TRUE WORSHIP
by Pastor Jim May
In Psalms 122:1 David penned these words, "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD." Are you glad to be in House of the Lord this morning? I want you to know that you are so very welcome to come and worship with us. I am so very glad to see all of you. It is my prayer that we will come together with one mind and one accord, to always seek to worship the Lord in Spirit and in Truth, and to know Jesus in a greater and deeper relationship than ever before. I am convinced that if we truly know the Lord, then we will learn to worship Him even more.
There is something that concerns me though, and that is whether we really know what true worship is all about. When we come together every week, on Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday evenings, we are coming together for a worship service. But I am convinced that many of us don’t really know what a worship service really is.
We come together and sing the songs of praise but the song is not the worship. We love to hear the music play but the music itself is not the worship. All of these things are what we use to bring us into a place of worship, but they are not worship in and of themselves, for true worship comes only from the heart.
There are a lot of people who believe that if they just drag their body into the church on Sunday morning, plop that carcass down on a chair or a pew in the church, and then force themselves to sing or to clap their hands every once in a while – that they are worshipping God. But that’s not what worshipping God is really all about. If we really worship God, all of the things that we do, playing the music, singing, clapping or raising our hands, tapping our toes, and whatever else you feel like doing, are all physical manifestations of worship but before that can be considered worship, there has to be something even greater happening in the heart and in the Spirit.
Israel worshipped God loudly and boisterously. We Pentecostals are known for our boisterous worship services. We aren’t like those who would go to church in quiet reverence and never even say an Amen to the preaching of the Word. We aren’t like those who go to the House of God and sing “a cappella”, we love to hear the sounds of the stringed instruments and the percussion instruments and the wind instruments.
We take the Word of God quite literally. David said in Psalms 150:3-5, "Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp. Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals."
I don’t know about you but there is something that stirs within me when the music begins to play. Sometimes I have to clap, and sometimes to shout, and sometimes to beat on the tambourine, and sometimes to tap my feet. Music has the power to get your body moving, even when you don’t feel like moving.
But music isn’t the point of worship; it’s only an outward sign of an inward feeling.
The music of the world has that same power. Some of you like Bluegrass and Country music and your body gets to moving and swaying to the music and the first thing you know you might even break out into a little jig. Some of you like Soft Rock, and some of you, God help you, even like Hard Rock music. When Dave Matthews, Black Sabbath or Ozzy Osborn walk begin to play, you fit right in with the rest of the crowd. I don’t think that you can call any of these types of music worship. If they are worship, they certainly aren’t worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it’s not the music that is the real worship.
Real worship isn’t in the music, but music can be a part of real worship.
Jesus gave us the meaning of true worship in John 4:24, "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."
Worshipping God in Spirit and in truth is what real worship is all about.
As I look around the church world, and right here in our own church, I wonder just how many people know what real worship is about.
Millions of people will drag themselves to church today, sit in a worship service, watch what’s going on, maybe even stand up during the prayer or the singing, give in the offering plates, endure the preacher as he brings forth a sermon, then get up, drag themselves out the door of the church, into the car and back home again. Their conscience will be clear for a while because they went to church, but did they really worship God?
True worship must come from the Spirit, not the body. The movements of your body and the things you do to worship with this body must come from something in your spirit. Worship must originate in your mind, in your heart and most of all in your spirit that is in tune with the Holy Spirit within you.
We never had to use our spirit for anything else in life and that makes it difficult for us to understand what worshipping God in spirit really means.
You didn’t get a job because of your spirit! If you think so, just call your boss tomorrow and tell him that your body won’t be there for the next two weeks but you will be there in spirit. What do you think he will say? You can do what you want with your spirit but your body had better be here. They didn’t hire you for your spirit; they hired you for what’s in your mind and for what your body can do.
When you got your High School Diploma, or your College Degree, if you have one, you didn’t get that because of your spirit. You got it because you made your body work, and your brain to work, and you did the work that was required. You didn’t walk into the classroom one time and start speaking in tongues or get slain in the spirit or get lost in the presence of God and then your instructor said, “You’re so spiritual! Here’s your diploma!”
But now, when you become a Christian and you must begin to learn to worship God, now you have to start allowing your spirit to be in control. There are a whole lot of Christians who have never learned the difference and that’s why we have such weak churches and even weaker Christians who are easy prey for the devil to deceive them into accepting a false style of worship.
Many of you have come from a background where you went to the night clubs and the dance halls and you loved to dance and shout to the music. Then when you come into the church, the music sounds about the same, and the excitement is about the same, and so you just trade the nightclub scene for the church scene and continue in the same groove. There’s a little bit of change in the words and a little cleaning up of the language and the life we live, but there’s no real change of heart and no real separation from the ways of the world that we have always known.
We look at the Word of God where it says in 2 Corinthians 6:17, "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you," and we say to ourselves, well I can still go as long as I don’t participate and act like the worldly crowd and everything will be all right. We don’t realize the true holiness of God, and the absolute separation from every appearance of evil that God requires of us. We think that we can play around with the world and worship God on Sunday and that’s enough. We don’t understand that we aren’t worshipping God at all. We are just playing like we are Christians but we aren’t really worshipping God in spirit and in truth.
We see that in people who come to church on Sunday morning but hit the nightclubs on Saturday night. We see that in the movie stars who have their drinking parties and social gatherings to celebrate the “good life”, but then have a prayer meeting and Bible study at their house after the party is over.
God requires more than that as true worship. True worship must come from the heart. That means that all that we are, our heart, mind, body and soul are controlled by the Spirit of God within us and that our spirit is in tune with God’s Spirit so that we don’t do anything to grieve the Lord within us. Everything we do, everywhere we go, everything in live revolves around only one thing – what can I co, what can I say, where can I go that God wants for me? Jesus has to have not just the preeminence in your life; He has to be all of your life.
I wonder how many of us have really experienced true worship? How many of us have become so lost in worship that we forget where we are, who we are, or who is around us, or what else is going on. We just get lost in the spirit as we praise, as we sing, as we clap, as we pray, as we stand there silently, as we lay on our face before the Lord, or whatever position we are in.
Have you ever felt yourself let go in the realm of the Spirit to the place where God can wash away your faults, your sin? Have you ever felt as though you were floating out of your body into the realm of the spirit even though you were still there standing? When we get into a place of worship in spirit and in truth, that’s the way it will be.
In the Gospel of John, Chapter 4, we read the story of Jesus coming into Samaria. The Jews of the Southern Kingdom of Israel would normally have nothing to do with the Samaritans even though the Samaritans were Jews themselves. The Samaritans had decided that they would establish their own place of worship because it was just too far to go to Jerusalem to worship. The Jews who only believed in worshipping in the temple at Jerusalem would walk many miles out of the way to keep from even traveling through the lands of the Samaritans. But Jesus had a purpose and a reason for going through Samaria. Let’s look at it together.
John 4:4-8, "And he must needs go through Samaria. Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat)"
Jesus stayed behind, waiting at Jacob’s well, and there was a purpose in His waiting. He was waiting for a Samaritan woman to come to the well. How long he waited I’m not sure but it could have been for a long while. Jesus had important things to do, but right now, there was nothing more important than waiting for the woman of Samaria to show up.
Aren’t you glad that Jesus waited for you? Aren’t you glad that he has patience with you to wait until you decide to come where He is? I don’t have that kind of time, to sit and wait all day for someone to show up. I don’t have the patience to wait for a long time for much of anything. But I thank God that Jesus waited for me to come with my empty vessels, searching for something to quench my thirst.
Jacob’s well was a place where many of the Samaritans would meet because it was the center of focus in life. Everyone would have to come there at some time to draw water every day. Jesus knew why he was there and the Samaritan woman thought she knew too. She never expected to come to the well, as she had done every day for years, and have an encounter with Almighty God.
If you read the story further you will find that there was a strange conversation that went on at the well between Jesus and this Samaritan woman.
John 4:9-12, "Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?"
What could have been her thoughts as Jesus began to speak? Was this just another handsome 30 year-old man looking for a good time? Was he trying to hit on her? I’m sure those thoughts crossed her mind; after all she had been approached many times before. She had already been married 5 times and was divorced even now.
Jesus knew her history. He knew her heart’s desire and the hunger down inside for something real. Perhaps she had been searching for something in the men in her life that only God could give and she didn’t know it.
Jesus offered her the “living water”. He offered her something real and something would forever satisfy the hunger and thirsting in her soul.
The whole conversation wasn’t about the water in Jacob’s Well. The things that this world has to offer to quench our thirst are very temporary. We have to keep going back again and again and again.
What is the drug addict looking for? He is looking for peace. He is looking for joy. He is looking for relief from the pressures and worries of life. Does he find it? Yes, he does, but only for a moment, then he had to go back for more. It only takes one time to get hooked because the mind and the body crave that feeling of euphoria and peace. But its so fleeting and he will eventually destroy his life while trying to find it.
What causes alcoholism? The man enters the bar looking for peace, looking for a time of joy, looking for a little bit of fun, looking for some relief from the pressures and pain of life. Does he find it? Yes – be again, only for a moment in time. Then he gets hooked on alcohol, as he has to go back over and again just to find that relief again until he destroys his body with alcohol.
What causes people to risk cancer from smoking and chewing tobacco and dipping snuff? It’s that same search for just a little pleasure for a moment. And a little easing of the pain until they become dependent upon the tobacco and it destroys their lives 25 years earlier than normal.
What causes people to look for fun, rest and relaxation in the “enjoyment” of worldly pleasures and the sin of this world? Don’t ever think that sin isn’t fun. If you think that, then you just haven’t found the right sin yet. The Bible even says that there is pleasure in sin, but that it’s only for a season.
If you want eternal joy, eternal peace and eternal life, the only source is in that “living water” that Jesus offers. And it’s only after you have tasted of that “living water” that you can really begin worship God in spirit and in truth.
Too many people look at that living water, and examine how it could be, imagine how wonderful it could be, but never really drink of it for themselves.
Illustration:
Take a nice tall glass of cold water. You stare at that water. Doesn’t it look good? Oh how good it would taste right now. It has to be good and cold, clear and wonderfully tasting. It’s pure and clean and I just have to have the power to quench my thirst right now.
But I’m not going to drink it. I’m going to just look at it. Then I’ll take a picture of it and post it by my bed so I can lie there and stare at it, imagining what it would be like to drink it.
That’s the way most Christians treat the “living water” and because they do, they don’t really know what real worship is all about.
Real worship is totally surrendering your will to God’s will in every facet of your life. It’s not giving part of your heart to God and then continuing to love the things of the world. It’s not giving of your tithes and offerings but holding back on what you know that God really wants you to give. It’s not giving God 3 minutes of your time as you fall asleep on your pillow at night, it’s giving God all of your time, all of the time.
Real worship isn’t just coming to church – it’s a lifestyle. You can have all the things of church down pat. You can know how to stand, how to sit, how to look like your worshipping, how to say certain words and phrases, but still not have true worship.
The woman at the well had a form of worship too. She was a religious woman who went to church all the time.
John 4:19-20, "The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship."
She recognized that there was something far greater spiritually in Jesus than in the other men she knew. She recognized that obeying the commandments was important. She knew all about the religious ways of the Jews and the Samaritans. She was a church going woman, but she was still searching for answers.
The answers aren’t in the church building. The answers aren’t in the musical instruments. The answers aren’t in the minister or the preacher. The answers aren’t in the people of the church. The answers aren’t in the songs. - The answers are found in the “living water” that only comes through a strong spiritual relationship and knowledge of Jesus Christ and a close walk with Him.
We get into a competition when it comes to what we think that worship is. One church has a better band than another. One church has a greater choir than another. One church has greater, more talented singers than another. One church has greater teachers or preachers than another. We forget that real worship doesn’t come from watching somebody else worship, no matter how good or talented they are.
Real worship has to come from within your own heart and your own spirit. If you learn to worship God with your spirit and with all your heart, none of that other stuff will be as important.
Jesus told the woman at the well in John 4:23-24, "But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."
You can worship God anytime, any place, and all the time. True worship is displayed in living a life that is wholly dedicated to God. True worship can only come as we lose ourselves in Jesus. True spirit worship can only come if our spirit is totally surrendered and immersed in the Spirit of God.
When you get lost in Jesus, and you begin to serve Him, praise Him, sing to Him, glorifying Him and forgetting about everything else, then you can begin to enter into real worship.
That’s the kind of worship that we need. When we come together, let’s come to a real worship service where we can just get lost in the presence of God and allow the Holy Ghost to have His way in us and in our church. AMEN!
