportant by everyone around him, that what was going to motivate his life was a passion to know God at an intimate level no matter what others thought or did to him.

When we perceive this when looking over the life of David, then many things suddenly come into perspective. Time and again after making stupid decisions or bad choices, David would realize that he had taken things into his own hands and would humble himself and seek God's heart again. And whether things were going well or things looked hopeless, David poured out his feelings and thoughts into songs and psalms as his heart struggled to express the nearly inexpressable and he yearned to connect and be touched by the heart of his Father in heaven.

I believe that it was this dominating passion of David to keep pursuing the heart of his heavenly Father that motivated God to tell Samuel (and Saul through Samuel) that this David fellow was a person after His own heart. God was not stating as some have inferred that David was somehow a model of what God intended for people to be as far as behavior is concerned. David made many blunders and bad choices that should serve as strong warnings to everyone of things to avoid. But it was the heart and spirit of David that God was referring to when He said David was a man after His own heart.

David – as some have pointed out – was a man quite literally who was AFTER God's heart. He was repeatedly pursuing to know God's heart, to feel and sympathize with God's feelings and thoughts, to be energized by the love from that heart and to receive healing and forgiveness from that great heart of compassion and mercy. David was one of the strongest examples in the Bible of a person who tried to relate to God at the heart level even in a society that was moving in the opposite direction many times. While the nation of Israel was moving away from God and their king Saul was rejecting God's authority in his life personally, David refused to reflect the attitudes of Saul in the ways he reacted when Saul repeatedly tried to hunt him down and kill him. David chose over and over to respond to Saul in the spirit of humility and respect instead of reacting in resentment or wounded pride.

Jesus shared with this woman of Sychar that the Father is still seeking for people who will interact with Him in worship much like David did from his heart. For worship cannot even occur properly or have any effect on us unless it engages us at the heart level and involves synchronizing our spirit with His Spirit. It is not enough to think we can be right with God and somehow get to heaven by keeping rules and being a good person. Righteousness is not about performance, it is something that we only can receive from the only One who is righteous. And the only way to receive the kind of righteousness that God is offering us is to relate to God openly and honestly with our heart, no matter how messed up or hurting or damaged it might be.

God is not in the business of judging us by the quality of our worship or how meticulous we arrange or perform our worship services. God is totally focused on what is going on in the deep recesses of our heart and is looking to encourage every glimmer of response in that area of our being to the constant invitations and allurments of His passionate love for us. And very often the people who are in fact responding and warming to the love of God deep in their wounded, confused hearts have external lives that prevent them from living comfortably in the company of typical religious people. This is seen quite plainly in the types of people Jesus hung around with that would scandalize most of us if those people were to come into our church services and try to honestly express themselves.

But nevertheless the Father is still seeking them. And He is also seeking out the pious, self-righteous religious types who feel so little need of any heart work in their confidence that they have all the truth and that is all they need. The Jews too had all the truth, but look what their hardened hearts led them to do – they ended up killing the Son of God and then rushed home to keep the rules about Sabbath so God would not be offended.

I know that I need much more heart work to come into this kind of worship. But God knows that and is leading me through experiences and personal tutoring using various resources to bring me closer and closer into that kind of worship. As I look back on the way He has led me to this point I am awed at how much my perspective of reality has changed. And from this point forward I have to trust that He will continue to train me, heal me, transform me and finish the work that He has begun in me. He is doing a heart work – as He always does with all who are willing to respond to His leading. I am often both amazed and discouraged at how difficult it is for me to let go of my resistance and fears that are exposed as He brings more light into my heart. But I still keep trusting Him to keep changing and drawing me as He did with David. And if the story of this woman is any indicator, I am excited about what may soon be seen in my life as I begin to drink more deeply of the living water that Jesus is offering to me.

Seeking Worshipers

But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. (John 4:23)

I read a small book a number of years ago about this very text that had a real impact on me. It was a book about worship and what real worship is as opposed to the kinds of worship we most often see in our churches. The author brought out something that I just spent some time researching myself to see how accurate it was. He said that this word translated seeks, the seeking that God is doing looking for true worshipers, is a word containing implications that go beyond just a casual kind of looking around. It implies an elevated priority in the attention of the seeker, an intensity and focus of purpose in the seeking.

As I reviewed many of the other places in the New Testament where this word was used, that is just what I found myself. It is used to refer to Herod intently seeking for the baby Jesus in Bethlehem to kill Him. A number of times this word is used to describe the way the Jewish leaders sought to trap Jesus, to find excuses to kill Him, to discredit Him in any way possible and which ultimately culminated in His death on the cross at their instigation.

Jesus used it many times to talk about how God seeks for the lost to save them. He also says that instead of our seeking to focus on our needs like food and clothing, we need to seek the kingdom of heaven first and all these others things will be taken care of by our Father in heaven. And while this word is not the most intense form of seeking, it certainly implies a focus of desire that makes it more important relative to many other things that normally would take up one's attention.

So to say explicitly that the Father in heaven is seeking individuals and people to worship Him in both spirit and truth is of great importance it seems to me. It also may well indicate the scarcity of such people since it appears that it might be quite difficult for God to easily find such worshipers. These words may likely be designed to rivet our attention to the fact that if we want to be found among those who honestly and truly worship God the way it needs to happen that it is not going to just fall into place naturally for us. Since this kind of worship is likely to be popular or common, we need to spend much more attention and energy doing some seeking of our own to find out personally just what God really is looking for in this kind of real worship.

Since it is becoming very evident to me in the past few years that salvation is much more about a relationship with God than about getting my act together and eliminating sin, then it would also follow that the kind of worship Jesus is talking about here is likely focused much more on coming into right relationship with the Father instead of figuring out just the right external practices or formalities that will supposedly trigger my acceptance with Him. Most religion as practiced by people of every stripe focuses primarily on the externals, on behavior modification or on rituals designed to impress either God or the gods that they are afraid of all their life. Formalism is so pervasive in our thinking in religion that it is very difficult to think of God in any other context. This was part of the very issue raised by this woman – which religion Jesus might recommend as being the correct one.

But in Jesus' answer to her question, He made it very clear that though the line of truth could be traced directly through the history of the Jews, that did not mean that what the Jews were practicing was in harmony with that core of truth given to them originally. What He said was that both the false religion of the Samaritans and the “truth-based” religion of the Jews were by that time both incompetent and ineffective in offering their adherents the opportunities for true worship that God was looking for. God has something far, far greater in mind for those who want to worship Him from the heart. He knows that He created them for much deeper, much more intimate experiences in life and much greater joys than anything they have ever encountered in this world. And because God looks at the heart much more than on the external life, He is constantly searching the hearts of every man, woman and child in the whole world at all times and seeking passionately to draw them into a personal encounter of love and passionate intimacy with His own heart. That is the only kind of worship that will satisfy the deepest cravings in the human soul that was placed there by God Himself.

Anything less than this kind of full-bore, no-holds-barred worship with everything that is in us is a cheap counterfeit not worth messing around with. But this kind of worship is not necessarily a highly emotional form of worship either. That also is a very appealing but distracting counterfeit for many people hungry to experience something better than the empty formalism of typical conservative religions. God has not created us to just experience flights of occasional ecstasy while in church only to return home to live in the “real” world waiting for the next round of emotional highs. Emotional-based religion that does not transform the whole life into mature obedience is also a deceptive counterfeit. But neither does He desire His children to be so afraid of emotion that we will not allow His Spirit to move us and fill us with the joy and gladness that is always present when we encounter His heart.

God designed us with two very different sides to our brain, and He did this for some very important reasons. Satan through deceptions and the effects of sin has taken advantage of this fact to bring about all sorts of confusion about life, about reality and especially about how to rightly relate with our Creator. Satan has introduced millions of alternatives to true worship that claim to satisfy our innate need to worship but that always leave us incomplete and empty in some part of our makeup. He does this to prevent us from entering into the true joy of our Lord that Jesus referred to on occasion. Counterfeit religion is sometimes so apparently similar to what the Bible describes as true religion that it is easy to believe that our religion is the real deal, that there is nothing more we need to know, that our traditions and our people have it right and everyone else is obviously wrong.

While this passage certainly does not fill out all the details about what might be involved in this authentic kind of true worship, it certainly lays the foundation for the only kind of worship that both connects our hearts with God's heart and that will bring real and lasting satisfaction and joy into the deepest part of our soul, the deep places of disturbance where fears inhibit us from coming near to God. It is a worship that is going to necessarily involve both sides of our brain, our intellectual integrity as well as our emotions. An authentic worship relationship with the Father will allow us to experience the ongoing blessing of the Father that is so critical for real growth and maturity in our lives. And true worship will also inescapably bond us to each other as we share the family ties of love and compassion that always flow from the heart of our mutual Father through our hearts in caring for each other.

I would like to end with a powerful quote about worship from Oswald Chambers.

Worship and intercession must go together, the one is impossible without the other. Intercession means that we rouse ourselves up to get the mind of Christ about the one for whom we pray. Too often instead of worshipping God, we construct statements as to how prayer works. Are we worshipping or are we in dispute with God— ‘I don’t see how You are going to do it.’ This is a sure sign that we are not worshipping. When we lose sight of God we become hard and dogmatic. We hurl our own petitions at God’s throne and dictate to Him as to what we wish Him to do. We do not worship God, nor do we seek to form the mind of Christ. If we are hard towards God, we will become hard towards other people.
Are we so worshipping God that we rouse ourselves up to lay hold on Him, that we may be brought into contact with His mind about the ones for whom we pray? Are we living in a holy relationship to God, or are we hard and dogmatic?
‘But there is no one interceding properly’—then be that one yourself, be the one who worships God and who lives in holy relationship to him. (My Utmost for His Highest, March 30)


Father, my heart is stirred as I read and meditate on this subject of true worship. I suppose I have only tasted fleeting glimpses on rare occasions of the kind of worship that Jesus is talking about here in this passage. But those fleeting tastes have inflamed my appetite enormously to experience and be ravished deeply by Your love and passion. Somehow I know this will happen if I enter into the worship You describe here.
This is not something I can figure out on my own through careful study and exegesis. That may help to correct some of the false ideas about worship that have confused me all my life. But I am seeing more clearly that the kind of worship You desire is far deeper and more personal and vulnerable than anything I have ever thought about before. It is a relationship with You that is so transparent and deep and intimate that only You can empower me to enter into this kind of experience with You.
But I can and I do give You full permission to bring me into this kind of worship with You. As You promised me in Ezekiel 33, salvage Your reputation by removing my heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of flesh, a heart that has Your laws written right into it hardwired. Cause me to walk in Your ways and to hate all evil. Cleanse me completely of all resistance to Your love and Your instructions. Bring me fully into harmony with Your perfect character by living inside of me and having Your Spirit causing me to worship You from my deepest being.

Balance for Worship

Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father." (John 4:21)

This statement from Jesus came in contrast to the next statement where He pointed out to this woman that the Jews were in fact the right “church” in comparison to the religion that her people endorsed. However, this fact did not mean that the Jews were practicing the truth as God designed for them to do. And given the next words that Jesus spoke on this subject it seems very clear that what the Jews were missing was not more truth but was a right spirit in their relationship with God.

The spirit of the Jews about God, their view of God, their perceptions about how God related to sinners and to those outside their “denomination” was so warped and bigoted that God was forced to accept their tacit rejection of Him in their spirit and open up a whole new way for people to be connected to God and experience His salvation. The Jews had had hundreds of years and repeated opportunities to align themselves with God by learning to reflect His spirit in relation to other people who did not know God like they could. But instead of practicing humility and allowing God to transform their nation into a model of what He wanted to do for everyone on earth, they selfishly supposed that God wanted them to be exclusive and prejudiced against those who were not part of “God's chosen”.

"But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 4:23-24)

What I am now noticing in this conversation is that Jesus is not only awakening in this woman her spirit and drawing her into real worship even as they spoke, but He also was correcting her intellectual theological truth so that she could worship in truth as well as in the right spirit. Jesus stated twice very plainly the importance of genuine worship that must be done simultaneously in both spirit and truth. This is something that is so easy to get out of balance and I am sure that is because Satan knows how dangerous true worship will be for his spell over our lives if we enter into this kind of worship.

I grew up in a religion where nearly all the emphasis was on the truth side of these statements. Consequently whenever I read this passage the spirit part of it tended to leave me baffled and wondering just what Jesus was really talking about here. I am aware that many other people participate in religions where the opposite side is emphasized, the spirit is focused on to the marginalization of truth when it seems too uncomfortable for them. This attitude in turn gives fuel for the “truth-based” groups to see too much danger in getting very involved in worship with their spirit and that in turn gives the “spirit-focused” people reason to discount the importance of truth. Thus both sides allow the imbalance of others to be their excuse for not entering into the authentic worship experience that Jesus was actually talking about here. Yet both sides insist that they are the ones who are in fact following these instructions.

Jesus did not hesitate to point out to this woman that her religion was a dead-end street that could not provide her with the salvation that God was offering for humanity. But it is extremely important to note that the spirit with which He spoke to her was so compassionate, caring and loving that the correction was very easy for her to accept. And as I have pointed out previously, I believe that she had already been harboring serious doubts about her religion for some time and Jesus simply confirmed what her own conscience had been telling her. She was ripe, more than most people at that point in time, to embrace the genuine kind of worship that the Father is eagerly looking for people to encounter. She was privileged to become one of the very first people that was entrusted with a clearer revelation of the kind of salvation and relationship with God that Jesus came to this world to reveal. This new light was designed to expose the myriads of lies about God that had come to grip the whole world in deep darkness about God, both in the spirits of people and in their teachings and beliefs about Him.

As I see it, the spirit is connected much more to the right brain side of our makeup, the part of us that is closely connected with our emotions, though it should not be controlled by them. This is the part of us that actually harbors our gut-level beliefs that largely reside in our subconscious most of the time but that controls our actions and reactions far more powerfully than our intellectual beliefs do no matter how firmly we may think they guide us.

The truth part of this equation I believe, describes more the intellectual, left brain side of our makeup where we store the information that we receive and the beliefs that are formed by analysis, study and sifting through knowledge that we acquire. These beliefs can easily become deeply entrenched as bigotry if we are not careful for our pride tends to act like a protective shield over our deeply held opinions that distinguish us from what other people believe who are not part of our group. We usually defend these kinds of beliefs with arguments and philosophy and even convoluted logic many times in our attempt to cover up any inconsistencies.

Of course, the problem occurs when either our gut-level right brain beliefs harbor mistaken notions about God (which all of us have) or our acquired knowledge about spiritual things is incorrect (which all of us also experience). Both of these sides of our being can cause us great difficulties and create inner tension when they do not agree with each other (that is what is felt as guilt). Therefore, what a person really needs to enter into the kind of true worship that really comes deep into God's transforming presence is both an increased knowledge of what is really true from God's viewpoint in their intellectual ideas about God and reality, as well as a transformation in their spirit, their attitudes, their feelings about God that constitute their inner picture of God emotionally. To neglect either of these areas of misinformation about reality and God is to fail to be able to worship God in the way He wants us to and that will bring us into the intimacy with Him that is necessary to prepare us to spend eternity with Him.

This woman of Sychar accepted the truth about her religion from Jesus and allowed Him to share with her truth that would prepare her to be a true worshiper. She also was coming under the softening influence of the spirit that she was experiencing from Him and allowed that spirit to synchronize her own spirit with God's. Because she did not resist in either of these sides of her makeup, she was able to begin to taste the kind of worship that most people have yet to really know. She very quickly entered into a state of belief in God that turned her immediately into a most effective witness to the power of God to transform anyone who is willing to submit both sides of their being to His kind of truth.

It did not matter what her background was. Her live-in relationship with a man and her history of broken relationships did not prevent her in the slightest from entering into real worship as many might be tempted to think. Neither did her upbringing in a counterfeit religion prevent her from moving directly into genuine and transforming worship. She was not required to first go through an extensive retraining period to correct her false theology before she could be trusted to spread the gospel to others. No, this most unlikely candidate was immediately empowered to become one of the most effective missionaries seen in the story of Jesus up to this point. She was unstoppable and so full of genuine joy and enthusiasm that she became an immediate contagious witness for Jesus.

And this is in stark contrast to the careful, cautious, prejudiced attitudes of Jesus disciples who were even then on their way back from town with lunch. Jesus' designated witnesses who spent all of their time with Him had accomplished absolutely nothing for Him in town except to cautiously negotiate some deals so they could buy some food without emotionally interacting with these “outsiders” and feeling contaminated. In only a few minutes one woman with a rather bad reputation accomplished far more for Jesus and the gospel in this town than a whole group of trained men who could not see any potential anywhere in this place.

I want to be transformed away from thinking like these typical disciples tended to think more into seeing reality the way this woman suddenly saw it. I want to be freed from the narrow box that I have been trapped in for so long in religion and to catch a glimpse God that will light me up and set me on fire for Him like what happened to this woman. I am actually jealous of her enthusiasm and her passion to share the good news with others, no matter what they might think. I want to be energized by the spirit that took hold of her and obliterated all fear and inhibitions. I want to become a real worshiper like what Jesus described in these verses. I want to live in the presence of God continually and to experience my whole life as an expression of authentic and invigorating worship that will transform me into the effective witness that He desires for me to be.