Am I worshipping God through vain religious practices or in the truth of who He really is?

23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

INSIGHT:  Let us take note here that Jesus says God is not looking for all people to be His children, but that He is only looking for certain kinds of people, the kind who will throw off the external restraints of cold, dead, religious legalism and formalism, and who will instead worship him in spirit and in truth (Jn 2:24-25).

Anytime I have seen those Biblical documentaries which show the dramatic efforts religious people make to worship God through buildings, artwork, decorations, pilgrimages, external displays of love and devotion, false humility, asceticism, and religious relics, I feel like flipping over change tables!  But I feel the same thing when I see world loving modern believers singing to God at the top of their lungs, with tears in their eyes, or becoming Bible Study champions and doctrine defenders, but not truly worshipping God in spirit or in truth. This kind of “worship”, no matter how devoted the worshipper feels, is all done in vain!  All false worship is rooted in a false view of the God they think they are worshipping.

Many people say, “My God is a god of mercy and love”, yet they have a distorted or incomplete view of Him.  We cannot buy dinner with a one sided twenty-dollar bill, and we cannot enter life to the full or heaven with a one-sided faith in God.  God saves and uses people who see and do according to His heart and mind (1 Sam 2:35, Ps 95:10).  How we view God determines our beliefs, which determine our actions, which determine our destinies both now and for eternity.

“What a person thinks about when they think about God is the most important thing about them.”  – A.W. Tozer

A favorite scheme of our flesh, and of course the devil is to heavily emphasize one attribute of God’s over another.  This distorts the image of God, which is a wicked heresy.  If I only recognize and talk about God’s love and grace, and I ignore or dismiss His justice and wrath, I am defaming the person of God and should not expect Him to be close to me or keep me.  Our easily deceived human nature wants so badly to see the kind and remain in denial about the stern. I think of the video I saw of the lady at the zoo, who is being bashed against the bars of the cage over and over, screaming hysterically because the polar bear has her entire upper thigh in his mouth, and he is trying to pull her into the cage to destroy her.  She approached the polar bear only seeing his gentle and calm side; she failed to acknowledge his other nature. This is exactly what so many do to God.  God has a very destructive nature like that polar bear and if we don’t acknowledge it now, it will be too late when we appear before Him. (Ps 9:5, 37:38, 145:20, Pro 16:4, Mat 10:28, Jn 3:36, Rom 11:22, Heb 10:27-31, Rev 20:15)

We must allow God to define Himself and His attributes fully through His word, not our favorite teacher or own ideal image of God.  Many of us worship God in vain religious tradition, or in error of who He really is.  For 19 years, I would have been so confident about who I thought God was, and how He felt about things in my life and in the world.  But I was terribly wrong and ignorant of who He really is, and that was reflected in my heart.  Today, I hear many believers say something about God or His ways, and I instantly know they are ignorant about Him and His ways.  As I became intentional about obeying Him, motivated by my love for Him, He began revealing Himself to me through His word and spiritual experiences (a scary thought for religious people). 

We can never know everything there is to know about God, but we can have much greater understanding than most of us have now.  It takes years of seeking Him, but God rewards us with more of His presence as we come into agreement with who He really is.   A proper view of God is critical and can only be attained by obeying Him and depending upon His grace to make Himself known.  Are you doing that?