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Part 6 of 7
ALTARations Series - On Spiritual Discipline and True Worship
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Have you ever been in a relationship where someone claimed to love you greatly, but they listened to you poorly? This frustration reveals a fundamental truth: a person's ability to love you properly is tied to their willingness to listen to you accurately.
Love listens. Why? Because in order for love languages to be met, they must first be understood. It is difficult to meet needs you don't understand, and you will never understand those needs if you don't listen.
When individuals don't listen, they give the person they're in relationship with what they think they want, rather than what they actually need. Love breeds curiosity. Love makes you inquisitive—it wants to dwell according to knowledge, not assumption.
Seasons may change, and love languages may shift. Before you had children, perhaps you wanted flowers. After you had children, perhaps you want the dishes washed. The seasons change and needs change. Love is curious enough to be investigative so that you can explore what the actual need is—and give the person what they actually need, not what you think they should have.
When you give a person what they actually need versus what you want them to have, it serves them at the highest level and it serves you at the highest level. It blesses them and it blesses you. It takes them to another level and it takes the relationship to another level.
People show up differently when their needs are met properly. There are versions of people that others miss because they do not know how to properly value them or properly assess their authentic needs. You operate differently when you're in a deficit. You operate differently when you're depleted. But if you ever get filled, there's a version of you that shows up that is different, distinct, unique, and special.
Just as this is important in our relationships with people, it is also important in our relationship with God. It is possible to be in relationship with God operating with assumptions regarding what we think God wants versus what he actually wants.
It is possible to think that because God is a God of grace, he is a God of no standards. But grace doesn't lower standards—it gives you more time and is patient with you in order to meet the standards. God clearly articulates in scripture what he wants. Unfortunately, many people assume that he will accept whatever they offer. But only a person without options accepts whatever is offered. As long as you are in covenant with Yahweh, you are never without an option. God will split a Red Sea. God will knock down Jericho walls. He will get you to everything he has in store for you.
Is it possible that we're giving God what we want him to have and not what he actually wants? God is not hard to read. He knows what he needs, and he clearly articulates this in scripture.
In John chapter 4, Jesus has a conversation with a Samaritan woman. Jesus has just exposed to her that she has needs greater than natural thirst. When he starts dealing with her life, she becomes uncomfortable and starts talking about doctrine.
She says: "Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place we must worship is in Jerusalem."
She is arguing with God about what God wants. But she's well-intended and sincere. She is articulating that what she thinks is important to God is where you worship. She has made something a priority and assumes that because she thinks it's a priority for God, it actually is.
She's Samaritan. The Samaritan people worshiped on Mount Gerizim, and she's adamantly arguing something she is incorrect about. She assumes she's correct because she got inaccurate information from a godly heritage. Her ancestors may have been good people, but they gave her bad doctrine.
She has a whole worldview about where you're supposed to worship based on the way one scripture was interpreted by her religious tradition. They took one scripture—"When the Lord your God has brought you into the land you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim on Mount Gerizim blessings and on Mount Ebal curses"—out of context and built a whole belief system on it.
One scripture taken out of context has led to dangerous things in Christian communities. The Samaritans only acknowledged the Pentateuch—the first five books of the Bible—and ignored the rest of scripture where God clearly designates Jerusalem as the place of worship.
Her religious tradition handed her a historic interpretation of scriptures. She didn't even realize she wasn't as objective as she thought she was, because every time that scripture was read to her, it was read with the insinuation that this was the accurate interpretation. She thinks she's giving God what he wants, and she's sincere because she's doing what the Samaritans taught her. How many people are living their spiritual life just doing what their denomination taught them?
But Jesus says: "You have this misunderstood."
He says: "The hour is coming and now has come when the true worshippers will worship the Father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem."
He's not saying that the places where you worship won't matter. But he is saying you won't have to go to a place to worship.
Then he says: "You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and now has come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth."
If he uses the word "true," if there can be true worship, that means there can be an expression of worship that's not true. True worshippers need truth to worship. My ability to worship biblically is tied to my biblical literacy.
He says, "You worship what you don't know." The more revelation I have about who God is, the more worship I can express. The more I see his worth, the more I can express that worth.
For some people, he's just a creator, and your worship reflects it. But for some of us, he's the creator and the provider, and my praise shows it. He's the healer, and my praise shows it. He's the deliverer, and my praise shows it. He's the way maker, and my praise shows it. Someone's testimony is that he's everything they need him to be. Just worship him for that.
Jesus gives the woman a gift that everybody has to receive who's serious about growth: the gift of correction.
This story ends the way it ends because she's willing to take correction in the middle. Correction is not an indictment against God's character—it is an expression of God's love. The Bible says: "Whom the Lord loves, he corrects."
Love is expressed through correction. We should not be concerned when God is correcting us. We should be grateful. You should be concerned when God is not correcting you. When he ceases to correct, it means you have demonstrated a degree of obstinacy that God, in his foreknowledge, knows will never be changed. He has seen enough to know that there's nothing more he can do to convince a heart that has become unconvincible. Since he is a God that will not violate your free will, he will honor your autonomy and give you over to what you think you want. The Bible calls that state a reprobate mind.
But this whole story ends the way it ends because a woman was willing to let Jesus correct what she had learned from her religious tradition.
You can only grow to the degree to which you're willing to be corrected. The difference between a season and a cycle is correction. Seasons change with time. Cycles change when you do.
Sometimes we say we're in a rough season, and God says, "This is not on me. This is on you. This ends whenever you end some things. This changes whenever you change some things."
The spirit of this age has produced traits and tendencies of hypersensitivity. It has made people resistant to correction. It is a spirit of offense. You can't even tell somebody they're holding the golf club wrong without somebody being upset.
If you want to stay stuck, stagnant, plateaued, paralyzed, and pitiful, then do you. But if you want God to take you from faith to faith and from glory to glory, throw your hands up and tell him, "Correct me."
You know what will shift some marital dynamics? Someone's willingness to be corrected. You know what will take you from the borderline into bliss? A willingness to be corrected. You know what will take some people from cycles of self-sabotaging professional behavior where everybody hates them? A willingness to be corrected.
The devil wants to use hypersensitivity to hold your growth hostage. But today he's got to let you go.
Jesus said: "The hour is coming and now is when true worshippers will worship him in spirit and in truth. The Father is seeking such to worship him."
There are three ways to worship:
This is the worship of self and the worship of stuff. It is the placing of personal priorities, possessions, and passions above God with an expectation that God will accept second place and bless what you made first.
This is an indication that one fails to believe that God has the capacity to satisfy. It's one thing to have faith that he can save you. It's another thing to have faith that he can satisfy you.
When Jesus told the woman, "You will never thirst again," he was telling her, "There's something in you that only what I have will quench. It doesn't matter how much passion you have, how much money you make, or how much you accomplish—there's something on the inside of you that can only be satisfied with me."
Do you trust that his will satisfy you? Do you believe he knows what'll make you complete?
The word "blessed" in the Old Testament Hebrew, in the Psalms, and in Jesus's Sermon on the Mount means "happy"—divine joy. It's an internal sense of jubilation that rests on the revelation that your welfare and your well-being rest securely in the hands of God.
When you live life the King's way, the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. But when you're stuck in the first way, you don't trust that his way will satisfy.
This way of worship is selective and skewed. It is the prioritizing of what we like over what God wants. It is the elevation of how worship feels over who worship is for. It values what moves us emotionally over songs that magnify him truthfully.
Worship means to express worth. Second way language is: "I can only worship if it's a song I like." You've just inverted who worship was for. It's for God. Instead of being obsessed with "Does he like this?", you're asking "Do I like this?" So you're worshiping in emotion and in preference, not in truth.
The question is: Are the lyrics true? I don't care if it's Mississippi Mass Choir or Maverick City—are the lyrics true?
In second way, we can be so caught up in emotion that we are moved by melody and not message. Many songs in church, we don't even know the lyrics to. So how can you worship with that when you don't even know what you're saying?
Hymns, in my opinion, are some of the most theologically rich expressions of worship. "Pass me not, oh gentle Savior, hear my humble cry. While on others thou art calling, do not pass me by." These songs are anchored in scripture. "Don't pass me by. I don't want to miss nothing. I want everything you got for me."
"Let me at thy throne of mercy find sweet relief, kneeling there in deep contrition, help my unbelief." It's all scripture. Throne of mercy—come boldly to the throne of grace that you might obtain mercy and grace to help in the time of need. Help my unbelief—based on the gospel narrative of the father with the demonic son, where the disciples could not cast out the demon, and the father said, "If you can help me." Jesus said, "If you can believe." And he said, "I believe, but help my unbelief."
It's not the melody. It's the message.
You need to be conscious and careful that you are not prioritizing the melody and your preference over the message.
Third way worship is an indication of a heart that has been captured by God's greatness. It is convinced of his goodness and it is compelled to give him what he actually wants. Worship that is anchored in truth and animated by the spirit.
It's not emotionalism void of understanding. I grew up in churches where people would dance in the praise, and then they'd fall asleep during the preaching. It's emotionalism void of understanding. It's zeal, but it's not anchored in knowledge.
Nor is this dry doctrine void of intimacy. It's the kind of worship that Jesus says the Father seeks. God is looking for this.
You can only get to third way with an altar. You've got to take first way and you've got to take second way and you've got to put that on the altar. If the Father is seeking that kind of worship, we've got to go there.
If he's looking for that kind of worshiper, somebody throw your hands up and tell him: "Here I am. Here I am."
