Worship is More and Less Than Many Christians Think
What is worship? Often you will hear Christians refer to the worship time or the worship service or they will ask “How was the worship?” Many of us think that the worship time is the part of a church service where the band and singers display their skills and lead us all in activity we refer to as worship. According to this thinking everything else is not necessarily worship. Obviously we are a little confused about what worship is. If we understand what it truly is many questions will be answered.
The Samaritan woman was concerned about the external aspects of worship and said to Jesus, “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Jesus responded to her “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).
She was concerned about external things like a mountain and a city but Jesus changed her focus to the Father and showed us the origin of true worship. God is pursuing people who will worship Him in spirit and truth not according to externals like musical instruments, emotions or body posture. God is seeking more than people who go through some outward motions that look like worship but people who from their inner being (spirit) are reaching out to God and accessing His presence throughout their day. Worship is not just for special times but should encompass our whole life.
The word “truth” here implies that we will be real in our worship of God — that it will not be fake or just going along with others. It is the true expression of our love for God flowing from our sincere heart. The writer of Hebrews exhorts us to “. . . draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith” (10:22). The Greek word for worship is proskuneo which literally means to assume a position of humility before Him and express our love for Him. One literal meaning is to “kiss toward God” which certainly implies expressing our love to Him.
Paul tells us that we were created “spirit, soul, and body” (1 Thess. 5:23). Since each of us is a temple of the Holy Spirit our spirit corresponds to the holy of holies in the temple, our soul corresponds to the holy place, and our body corresponds to the outer court. God enters into us through our spirit and dwells there, expresses Himself in us through our soul and our body which touches and experiences the physical world. We were created in His image (Gen. 1:26, 27) so our spirit allows us to connect with God and receive Him into our being, our soul enables us to experience and express Him and our body allows us to connect with the physical realm which He wants to touch through us.
Our soul is our person with its mind, emotions, volition, personality etc. By means of your soul you are a unique person in the universe, unlike anyone else now or in history past or future. Our emotions are a function of our soul allowing us to express ourselves. When we are born again our spirit is completely reborn and renewed by His presence but our soul is in need of transformation. It must gradually change as it is influenced by God’s presence in our spirit seeking to lead us. Our mind, emotions and will are slowly being transformed into the image of God by the Spirit and we begin to express God through our soul and body (2 Cor. 3:18; 5:17).
Keeping all of this in mind let’s return to the issue of worship. Can you see that emotions originate in our soul but Jesus said we should worship “in spirit?” The sons of God are those who are “being led by the Spirit of God” (Rom. 8:14). Our emotions must be under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit in our spirit and not function apart from God. Just releasing our emotions for the sake of emoting and impressing others is not being led by the Spirit.
Our emotions, like all of our being, must be kept in the balance by the Spirit’s leading. They will not be emotions that are shaped by our religious traditions of false humility in fleshly, stiff-necked, human order nor will they be emotions that are purposely manipulated to produce exhilarating feelings and fleshly extremes. Our emotions should be the product of the Spirit expressing Himself through us as we approach our God with true hearts to express our love for Him.
Peter declared “. . . though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8). There’s plenty of truth in this verse. First, we love Him even though we have not seen Him which means this worship is beyond our human understanding or physical senses but coming from the supernatural revelation of God. Also we believe in Him in our heart which is part of our soul (Rom. 10:9, 10) without seeing Him in the flesh.
Then Peter says something truly amazing! He uses a word for “rejoice” which means to jump for joy or exult and then tells us that this joy is inexpressible and full of the glory of God. So, we are to express something that is inexpressible! That doesn’t seem to make sense. This is the only usage of this word in the New Testament. He essentially is telling us to “greatly rejoice” with a joy that cannot be expressed outside of the Spirit of God. I understand this to mean that we must greatly rejoice (jump for joy or exult) on a level that is “in spirit” because our natural being cannot express it properly. Some day when we see Him face to face we will fully understand this but for now we need to see that this is undefined, spiritual worship led by the Holy Spirit.
Worship of our God is a profound and extraordinary thing, to say the least. It is the Holy Spirit in our spirit expressing how all of heaven feels about God and expressing it through our soul and body. Knowing this we can finally understand statements like Romans 8:26, 27:
In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
This amazing verse speaks of expressions that are beyond our ability to express. The Spirit intercedes within us with groanings that cannot be expressed. In these moments, there is something on our heart because He put it there but we don’t know how to say it. The Spirit takes that which is inexpressible in our hearts and prays it forth for us in God’s will.
This will seem strange to you if you still think of worship as an exercise in church where we corporately sing songs to God. Worship is everything we do in spirit and truth throughout our day, with the saints or not. How else can we “pray without ceasing” or “pray at all times in the spirit,” or “rejoice always,” (1 Thess. 5:16, 17, Eph. 6:18). These actions are the work of the Holy Spirit in our spirit.
Look at the passages dealing with our corporate fellowship. Here are a few: Acts 2:42; 1 Cor. 14:26–40; Eph. 5:18–21. In none of these passages do we see a worship leader with a band and a slew of other things that characterize “worship” today. This is because the early believers, as did Jesus, saw their lives as a constant flow of worship to God as led by the Spirit. They didn’t compartmentalize the various things they did concerning their Lord. It was all worship. It was all done in spirit and truth. Of course this was intensified when they came together because in those shared settings Christ was in their midst in a unique and beautiful way (Matt. 18:20).
Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). This is not just for Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights. This is to be your life. This is worship and your whole being — heart, soul, mind and strength are to be involved. And yes your God-given emotions are part of that. May the Holy Spirit lead us into worship that pleases the Father and brings joy to His heart. He is spirit and he gave us a spirit filled with the Holy Spirit so we can do just that.
