In Spirit and truth

Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."  - John 4.21-24

Jesus and the woman at the well spoke for a while before she realised and accepted who He was.

One of the things that Jews and Samaritans fought over was the proper place of worship. The woman asked Jesus and question right at the heart of the controversy. ‘Where do you think we should worship? Should we worship in Jerusalem, like the Jews believe, or should we worship in the mountains of Samaria like we believe?’

Jesus would not be detracted from His purpose. He first of all nailed down that the Jews had the answer of salvation (in Him) but then He went on the point out that the place of worship is not what matters.

Jesus told her what true worship was all about. God is a spirit and those who worship God must do so in a certain way. Those who worship God must do so in spirit and in truth.

I see a couple of things here, but the one that sticks out in my mind is that what really counts in worship is that it is done in spirit and truth. The peculiars are secondary. The place we meet, the building we use, the songs we sing, the style of worship, the way we dress, our cultural practices – all of these are secondary.

What counts is our worship. No matter what the methodology do we worship the Lord in spirit and in truth? Are the songs we sing worshipful in spirit and truth?

We tend to focus on how worship is done on the outside. What we really need to focus on is how it is done on the inside.