Worship in spirit and in truth.

John 4:24 For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

Like most preachers, I have used this verse a lot. I believe that it is especially relevant in the church today. We do church, but we don't do it all that well, at least not by God's standards. We vary on some of our understandings of truth, but for the most part, we do pretty well about preaching and teaching the Word of God. It's the living part that we struggle with the most. Most of us probably have a fairly good workable knowledge of the truth even. It's just that we don't do well with making it work for us the other six days of the week.

Another problem we run into is that we usually go through the motions of worship instead of actually being in the spirit of worship. Many things go through our minds when we are in worship services and most of them are not related to our relationship with God. So often, we leave our spirit out of the church. We go through the motions, but we are not connecting with the Lord like we could and should be.

Is it really worship that we are doing? Not according to what Jesus is saying in our text today. In order for true worship to happen we need to be engaged with the Lord both in His Word and in our spirit. We need to quiet our hearts before the Lord, wait before Him, and expect Him to speak to us. We need to focus on our souls and not all the other stuff that may fill up our days. We need to come before Him knowing we need a word from Him and stay engaged until we get it.

Jesus said that we MUST worship Him in spirit and truth. Let us strive to do a better job of bringing our spirit with us when we come before Him in worship, whether it's in public or private worship.