After "I Believe"Sample

Day 6: Worshiping in Spirit and Truth

It’s time to add a soundtrack to the journey of your new Christian life. 

No one wants dead, lifeless ritual. We don’t want meaningless symbols and practices. We want to engage God, to experience God. God wants that for us, too. And He’s designed the way for it to happen: worship.

Worship is when we collectively recognize the presence of God, giving Him what He deserves: honor and respect, praise and devotion. According to the Bible, we were made for worship. We are not truly complete until we have oriented our lives around that which we were created to hold in awe, wonder and majesty. 

So how do you do it? Is it simply attending a service and singing a song? Not according to Jesus. When it comes to worship, Jesus taught two things: that we should worship God in spirit and in truth. 

To worship in truth means that we should worship God as He really is, not some false idea of God. There must be a conscious, intelligent, theological dynamic to worship. It is not simply an emotional or experiential event, but a cerebral one. You worship when you are thinking rightly about God. 

To worship in spirit is to worship authentically with your heart, to have your act of worship be sincere, genuine, and real. Jesus said it’s not just whom you worship that matters but also how you worship.  

So we are to worship in spirit and truth. But what are some ways of actually doing that? 

One of the most common and most significant ways to worship God is through music. To use music to worship God, we take the words to the songs and make them our words. We use them as a vehicle to express how we feel and what we want to say. 

A second way is through your body. We are physical creatures, and we tend to express ourselves physically. The more comfortable you become with worship, the more comfortable you become expressing yourself physically to God in ways that seem natural and appropriate to who you are and how you’re feeling. 

A third way is through certain acts or events. In the Bible, taking up an offering is considered an act of worship. Praying and reading or reciting Scripture can be acts of worship. Dance, drama, and film can all facilitate worship. Additionally, both communion and baptism are worship events. 

When you worship, do you tend to engage your heart or mind more? How might you involve your body in worship? If you haven’t yet participated in communion or been baptized, resolve to look into them further.