How to worship the Father! John 4:23-24
I have been delving into the bible more the last few months than I have my entire life. YHVH (God) is faithful to this and has opened my eyes to many truths. One of the most important I have come across is in John 4:23&24. YHSVH (Jesus) is talking to a Samaritan woman about living water and worship. He tells her:
23 But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. 24 For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”
Who wants to be a "true worshiper"? I know that I do!
How do we do it? Well, these verses tell us how; by worshiping " the Father in spirit and in truth". Verse 24 solidifies the importance of this with the word "must".
Okay, what exactly does worshiping in spirit and truth mean?
To understand let's begin by looking at the word spirit and how it is being used here. The Greek transliteration for spirit is "pneuma". Because the lower case word is being used here the translators of the New Living Translation assumed that the life YHVH breathed into us is being referred to here, as opposed to the Holy Spirit which would have been capitalized. Let's assume they are right. Lower case spirit is defined as "the rational spirit, the power by which the human being feels, thinks, decides". That would mean we have to worship YHVH consciously and deliberately from our own free will.
As a side note: I believe that if we looked at the other way pneuma could have been translated, as Spirit, meaning Holy Spirit, it would have taken away our conscious and deliberate worship, from our own free will, as we would be relying on something outside ourselves. (Not that the Holy Spirit is a bad thing but YHVH gave us free will for a reason)
I hope that covers worshiping in spirit.
Now lets take a look at truth. I am sure most of us know what truth means but how is it being referred to here? Luke 16:15 tells us "Then he said to them, “You like to appear righteous in public, but God knows your hearts. What this world honors is detestable in the sight of God." What I want us to see here is that God knows our hearts. We cannot lie to Him as we can to others, or even, more dangerously, to ourselves. The Pharisees, that YHSVH was talking to in Luke, are perfect examples. From the outside they did everything right but on the inside... far from it.
So we really need to take time and evaluate the authenticity of our worship to the Father. We need to make sure we are not deceiving ourselves because, if we are, we would only be cheating ourselves as our worship would not be acceptable to YHVH.
I hope anyone who reads this understands the importance of worshiping the Father in spirit and in truth and that they take the time to look inside themselves. For there is where the answer really resides.
Created over 1 year ago
