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.