Spirit Worship

But the time is coming, and is even now here, when the true worshippers will give worship to the Father in the true way of the spirit, for these are the worshippers desired by the Father. (John 4:23 BBE)

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16 NIV)

This part of the passage in this story has a very strong connection back to the story of Nicodemus. Jesus when talking with Nicodemus was explaining the real truth about God and His kingdom to a man who had all his life been trapped in religion that did not worship God with the spirit. They were very keen to study and uncover all the truth and the Jewish religion certainly did have far more truth than any other people group on earth. But because they failed to yield their spirit and heart to the Spirit of God they were left with a religion devoid of the power that comes from an encounter with the passion of God's heart of love.

So in Jesus' words to Nicodemus He focused a great deal on his need to be born of the Spirit of God, to enter into a whole new dimension of worship that was up to that point almost completely foreign to Nicodemus. And what Jesus explained to both Nicodemus and to the woman in Samaria was that the real motivation for true worship is a heart reaction to the reality that it is the Father who is actively pursuing an intimate and dynamic relationship at the heart level with every person willing to respond in their spirit.

In His talk with Nicodemus Jesus referred to the Father as the one who demonstrated His passionate love by sending His one and only Son to this earth to be a human demonstration of how God feels towards sinners. All throughout the life of Jesus in every word, thought and action He illustrated and lived out the heart of the Father in every relationship. This demonstration of love for even the worst of sinners without any reservation was so scandalous in the eyes of the self-righteous and the religious leaders that their hearts reacted with hatred and malice toward this love.

How ironic it is that when the Father seeks true worshipers by sending His Son to perfectly represent in human flesh how He feels towards us that we react with increasing resentment and bitterness to every expression of love for us. This seems absurd – and it is, for sin has caused in every one of us a state of partial insanity. That is exactly what Jesus came to deliver us from – our sins. And yet sin has caused us to assume that Jesus came to deliver us from the wrath of an angry Father.

The book of John was primarily written to unmask this lie about God. Delivering us from an angry God is the fartherest thing from the truth that could ever be; it is one of the cleverest lies of Satan to obscure and distort what Jesus came to reveal to us. Far from being angry at us and wanting to torture us for our sins, the Father feels exactly toward us the way Jesus does for that is why Jesus came to start with – to reveal the heart of the Father. Every chapter in the writings of John is intended to unravel these lies that fill our minds and confuse our hearts about God. Far from hating sinners, Jesus stated unequivocally that the Father loved the world so much that He sent Himself in the person of His Son to let everyone see how He would respond when we treated Him like we thought He was going to treat us.

How tragic that when the Father seeks people to worship Him in spirit and truth that so many react with fear, suspicion and finally malice and even violence against the very ones who demonstrate the best how God feels about them. In every age God has His representatives that demonstrate this kind of unconditional love for sinners and in every case that kind of love arouses animosity and persecution and hatred. Such is the blinding, distorting effects of sin on the heart.

But it is not inevitable that we have to be consumed with this kind of reaction to love that is too often expressed against those who represent God's character accurately. God came in the person of Jesus to reveal the real truth about His attitudes towards us and we have the option to allow His Spirit to bring about a radical transformation in our hearts. God's mercy and grace can transform us instead of hardening us if we will allow His demonstrations of love to soften our hearts and inspire our affections. And though Satan does everything possible to distort every expression of that love and to discount God's motives and lead us to believe otherwise about God's intentions towards us, behind and through all things God is seeking worshipers who will surrender their opinions about Him in exchange for the truth about His heart that Jesus came to show us more clearly.

Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 3:5, 8; 4:24)

I see a very intimate connection between all these references to the spirit and the issue of belief that is such a major thread all throughout the writings of John. The kind of believing that John talks about most is a belief that is rooted in a transformed heart, not the head-based belief that puts great emphasis on truth but fails to engage the spirit in surrender to be ravished by the passionate love of the Father. While many people believe that they can be right with God and can go to heaven based on an intellectual assent to the truths of God's Word and even acknowledge the facts of the gospel, that kind of belief will never be enough to prepare them for the radical shock of an encounter with the God who is a Spirit and can only be worshiped and experienced through a full surrender of our spirit.

So little is known about the issues of the spirit by many of us. We throw the words around and glibly think that we understand what we are talking about. Yet these facts about the spirit part of us and about the Spirit of God largely remain obscure to most of us even though we don't realize it. Sin keeps us blinded to the true condition of our spirit and convinces us that we are pretty good people and that God's grace is going to make up for any deficiencies that we may have in the day of judgment.

But the day of judgment is going to be radically different than any of us every can comprehend. For the judgment is not nearly so much about dishing out rewards and punishments for our external actions, words or even our thoughts based on some standard of conduct to see how well we measure up. Rather the judgment is a time of full exposure and revelation where the true condition of our spirit and our gut-level beliefs about God are plainly exposed for all to see clearly. Then it will become impossible to deny what our hearts feel about God. Then it will be clearly seen who has allowed God's Spirit to change their minds about how God feels about them and who insisted on clinging to Satan's misrepresentations about Him as an angry Father waiting to punish and torture all who refuse His offers of mercy.

He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. (John 3:36 NKJV)

One of the most important revelations I have ever received from God is this truth that God's wrath is not caused by a Father who is angry at me for snubbing His grace and love. God's wrath is rather the natural result that happens inside of my own heart which was designed by God to synchronize with His heart. When I refuse to allow His love to transform and fill my life with His eternal, abundant life of joy my heart perceives God as being angry with me. When I reject the joy of living in harmony with His love and surrendering my will to His will to obey Him, then the friction that occurs between His love and my unbelief about that love creates tremendous conflict and resistance internally that is felt as wrath. And because it always occurs whenever God shows up and His love is resisted it is called the “wrath of God” even though it does not involve any ill feelings towards me on God's part.

So any worship that we offer to God that contains mistaken ideas about how God feels about us is going to be contaminated and confusing at best. These passages more clearly reveal that God's attitude towards sinners is always one of undiluted love which will always be experienced most in an encounter of devotion and worship. Worship is in fact devotion itself expressed in various ways. And devotion is only awakened in a heart where love is encountered and truly appreciated. Because our hearts are all filled with lies about God and about His feelings towards us, our worship is always tainted with at least some confusing and conflicting feelings on our part. It is this source of wrath that Jesus came to expose and to deliver us from, not any anger on God's part.

But God continues to reveal Himself to our hearts more fully as we are willing to embrace these revelations. The more we choose to believe the truth about His unconditional love for us the more our hearts and minds will be transformed and the more perfectly will our lives become reflections of His character. But all of this must take place in the spirit part of our being primarily, not just the intellectual. Though it is important to intellectually believe true facts about God, it is far more important to allow those facts to become alive in our spirit and to allow God's Spirit to move us deeply and even unexpectedly at times.

The wind goes where its pleasure takes it, and the sound of it comes to your ears, but you are unable to say where it comes from and where it goes: so it is with everyone whose birth is from the Spirit. (John 3:8 BBE)

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.