September 27

Worship #2

Jesus spoke of the concept of truthful worship. He said that the day will come when God will be worshipped in “spirit and in truth”. I suppose there are several meanings that could be and should be applied to this prophetic word from Jesus.

Firstly, Jesus came to reveal the Father. He said if you have seen me you have seen the Father. He came to straighten out people’s image and view of the Father. Their revelation was incomplete and wrong. Jesus was the embodiment of the Godhead and therefore people from His day forward would have a greater revelation and an more easily grasped accurate picture of who God is. That matters with worship because when we worship in “truth”, we must have an accurate view of God, whom we worship. The Samaritans in particular, represented a people of mixed religion because of their past. Here we are, in the year 2011 as Gentiles, and our knowledge of God “could” be so great, but we are in many cases held back by the “unauthorized” teachings of who God is. I am befuddled on how few people want to get into the presence of God and just sit there with Him. Remember that “worship” isn’t necessarily singing, it is coming toward, to bow before, to kiss. You can’t really worship God if you don’t believe, or won’t believe, that you have a place at not only His feet, but at His side – holding His hand! He loves us so! I pray we get this revelation so we can draw near and receive from Papa – but it takes the truth of who He is in order to truly draw “near” and sit on His lap.

If you don’t have that truth about God you will keep your worship as religious as possible, maintaining that God should not be approached without proper sacrifices and denials of self, and then only so close. (Like sitting across the board room from him). The truth of the matter of the worship of that day was that they performed service to God instead of wrapping their arms around Him. He had clearly revealed himself in the gentlest of terms, saying that he walked them out of Egypt by the hand, (think about a dad and a 2 year old walking hand in hand together), and he stated that he carried them on “eagles wings”. He revealed himself so tender, so loving, but they didn’t get it – at least not many of them. He sent His Son to show them His loving care for even their physical bodies, healing all who came to Him, delivering them from demons, preaching the message that they had waited for – but “in service” to God, then killed Jesus. Why? Because their worship was service and not relationship! Services always ends up to be service to your own self and your own self-interest. Without a clear relationship with our loving Heavenly Father, our own service to Him will end up a burden and it will be a self- satisfying act performed for us to feel good about ourselves. The truth of worship has nothing to do with religious duty, keeping rules or automatically (with no heart) generated praise. Worship is an act of the truth of our hearts in devotion and humility giving back the love and the sacrifice of praise of a life that is sold out to the God of all Gods! Hold nothing back – He gave all – it is our ONLY worthy response!