The Dynamics of Worshipping God in Truth and Spirit        

                                           By: Art Javier

             The thought of worshipping God in Truth and Spirit had its roots according to many Bible scholars from the conversation of our Lord Jesus with a Samaritan woman at the well. The conversation as depicted in the Bible had this woman telling Jesus that Jews worship God in the temple while Samaritans worshipped at Mount Gerizin.(John 4:6-30). Jesus told the woman, “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to worship Him. God is Spirit and His worshippers must worship in the Spirit and Truth.”  (John 4:23-24).   

             What is the lesson that we need to learn about worshipping God in Spirit and Truth? It is important that we need to understand the underlying dynamics of this tandem as we go about fulfilling the purposes of our everyday Christian life.  

              For starters, we can discern from the conversation at the well, that worshipping God in truth and spirit, negates the traditional posture of confining this activity in a geographical location as in the Temple in the Old Testament or in modern times in a church building. The coming of our Lord Jesus has made this tradition, of separating Jews and Samaritans in the Old Testament- and truth be told, it still extends even unto modern times among denominational traditional church practices- as irrelevant.

 A Love-Driven Worship

             Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes through the Father but only through Him. (John 14:16). All we children of God have now gained access to the Father through Him. Therefore, true worship has become an affair of the heart rather than a memorized or scripted traditional ceremony, plagued with repetitious recitations and empty verbage.

            Jesus has commanded us that love must pre-empt worship. He gave us the greatest commandment in Luke 10:27, Jesus answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.”  Therefore, our worship pre-supposes that it must be love-driven or else it is a meaningless and useless worship.

          Having now established that love is the primary and necessary ingredient in our worship we are now ready to zero in on how we worship in spirit and truth. We will now see how this dynamic relationship comes into play. Brace yourself as we embark into this very enlightening spiritual exercise.

The Dynamics

          To worship in spirit means that we engage our hearts to its full capacity, with overwhelming real passion for God and with our love directed only to Him. As we love, so do we worship. The absence of such a passion means it is not worship in spirit.  This is where “we separate the men from the boys” or to borrow the phrase “we separate the church goers from the church movers.” Many church members just go to church with their minds wandering all over the place. Some do it or see it just to fulfill an obligation or “my parents told me to go to church every Sunday.”  To many, it has become an obligation and somewhere along the line the devotion had been lost. Those involved in multi-level marketing even disrespect a sacred place by turning the church into a hunting ground to recruit potential MLM members. Worse, some come to church for the food that a church member volunteered to bring in. This is a totally different spirit.  Probably we can call it as the “prospecting spirit” among MLM sales people or the “spirit of eating” if we must have a description of this anomalous postures of some church members.

Know God in the Word

            Now that we know what correct worship in spirit should be in contrast to the superficial, we must now combine this with truth to witness the dynamic changes and spiritual growth in our hearts and in our minds. I quote an author who said, “To worship in truth means to be properly informed. Unless we have knowledge of the God we worship, there is no worship in truth.”  

            If I may add my own commentary to this, it is equally important not only to know the Word of God but also to know God in the Word. This line alone explains that worship must be in truth (to know the Word of God) and simultaneously in Spirit (to know God in the Word).

             The intertwining of spirit and truth is necessary to satisfy a true God-honoring worship. Spirit only without truth becomes a shallow exercise. It can be likened to an emotional encounter that when it cools down is nothing more than an emotional high. Likewise, truth without spirit could have a dry spell on us with a passionless, joyless exercise of utter debate of legalism and semantics. Spirit and truth must be combined in our worship so we can witness their dynamic effect- manifested in the changes in our very own person and character, our changed minds, emotions, beliefs and more importantly the ever-changing, ever-improving and ever growing personal relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.  

            In closing, let me summarize the dynamics of worshipping God in spirit and truth in a nutshell. The more we read and learn our Bible, the more we know about God. The more we know about God, the more we love Him. The more we love and appreciate God, the more fervent, depth and meaning we put in our worship. The more fervent, depth and meaning in our worship, the more God is exulted and glorified.

            And all together we come as one and say, “To God be the glory!”