BEYOND SUNDAY: Heart

Read John 4: 4-24.

“Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth” John 4:21-24.

We are created for worship. Our very system points us to worshiping God. If we would just follow the sign, we will live fulfilling lives. But what does it mean to worship God? We have different ways of defining worship but it does not always mean that we are right about it as Abraham Lincoln once said, “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don’t make it a leg”. Calling something “worship” does not make it worship.

DEFINITION OF WORSHIP.

What is the heart of Worship? Jesus wanted to talk to the woman at the well about true worship but he first drew out the woman’s misconceptions on it.
To understand worship, we must first know what worship is NOT.

*Worship is NOT traditions. The woman at the well referred to their ancestors when she talked about worship. She had the “this is how we do it” mentality. Many people do not want to let go of what they have been used to that they miss out on what God is doing.
*Worship is NOT a place. The woman at the well referred to the mountain as a place of worship. Many people think that worship begins and ends when they go to church. But majority of the time that we worship God happens outside the church facility.
*Worship is NOT an object. Many times worship becomes how we feel or what we do. But worship is NOT about us.

Worship then, is directed to God. Worship is to honor God.
For who He is and for what He has done. We worship Him for who He is in our lives. He has touched our lives in a great and mighty way – we worship in response to this revelation.

“Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, ‘do you believe in the Son of Man?’ ‘Who is he, sir?” the man asked. ‘Tell me so that I may believe in him.’ Jesus said, ‘You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.’ Then the man said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him” John 9:35-38.

“Taste and see that the LORD is good” Psalm 34:8.

WORSHIP IS NOT ABOUT WHAT WE GET. IT’S WHAT WE GIVE

How do we worship? Jesus said that true worship is to worship in Spirit and in Truth (John 3:3-8; John 9:38). The heart of worship is to worship God with all our hearts. God is not affected by our past or our circumstances. All we need to do is lay it all down at the feet of Jesus and worship Him just like the woman at the well – shamed by her past, considered an outcast by the Samaritans (who themselves are outcast by the Jews), she did not know what to do but decided to worship Jesus because He is in control.

“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth” John 4:23.

“Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” John 17:17.

Jesus speaks about worshiping God in Spirit. The only way we can worship God is if we are born in the spirit. Repentance and faith in God, believing in Him is being born in the Spirit. Being born with God is a relationship and it’s the starting point. For us to be able to worship, we must also be able to worship in truth. The word of God is the only way we will know God more and experience Him each day. And the more we know God, the more we will see His worth and our response will be to worship him.