On This Day: The Time for New-hearted Worship

   Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:21-24)

   Many of us are familiar with the expression “worship in spirit and in truth”. My experience is that few want what Jesus was talking about.

   It helps to remember the three possible views of how church people relate to this. The Legalistic pendulum extreme on one side focuses on truth without spirit. The Charismaniac pendulum extreme on the other side focuses on spirit without truth.

   Between the two is the Plumbline experience of worship that always keeps the two together. The “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth”.

   The Samaritan woman was coming from a background where the worship was physical rather than spiritual. It was all earthly history, earthly heritage, earthly location, earthly prejudices between the Jews and Samaritans.

   It was also false instead of true because the Samaritans had a corrupted version of what God had given in the Scriptures and so their ideas about God and worship were on the wrong track.

   However, even though Jesus clarified that “salvation is from the Jews”, he didn’t mean that the way the Jews were worshiping in Jerusalem was acceptable to God. He meant that the salvation God was now offering the world through his Son came through the Jews. The foundation for knowing God was not in Samaria, it was in Israel. And Jesus was the one who was giving the good news of great joy that a Savior was given to man by which all people could repent and experience the born-again life.

   Jesus made this clear with Nicodemus who needed to be “born again” just as much as the woman at the well needed to drink Jesus’ “living water”. The two expressions are facets of the same diamond. No one is inherently saved. No one is inherently good enough for God. Everyone needs to be born again by drinking the living water of salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord.

   Since I am sharing this as part of the Higher-Deeper way Jesus was relating to the Samaritan woman, I expect that anyone who opens their hearts to how Jesus taught her will also see their own Higher-Deepers in effect. All of us are called to look Higher in worship than we ever have before. Not to something different that no one has ever thought of, but what is in Jesus’ words, that our worship must be both spirit and truth. And we must look Deeper inside ourselves to bring everything within us to worship God spiritually and truthfully no matter what we see coming up from our secret hearts.

   It is twenty-five years ago that God was leading me into home church ministry without me seeing the destination. He had spoken in his word of some Higher things that were in the works, but I had the same obtuseness of the disciples that simply couldn’t see where he was going with the Deeper things that were unfolding.  

   However, only months later I could see this most amazing gift of a group of people discovering that we did not need to confine our worship of God to church buildings, single locations, structured rules and regulations, denominational distinctives, or anything else that was physical.

   Rather, we were on our way to learning a new dimension of worshiping in spirit and in truth. We could gather in anyone’s home, any time that was good for our people, seeking what was best in encouraging our spiritual attachment to God in fellowship with a love of the truth of his word.

   No, worshiping in spirit and in truth is not confined to home church ministry since that would just be continuing the Jewish/Samaritan feud about where to worship.

   Yes, anyone who has been born again into the new life of the Spirit can worship in spirit and in truth anytime they worship, anywhere they gather with fellow believers in their version of church, and with anyone who is a spirit and truth worshiper of God.

   So, why do I think that many church folk know this Scripture, but few want to live it?

   Answer: because I am now old enough to have decades of experience in many different churches that has shown me what Larry Crabb prophesied to me in his book, Inside Out, 35ish years ago: church people are more committed to self-protection than to knowing and doing the will of God.

   Using the Highers-Deepers of the Samaritan woman as a measure, I have now learned that people will initially feel an amazement and wonder that they are getting to know God in Higher ways and beginning to learn how to relate to him from their Deeper state of being.

   However (and this is close enough to unanimous to treat it as such), the consistent pattern has been that one day, God leads someone from the amazing Higher they just shared about with excitement, to a Deeper that opens a door through their self-protection to things they had hidden from everyone (God included), and suddenly they can’t trust God for the next Higher. And yes, I have seen this as much in home churches as in institutional churches.

   I share this as a Higher-Deeper of its own. The Higher is God’s calling to worship him in spirit and in truth because he seeks us out with a desire to have us, and he has given us the new covenant in Jesus’ blood which gives us new hearts by which to worship him in the “new way of the Spirit”, as Paul called it.

   The Deeper is whatever we see inside ourselves that isn’t there yet. Hidden sins? Childhood trauma? Unresolved guilt, shame, and fear? Feeling worthless and seeing no hope of that every changing? Experiences shrouded in darkness that do not want to come into the light?

   We can bring ALL THOSE THINGS to God the Father in spirit (a genuinely spiritual way) and in truth (letting what is true about us cling to what is true about God). And meeting God in our Deepers that do not yet know him for real will continue leading us into the Highers of knowing God for real in spirit and truth kinds of ways.

   If any of this doesn’t sound quite right to you because of thoughts that are coming out of nowhere, please do not read things in to this that I’m not saying as if I’m the one saying them. And please do not take my word for it! Join Jesus and the Samaritan woman in the Higher-Deeper journey of John chapter 4, and make sure you are relating to God in your spirit (new heart), while seeking to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth of God from his word and his Spirit.

   And, if you don’t have anyone in a church to talk about whatever is coming up for you, make sure you keep talking to God your Father about it without fail, and let me know if I can contribute anything from my place in the body of Christ.

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)