‘Jesus declared, Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem….the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.’ – John 4:21,23

Here Jesus is speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well when she asks a question about where people should worship.

Isn’t it interesting how we can get ourselves caught up in similar debates

Hymns or Hillsongs, piano or guitar, arranged or ’spirit-led’. It’s also interesting that Jesus doesn’t give much time that particular question, but instead moves on to the heart of the matter. Don’t you find he does that a lot?

It’s not about the worship, the how, or the where.

Worship is centred around the ‘what’ and the ‘who’. What is God the Father seeking? Simply worshippers who will worship. In other words, more than the specifics of how, where, and when, God is:

• More interested in the people than the action.
• More interested in who those people are (and the state of their heart) than just what they do.
• More interested in the natural, unforced response of someone who knows their rightful place in relation to God.

So is there a ‘how should we do it’ when it comes to worship

From this verse we see two simple guidelines.

• In Spirit: Worship from our spirit, not just our flesh, and led by the Holy Spirit who indwells us.
• In Truth: Worship that is honest, sincere; founded on scriptual truth; and trusts in Jesus (The Truth) and not ourselves.