Worshipping In Truth

“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.” John 4:23 NIV

I’ve loved this verse since the first time I read it. Yet, a question seemed to linger in my mind long after reading it, “What exactly does it look like to worship God in spirit and in truth?”

I understood the idea of worshipping in spirit, but worshipping in truth I wasn’t so sure about. I wondered what it looked like fleshed out in the life of a believer.

That is, until we began our recent student ministry series on continuous worship.

Over the years, my understanding of who God is has changed drastically. As a young girl, I thought He was vengeful, jealous, angry, and ready to strike me down at any minute. As a teenager, honestly, I didn’t think of Him much nor did I think much of Him. And as a young adult, before becoming a Christian, I treated God like some sort of buffet, picking and choosing only those characteristics of Him I found appealing, focusing mainly on the idea that God is love.

Early in my Christian walk, I zoned in more on aspects of God like Savior, Redeemer, Friend, Encourager, Comforter, Provider, and Father. My worship of Him was centered mainly on the love and grace He had given me. Simply, my worship was responding in gratitude to what He had done for me. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that necessarily, but in some ways it is a self-focused form of worship – because it was all about what God did for me.

Brother Lawrence, most commonly known for the book, The Practice of the Presence of God, said, “to worship God in truth is to recognize Him for being who He is, and to recognize ourselves for what we are.”  What I didn’t realize at the time is that worshipping only part of who God is, is not worshipping Him in truth.

The magnitude and majesty of God really struck me recently as I read through the book of Job. After chapters and chapters of Job and his friends going back and forth about his circumstances, the LORD, in chapter 38, sets the record straight when He speaks to Job out of a storm:

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone-while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’?” (v. 4-11, NIV)

Reading the LORD’s response to Job, which continues for three entire chapters, left me awestruck. Our God is the one true God. He spoke the heavens and earth into existence. He gives orders to the morning and shows the dawn its place (v. 12). He tells the proud waves of the sea where to halt (v11) and even the lightning bolts report to Him (v. 35). He is the Creator and we are His creation.  And as it says in Psalm 115:3, “he does whatever pleases Him.”

Worshipping Him in truth means worshipping ALL of Him – His power, might, and majesty, as well as His love, grace, and compassion. It means worshipping Him as the Creator of all things and knowing my place as His creation. He owes me nothing and He deserves my all. He deserves my worship just because of who He is.

What I’ve come to realize is this: When my view of God is small, my worship is small. But the more I come to understand the magnitude of the God we serve, worshipping Him in spirit and in truth, the bigger and more marvelous my worship of Him becomes.

*image courtesy of istockphoto. Post written for http://unafide65.wordpress.com. To listen to the podcasts from the Wafuasi or 24Seven series Continuous Worship click here.*