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Do You KNOW Whom You’re Worshipping? Our 4 year old son came into the living room yesterday and said, "Hey - let's worship God!" Kurt and I were having a hard day. To be honest, neither of us felt like worshipping God. We looked at each other. How could we say no to him? We turned on some music, he picked up a baby blanket he was using as a flag, and we began to worship. At first, I wasn't feeling much. Then, all at once, God showed up. I began to weep. I looked over at Kurt and he was singing, worshipping as well. God had invaded our awful day with His wonderful presence. I have been leading worship in some capacity since I was 17 years old. One thing I can say about worship - it is not about music. It is all about our hearts. Many times we worship God in our home with no music at all. A shout of praise, a word of thanksgiving, a life that is fully surrendered to Him; this is true worship. Let’s look at this verse of scripture: “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father
neither on this mountain nor in This verse says that the Father God is looking for worshippers who worship in Spirit and in truth. Looking at the context of this, Jesus had just mentioned that the Samaritans did not have a revelation of who God was. He then states that the Israelites did have a revelation of who God is. I believe that Jesus is saying to us that God wants worshippers who worship in "truth" - the truth of WHO GOD IS. I do understand the other aspect of the verse - that we should worship in truth, meaning in honesty and realness. That is certainly true. However, the context of this verse makes it clear that God cares that we know who HE is, and in that context, we worship. For the past couple of years I have been meditating on a sermon by Rev. John Eckhardt, called "The Beauty of God." I must have listened to it about 50 times at least. In it he talks about the fact that you must have revelation of God's beauty and His goodness to be able to truly worship Him. Many people worship God out of religious duty, without ever seeing Him for who He is. For example, many feel that God is the permitter of everything that happens in this world, both good and evil stuff. In other words, He "allows" evil by putting a rubber stamp on it. They use the scripture in Job where Satan asks permission to attack Job, and God says"OK". The assumption is that this happens every time something evil happens in the world. If this is true, then Satan is spending ALL of his time in HEAVEN, asking God for permission to do horrible things to people. We do not believe for a minute that God tacitly permits evil. What we do believe is that God has allowed the free will of human beings, which in turn has allowed evil into the world. I am not saying that people individually bring all this evil upon themselves. I am saying just that we live in a fallen world and because of this, evil things happen to good people. There are volumes more to say about this as it is a very complicated subject. If you want to read more about this subject, click here. So - people may think that God wanted their child to die or He "allowed" 9-11. They may believe that God willed cancer into their lives. And yet they are expected to worship Him anyway. The worship that God wants is for us to worship Him in Spirit and in truth; in the truth of who He is. We need to understand the reality of I John 1:5 - God is light and in Him there is NO DARKNESS AT ALL. That means that when you worship God, you are loving and adoring the ultimately perfect and good Being in the universe. He has no evil in Him. When you get a revelation of these truths, you see Him so much more clearly, in all His glory, and in all His beauty. God hates evil, and He wants to partner with you in the destruction of it! He gave His Son so that evil in this world could be destroyed forever. (For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. I John 3:8) I want to spend every day of my life proclaiming the greatness of God. When I lead worship, I want heaven to rejoice and hell to tremble. My great desire is that everyone I interact with will receive a deeper revelation of God's goodness, and so, worship Him in truth. I have led worship in many different countries and in America. I have written worship songs that the Lord is using in many churches. I have seen people weeping in repentance, laughing with joy in the presence of God, dancing wildly before Him. I want to see more of these things. But the thing I desire more than anything is to see a move of God where worshippers see Jesus in a new way, and are so blown away that all their inhibitions and hangups melt away. I want to see intimacy with God that the church has only tasted up to the present. I want to see a move of holiness so great that everyone in the room is flattened on the floor, so overwhelmed by God that no one can move. God is calling His church higher in the area of worship. As we receive a greater revelation of God's infinite beauty, our worship and our songwriting will reflect that. For Jesus, Dr. Marla Johnson We welcome your comments or questions. Email us at joministries@f2s.com.
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