in Spirit and in Truth

God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in Truth.
John 4:24

On my way to work this morning as I was praying and meditating on the Word, I began to think about what it truly means to worship God in Spirit and in Truth. Why did Jesus say specifically “Spirit and Truth”? It suddenly came to me that in order to worship God we must be led by both the Holy Spirit (Spirit) and the Word of God (Truth). Paul spoke about this in his 2 letters to the Corinthians. As most who are familiar with the Pauline Epistles know, the Corinthian church were a people who were very gifted spiritually. They operated prophetically, spoke in tongues, exhibited gifts of healing, and signs and wonders followed them. As a whole, their problem was that they were unbalanced. They began to focus more on the gifts than the Giver. I get the impression they sought the gifts of the Spirit of God, but forsook the proper study of the Word of God. Paul himself said to covet the gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy. However he also said that he would rather speak 5 words of understanding than 5000 words in an unknown tongue. Yet Paul spoke in tongues more than them all AND he walked in a divine understanding of the Word. He was balanced.

So many times as Christians we walk imbalanced. Solomon wrote in Proverbs 11:1 that a false balance is an abomination to the LORD, but a just weight is His delight. When Jesus gave his instruction on how to worship God, he used the word “must” which actually made it a command. If we want to worship God we have no choice but to do it in Spirit and in Truth. We can’t focus so much on the Word that it becomes a dead letter. And we can’t focus so much on the gifts of the Spirit that we end up falling into witchcraft. We must be led by the Spirit and led by the Word; walk in the Spirit and walk according to the Word; pray in the Spirit and pray according to the Word. We must know the Spirit of Truth, as John puts it in John 16:13 along with the Word of Truth. I believe a reason why many have not and do not see the power of God working in their lives is because they are imbalanced. We (I say we to include myself) have yet to worship God the way that Jesus instructed. We have yet to surrender our body as a living sacrifice and give up everything for Jesus. We have yet to tap into the manifested glory of God and allow Him to reign in our lives to the point where people no longer see us, but Christ within us. We have yet to truly worship God. Worship is a lifestyle. It is a form of adoration and humility before our Creator. It is only in worship that we can develop an intimate relationship with the LORD. Anyone can praise God, but it takes a true son and daughter of the Most High to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.