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

Recently I have noticed a few folks bragging about how God was "really blessing them" in their church services and how "awesome" and "kicking" and "rocking" it was etc., etc., etc... Don't get me wrong, I love it when God blesses me during worship. Just this past Sunday as Sis. Carol was singing the song, Thank You Lord, I felt the overwhelming Spirit of God working inside of me and I had to raise my hand toward Heaven and shout and say "AMEN" and cry a bucket of tears and let it out but....

"God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all [them that are] about him." -Psalm 89:7

I'm afraid that folks are really misguided on what worship means. If you are attending church with the main purpose of being "blessed" or to get some kind of "feel good feeling," then you are attending for the wrong reason! Worship is not about YOU or ME, it's about HIM. Our whole purpose is to go and offer up our praises and adoration to the Lord and hopefully bless HIM, not the other way around. It sickens me to read accounts of people's worship experience where they say things such as, "we had a rockin' service," or "we had such a good service that we didn't even have preaching." Oh wow, you didn't have preaching and you call that a "good service"??? Or how about this: "we just went around shouting and hugging each other and having a great time." STOP!!!! You have left the Lord out of the service! You may get a great feeling from worship but you better be more concerned with whether or not you are blessing the LORD instead of Him blessing you!

"Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire." - Hebrews 12:28,29

It is disgraceful to see and hear of the way some churches have allowed the world to influence their worship styles by allowing ungodly "Christian" rock into their music programs; loud mind numbing drums and electric guitars. Such world-like worship must sicken our Lord as he sees His church drag the world into His Sanctuary. I also hear people say foolish things such as "when I see Jesus I'm going to dance in front of him," or "I'm going to walk up and put my arm around his neck and give him a big hug." Are you kidding me?

"O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker." - Psalm 95:6

We aren't going to be dancing for Jesus, we are going to be falling down prostate at his feet! Just like Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue when he approached Jesus looking for a miracle to save his daughter, he fell down on the ground at Jesus' feet. In the book of Revelation chapter 1 verse 17, when the Apostle John found himself in front of the Lord he says "And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead." My friend, John wasn't dancing for Jesus or giving him "noogies," he was hitting the ground because he knew that he was not worthy to even stand in His presence. People seem to forget that He is a Holy God. If you need a refresher in what that means, I urge you to listen to the below sermon: