Spirit AND Truth

But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

John 4:23-24

I so vividly remember back to my youth group days when I was growing up at church. We used to take the best trips in the summer for youth camp and also for choir tour. We would load up on buses in our Umbros with our pillows, Caboodles and Walk-Mans and take off to some destination that was sure to be filled with hilarious laughter and amazing memories. We would do all the "camp" things like swim, play games, get dirty, eat mess-hall food and just generally enjoy being a kid. Then at certain times during the day we would gather for worship and to hear from the camp speakers. I remember the feelings that those times brought on as well. Sometimes I felt disconnected, like I was missing something that it seemed everyone else around me had. Sometimes I felt guilty because I knew my life back home didn't necessarily reflect the speaker's messages. But sometimes I actually felt spiritually impacted by the moment and I might even close my eyes and make promises to God and to myself that when I returned home, I would try harder. Camp is an amazing thing. Being away from home, away from parents, away from school, away from the distractions of "life as usual" can lead to some serious spiritual awakening and in the best of cases, actual transformation. Unfortunately for me, even though I may have experienced a "spiritual high" from time to time during worship, I was missing a crucial element. Truth. The actual truth of who God was and what He wanted to accomplish in my life. The truth about the magnitude of Jesus' sacrifice and what that meant for me. The truth about sin and the enemy and how they were vying for my life. In all honesty, the truth about what worship actually was. Enjoying time with my friends beside me, chuckling about our new crop of inside jokes, bowing our heads on occasion and feeling emotional about a really great song lyric were not it. I just didn't know it yet.

A little later on in my early adulthood when I was out in the working world, I felt really great about the truths that I believed. There was no question that God was the Creator of the Universe. No question that He created Adam and Eve. There was no Big Bang Theory that would come up against my beliefs, no sir. Jesus was absolutely the Son of God who was born to his mother Mary, a virgin. We celebrated His birth at Christmas and we celebrated His death, burial and resurrection at Easter. And THAT was the truth! Don't bring that Darwin mess over here, uh-uh! I would make God super proud by not allowing myself to be swayed in any other direction. I had these 4 or 5 vital facts on lock baby. High-fives all around. Oh, it's 6:00 p.m. already! It's time to get dressed because tonight is about to get crazy! There will be plenty of time when I'm older to settle down. That's when I'll really start to dig in to Jesus and maybe go to church more often. For now, I'm young and the world awaits! You see the issue, right? I had truth (well, the infantile basics anyway) without a morsel of spirit. Not so much as a hint of mind or body renewal. Present my body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God? Not hardly because it's impossible to do those sorts of things when you don't even know those words exist. Besides John 3:16, all I knew was there was a bunch of words in that book and maybe... maybe... one day I would care to know some more of them.

This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me.

Matthew 15:8

Oh man, I was lip honorer if there ever was one. Just like those Pharisees, I completely missed the forest for the trees. The forest was Jesus, living and breathing, just waiting to shower me with mercy, redemption, peace, joy, purpose and fulfillment. But those few trees that captivated my attention allowed me to check off my truth boxes all the while keeping my heart well at bay. Control was still mine. Decisions were still mine. My spirit was still mine.

I did some reading in preparation for writing this post and I want to share a few things from those articles because they can not be said any better.

From https://www.compellingtruth.org/true-worship-spirit-truth.html:

"First, it is important to understand what worship is. Many equate worship with singing music in church. This is one aspect of worship (Psalm 100:2), but worship is in no way limited to song. It is a full life response to the object of our worship. When we truly worship something, it affects the way we live."

"Worship is a life response to the worthiness of its object. When we worship God, we do so in response to who He is (Psalm 52:9). Our attitudes and actions reflect that we believe the character and conduct of God to be worthy of praise and adoration. At times our worship is expressed through corporate singing, teaching, and tithing. It is also expressed in our daily lives through prayer, Scripture reading, acts of kindness, gratitude, pure thoughts, and the like."

"Our spirit is the core of who we are. It is the center of our volition and our emotions. We also know that God is a spiritual being. To worship in spirit, then, is to do something that is beyond the physical. We do not worship by simply bowing our knees; we worship through a heart posture (Psalm 51:17)."

"Worshiping in truth means that we worship based on truth (see Romans 10:2). This includes the truth about who God is and what He does, hence why He is worthy of worship."

From https://blog.kcm.org/7-ways-worship-god-spirit-truth/:

"Man’s way of thinking is not God’s way of thinking (Isaiah 55:8). In order to worship in truth, we must know the truth, which is found in the Bible. We must continually renew our minds to the Word of God by spending time studying every day (Romans 12:2). When our minds are renewed to what He says is truth (and not the world), we will be able to come to Him and worship Him in spirit and in truth."

From https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/god-seeks-people-to-worship-him-in-spirit-and-truth:

"It’s the presence of God’s Spirit in your life that takes away your frustrated soul-thirst forever and turns you into a person who overflows with life for others instead of sucking up other people’s life like sandy soil."

"Worship is first and foremost an experience of the heart. Prayer without heart is vain. Songs without heart are vain. Confession and creeds and liturgies and sermons that don’t come from the heart are empty and worthless in God’s eyes."

"Together the words “spirit and truth” mean that real worship comes from the spirit within and is based on true views of God. Worship must have heart and worship must have head. Worship must engage your emotions and worship must engage your thoughts. Truth without emotion produces dead orthodoxy and a church full of unspiritual fighters. Emotion without truth produces empty frenzy and cultivates flaky people who reject the discipline of rigorous thought. True worship comes from people who are deeply emotional and who love deep and sound doctrine."

Whew! Talk about truth bombs...

Does your personal worship have both heart and head? Does your personal worship result in a full life response or do you just return to life as usual on Monday morning? A few things to consider:

Are you mostly in search of feelings, spiritual highs and what makes you feel good in church?

Does it make you super uncomfortable when the pastor talks about sin and the reality of hell?

Do you love a good Hillsong anthem and the emotion it invokes all the while formulating your worldview based on pop-culture instead of sound biblical doctrine?

Or how about these...

Do you think God is completely satisfied with you because you showed up to Christmas and Easter services last year (Fist bump to Jesus on His birthday and resurrection day, holla!)?

Do you believe the basics of Christianity, but still maintain complete autonomy in your thoughts, attitudes and behaviors?

Do you become easily distracted by what you consider to be others "flaws" in church, while never giving a second thought to the condition of your own heart?

Y'all, this just won't work. Worship that is all spirit with no truth or all truth with no spirit isn't worship at all! Depending on which way you swing, it's either an unreliable, emotional roller coaster or a legalistic dog and pony show. God is not pleased with either of these options. The Father is seeking worshipers who are equally spirit and equally truth. Nothing less will do and nothing more is required. The Father desires spiritual maturity that comes by way of learning and implementing biblical truth in our lives. And not just one time. Over and over and over again. Every minute of every day. There will never be a time when our spiritual maturity is maxed out because we've perfectly implemented all the truth. Not even close. So what keeps you from becoming fully grown in Christ?

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

John 3:6

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:3

A born-again believer is a person whose spirit realizes the depth of their unworthiness. They are "poor in spirit" because they know without a shadow of a doubt just how bankrupt their lives are without Jesus. And miraculously their lives function within the truth of this broken state because that's when Christ comes in and gives them life to the fullest. This is just another example of how He flips everything on it's head. When you realize just how lowly a state you are in without Him, that is when He brings you to the richest life you can ever imagine. You have to lose to gain.

I will leave you with several other verses containing truth about our spirit and, you guessed it, truth itself. Please don't fall into the trap of bringing sub-par worship to our Savior that contains either no heart (spirit) or no head (truth). You'll make yourself susceptible to legalism or to being controlled by your ever-changing emotions and neither is a recipe for true fellowship with God.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

Psalm 51:17

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

Colossians 2:8

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

Romans 12:1

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

John 8:31-32

But the unbeliever does not welcome what comes from God’s Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually. The spiritual person, however, can evaluate everything, yet he himself cannot be evaluated by anyone. For who has known the Lord’s mind, that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.

1 Corinthians 2:14-16

Although by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the basic principles of God’s revelation again. You need milk, not solid food. Now everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced with the message about righteousness, because he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature—for those whose senses have been trained to distinguish between good and evil.

Hebrews 5:12-14