Worship in Spirit and Truth (John 4)

Jesus went out of His way to talk to the Samaritan woman (See John 4) and shared with her that the Father is seeking worshipers who worship Him in spirit and truth. Is that the way you relate to our Heavenly Father and teach others to worship Him? Be encouraged to become more effective in worshiping and helping develop new worshipers the way God desires. 


NOTES: 

Rockwell Church     April 21st, 2024     Pastor Chris Teien
How to Worship in Spirit & Truth
John 4:23-24

The Father is Seeking Worshipers that:

#1 Worship in SPIRIT 
(Acts 1:8, Rom 8:9; Eph 1:13-14, 5:15-20)


#2 Worship in TRUTH 
(Acts 4:12, Jn 14:6, Rom 12:1-2)


#3 Worship WHEREVER they are 
(Deut 12:5-7, 1 Cor 6:19-20)


#4 Worship with ACTIONS 
(Prov 3:5-6, James 4:8, Heb 10:22)


#5 Worship attracts OTHERS 
(Matt 5:16, John 13:15; Ps 34:3, 1 Pet 3:15)


An additional resource for this message series is the small book “Tell Someone – You Can Share the Good News” by Greg Laurie. Also available as an e-book or audio book. 

The WELL Faith Podcast offers encouraging, Bible-based messages from Pastor Chris Teien and guests. New sermons are released every Sunday. Replay episodes are marked with an asterisk. Find us online at ChrisTeien.com and Rockwell.Church in Virginia, MN. Email comments to wellfaith24@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 1:57

And that's who you are. In hell.

Chris T 2:19

So I want to talk about the Samaritan woman a bit and how to worship in spirit and in truth. So I don't have all of the verses from John chapter 4, 1 through 26 on the screen, because that'd be a lot of button pushing. And if you want to follow along in your Bible or the Bible in the pew in front of you, it's John chapter 4, verse 1. And I'm sure that many of you are familiar with the Samaritan woman. And so I was going to read the, you know, kind of the background of my key message on how to worship in spirit and in truth. Well, we're in a series called Tell Someone, and there's actually a little booklet on the table that you could buy for$5 that encourage you to share your faith by Greg Laurie, Tell Someone. So, and I stole that and used that for the name of the series, Tell Someone. So I'm not preaching the book, but there's helpful things in the book to encourage you to share your faith. And the purpose of me talking about John chapter 4 and how to worship in spirit and in truth is because that's supposed to be the motivation to help you to share your faith. Everybody, most people are terrified to share their faith. People are terrified to share their testimony while they're being baptized. People are afraid someone's going to ask them the question, they uh ask them a question they don't know the answer to. People are afraid that uh, you know, they might say the wrong thing or, you know, I'll mess it up. And so so many times the Holy Spirit kicks in and can help you. And so there's a lot to be said about this woman that Jesus shared with, and I'll highlight a few things, but I really want to get to the reason on why we need to share our faith, and that's because the Father is looking for worshipers who will worship him in spirit and in truth. So, what does that mean? So I think over a year and a half ago, maybe I did a message on worshiping, but it's not the same message, but we could talk about how to worship God all day, but uh probably for weeks, we could do series upon series for a whole year on how to worship the Lord. But I hope this will be an encouragement. So again, the key passage here is the time is coming and is now come. Jesus says, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the spirit and in truth. All right, so let me go back to the story of the Samaritan woman. Okay, so verse one. Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees has heard had heard that he was gaining in baptizing more disciples than John, which I mentioned last week that that wasn't actually accurate. Uh Jesus' group of disciples were baptizing. Jesus wasn't actually doing the baptizing. Um, he had delegated that. So um, although in fact, here it says in verse 2, although in fact it was not Jesus who was baptized, but his disciples. So thank you, John. I should have just read the verse. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. So um, so you got Judea and Galilee, and you've got like Samaria in between. And it says, now we had to go through Samaria. So, but actually, he didn't have to go through Samaria. People didn't like the Jews, didn't like the Samaritans. They were half Gentile, half Jews, they were religiously confused, they were considered outcasts, nobody really liked them. It was like a bad part of town. So, what a lot of Jews would do in Jesus' day is they would, they would, it took a little longer, but they would go around. So they would go around Samaria and just avoid the Samaritans because they didn't care for the unclean Samaritans, didn't want to go through that part of town. Maybe you've done that before. Maybe you know where there's a particularly bad part of town. Uh, years ago, uh, when I um drove a delivery van for a company, I was told that when we did the delivery route in Minneapolis that we went around this neighborhood because it wasn't a safe neighborhood, you wouldn't want to get stuck there, caught there. Um, you go around that neighborhood. But as I was praying about it, I thought, you know, these people are people that Jesus loves too. Maybe some of them are just stuck in a bad neighborhood. I can't imagine that everybody in that neighborhood is bad, so I took the delivery van through the neighborhood, any opportunity I could get in the summer, and you know, saw families doing family stuff. Saw, I mean, there were some suspicious-looking characters around. But um, nonetheless, have a heart for the broken people. And here it says that now we had to go through Samaria. But I'm thinking he didn't actually have to go through Samaria. He could have gone around, but he had to go through Samaria because he had a message for the Samaritans. And the message he shared with was with an unlikely character. I'm sure you know the story. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. So Jesus has been walking a long time. He's thirsty, and he's tired. Now, when I get hot and tired and thirsty, my first energetic idea is not to be, all right, we're in town, let's go talk to people about faith. So sometimes it's like, oh, I need a nap, and then maybe I can do something about it. But anyway, so Jesus is on the scene. He's tired, he's thirsty, he has a need, it shows his humanity. So we know that Jesus was fully God and fully man, and here we've got God in the flesh. Jesus who is tired and thirsty. Because the Philippians 2 talks about how he set aside his power and humbled himself and came to live among us. And in Hebrews, we see that Jesus is the high priest that's able to sympathize us, sympathize with us and our weaknesses and our needs and everything. So that's a good verse to remember that Jesus was thirsty and tired. Alright, so verse 7. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, Will you give me a drink? Because his disciples had gone into town to buy food. And the Samaritan woman said to him, Um, You're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. So it was a social disconnect. It was unexpected. It was this woman did not expect to have a Jewish person, um, a man who would look down upon her, uh, enter into a conversation, and even be willing to drink from you know the same bucket or cup or whatever she had. So he's like, Can I have a drink? And it took her by surprise. And so then verse 10 says, Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Now that's cryptic and curious in a way, this woman who has to go draw this water and bring it back all the time, and now he's talking about living water, and why is he talking about living water? And if he's got this living water, then why isn't he getting the living water? And said he's asking me for a drink from the well, because he doesn't have a bucket. Uh verse 11, Sir the woman said, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank for the from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock? And Jesus answered, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. And the woman said, Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. So she's like, Oh, this sounds pretty awesome. So you're talking, you're talking about some kind of plumbing. I mean, if she could see into the future, right? See all the plumbing that ye all have and the water filters and the purity of the water, and you got the water on the refrigerator and the water on the sink, and so this woman's like, That'd be sweet. Let me have some of that. But Jesus is talking about a spiritual thing, and I'm actually gonna talk about living water maybe in June or whatever, because that's in John chapter, I think it's John chapter 7. He talks about that again. But he's talking about a spiritual thing now, it's real cryptic, he doesn't answer her questions directly, but he is intriguing. She's she's wondering. She, I think that she's a pretty smart person. So again, she's like, sir, give me this water so I won't get thirsty again. And so people all around us are thirsting for Jesus. People all around us are thirsting for hope and for an answer to the questions that they have in life and uh for forgiveness for the past. And so, anyway, verse 16, Jesus tells her, Hey, go call your husband and come back. So that just like totally changed the direction of the conversation there. And she says, Um, I have no husband. And Jesus said to her, You're right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you've had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true. So she was just, I don't have a husband. What she said was true. So now you have to ask some questions about this woman. So all through Sunday school and years growing up, I was always told that she was the immoral woman who had to come to the well when no one else did, so the other women didn't harass her or you know, because she was she was the immoral woman. And so she was living with a guy, and she had all these other other husbands, and so nobody really knows about all the details in her life. I mean, was she just unlucky in love? To the point that um she married a guy and you know, maybe he like went off in war or got in some kind of accident or whatever and he died. And she's like hoped things would work out better again, and she got married again, and that didn't work either. And then she's like, third time's a charm, and that didn't work fourth time, and then she comes to the fifth time, and she's like, you know, I'm not even gonna bother getting married anymore because it's just not working out for me. Could it be that she had this hard life and she was this broken, humble woman who just had the string of bad luck with all of these different husbands? And she was living with a guy that she didn't particularly love enough to be a husband, but because of her age and because of her condition, she had no place to live, and so the guy said, You can live here, and so maybe she was immoral, maybe she wasn't immoral, I don't know. But I do know that Jesus called her out on it, and it was a problem in her life because I'm sure people talked about her. Um, I'm sure it would say in the text, but maybe she was like the black widow or a praying mantis, and every husband that came along, she's like, I'm gonna get rid of that one. But nonetheless, I'm assuming that because Jesus went out of his way to have this divine appointment to talk to this woman, that there was something about her spiritually hungry and inquisitive that she was the perfect person to talk to for Jesus to make a connection to the Samaritans. Maybe she was the perfect person to invest in, to reach in, to care for, even though she was not a leader in the town, she was not a highly respected woman or man in the town. She was just some lonely person that was out getting water when no one else was. And I think Jesus was just waiting for her. And I wonder how many divine appointments are just waiting for you. And you need to, even when you're thirsty and tired, you just need to stop and take the time and enter into the conversation and see where it leads. God might, if you especially if you start the morning by praying, God use me. I invite you to interrupt my calendar, my schedule, my agenda so that I can be used by you if you give me opportunity to be ready, to have your radar, to be looking to see who God could use you to reach into the life of someone. So anyway, so Jesus is like, You just told the truth. Yeah, you've you're not living um with your husbands, you're living with someone else. And then so she says, Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. All right. So she's like, Okay, obviously there's something about you because you're like telling me about I don't know you, I don't think you know anybody here, and you're just telling me everything about me. And so therefore you must be able to be uh to see like a prophet, like one of God's prophets, of what's going on in my life and and what's going on. So she turns it into a religious question. She says, Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you James, you Jews, claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem. So she turns it into um a religious question, because you're a prophet, so let's talk about religion. I know a little bit about religion, and I know that you guys don't want us in Jerusalem. So we made up our own um worshiping. We took like the Pentateuch, we took uh the first five books of the Old Testament, and we turned that into our Samaritan kind of worship because you guys don't want us in Jerusalem anyway, because you call us unclean. So um, so what what of this? Woman, Jesus replied, believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know, we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Verse 23. Again, this passage that I've already mentioned, a time is coming and has now come when true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in the truth. Uh, they're the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the spirit and in truth. So let's let's think about this for a minute. The Father is seeking worshipers that, and I already gave you the outline, and I think I even put the answers in it already, so you know where I'm headed. But to worship in the spirit. So we need to worship in the spirit. So there, if we want to worship God, we need to be converted so that we can worship in the spirit. So you know, we all have just about everybody here has a cell phone of some kind. And so if we want to get our phones to work, if we want to be able to communicate, we need to have the right phones on the right networks for the area. So 26 years ago, when I lived be lived here before, I had a dual network foam and it worked anywhere. So it worked up here on the range in the trees, it would grab any signal, and it was great. And I think the United States government or the military or whatever took over that signal because eventually all those phones had to be um that network had to be disbanded. They the government took it over. You couldn't be on that network anymore. When I had moved from here to where I lived, um I actually got a ransom check from uh I think it was ATT or Hickory Tech or whatever down there, and it says, You have a phone and it's on this plan, and so you're using this network, and it's costing us a lot of money. So we would like you to get a new phone or leave our network, and we will give you this much money if you leave, so that you will you will disconnect from this. So almost sounds like Satan wanting to disconnect from God, but um we have to be on the right network, and the only way we can be on the right network to communicate is for our spirits, for us to be born again, for us to become a new creation, for us to receive the Holy Spirit when we receive Jesus Christ, which means that if you are not saved, if you haven't come into a relationship with Jesus Christ and been born again and those things I talked about when I was praying, that you cannot worship God in a correct way. You can go through the motions, you can say the right words, you can sing hymns beautifully, you can re uh repeat or recite um scripture poetry, and you could you could wow us, you could impress us, you could totally fake us out with your deep worship. If you are not truly in the spirit, of the spirit, you cannot worship God in the way that He wants. God is spirit, and to connect with Him, you have to worship in that way. So to connect your soul to the Heavenly Father, to the to what the Lord is doing, you need to be born again and in Christ. So in Acts 1.8, the disciples were promised that after Jesus ascended into heaven, uh in a period of time, you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth. So you're gonna get the Spirit. So back then, um, before the Spirit came, they the Holy Spirit would show up for a time. So the Holy Spirit would, like for instance, David had the Holy Spirit, and when I think it's Psalm 51 or Psalm 32, when he's repenting of his sin with Bathsheba, in that prayer of repentance, he says, Please don't take the Holy Spirit from me. And that was the thing. So you could the Holy Spirit would come and go. So New Testament believers, we have we receive the Holy Spirit when we receive Christ. So the Holy Spirit was coming, he came at Pentecost, and so in Romans 8 9, it says you're not controlled by your sinful nature, you are controlled by the Spirit. If you have the Spirit of God living in you, and remember that those who don't have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to Him at all. So the Spirit in you, the Spirit can guide and direct you, can control you. You're supposed to yield your will and your life to the Holy Spirit, so you can allow the Holy Spirit to work in your life and to enjoy what he is doing. So unconfessed sin, um, constant rebellious um actions, uh, those types of things will get in the way. So when the Holy Spirit convicts you of sin or prompts you to do something and you don't listen, um, he doesn't force you. So um the Holy Spirit doesn't force, but he uh gives opportunity and he enables. So as you move forward in the spirit, you can um commune with God, you can experience joy, um, things that you can't do without the spirit. Ephesians 1 13 says, You also were included in Christ when you heard the message of the truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is in the life of the believer. Not only is the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer, but it's a guarantee for us unto salvation, and that is an exciting thing, not just a benefit, but the thing that you need if you're gonna follow after Christ. Again, who is a deposit, guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his glory. So we live in the spirit, we walk in the spirit, and Ephesians 5 15 then says, be very careful then, how you live, not as unwise, but as wise, making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil. You know, we miss so many opportunities. Uh Jesus did not miss that opportunity with a Samaritan woman because he was thirsty, because he was tired, or because he decided to take the easy road around. So Or he decided to stay with the disciples. He'd like, oh yeah, let's all go get lunch together because I am kind of hungry. Instead, he went ahead. He did his own thing. And he was on mission and he was making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil. Is there something that you could do to take more opportunity? Is there something that you could do maybe to, you know, connect with your neighbor or join some kind of club where you can meet people? How are you going to get the message out of your heart and your life into other people's lives if you're not around other people? So I don't know what it will be that you have that you can do, but maybe you're involved in some type of club or sport or whatever. Maybe you just find a walking group and go walk with people or something. Pray about it and ask God to show you what it is that you can do to get your life invested in other people's lives, save people's lives so that you can make the most of most of every opportunity. Okay, verse 17. Therefore, don't be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. Don't get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery, sin. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. So be filled with the Spirit and yielding your life to the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we need to have the Spirit in us if we're going to worship in spirit. And then in worship in truth. Worship in truth. Again, I already mentioned that it's easy to fake worship. So musicians can fake worship. People that are good speaking can fake worship. It's real easy to fake worship. And sometimes people just go through the motion. Maybe I mentioned before years ago, I took my friend to a military recruiter in Hopkins, Minnesota. So he was actually stationed down south. He was from the area. That's why he was my friend. But he came up to visit. And while he was up here, he said, I'm going to re-enlist. So we went down to the recruiter's office and he told the recruiter that he would like to be a recruiter. And the recruiter is like, Oh, this is a tough job. This is this is hard. I need to get warm bodies and boots. And if I don't meet my quota, I'll get put back into the personnel pool. I could lose my rank. He was swearing left and right and everything like that. And then I was younger. He looked at me and he's like, What about you? Um, I said, I'm preparing for the Lord's army. Praise God, brother. I'm so I'm involved in this church, and oh, I just love Jesus, and we could get you in as a military chaplain. And you know, he totally flipped. And I'm like thinking to myself, and I told my friend afterwards, he just wants to get my warm body and boots. But so he's someone, I don't know his heart. I mean, maybe, you know, that's just, you know, maybe he truly is on fire for Christ, and that's just the way he presents himself. But it's easy for us to fake and not worship in spirit and in truth. It's easy for us to go through the motions if we're in a church congregation where everybody's got their hands up in the air and everybody sways, and that's the way everybody does it. You feel pressure. You feel pressure to do that too. So you're not worshiping in spirit and in truth. You're like, okay, everybody else is doing it. I gotta get my hands out of my pocket. I'll guess I'll guess I'll give Jesus one hand or two hand. God sees your heart. If you're truly lifting your holy hands and worship because you love Jesus, that is awesome. So there's only one place we ask you not to do that, and that's right here where the camera would get in the way, wouldn't be able to see a thing. Okay? So, so yeah, so if you're six and a half feet tall and you're in the front, you're like, I love Jesus, and no one can see past your hands. That would be tough. But if that's who you are and that's worshiping in truth, that's awesome. There are Scandinavian people who worship in truth with their hands in their pocket like this, and they're like, maybe they turn their hands out like this, and they're like, Oh, Jesus, you know I love you, so I just don't feel the need to lift my hands because it's the it's a style thing. You worship in truth, you speak in truth, you are genuine about your worship, not pretend. God sees pretend. Often people can see, pretend, so to worship in in spirit and in truth. So the biggest truth is Jesus. So salvation is found in no one else. There's no other name under heaven given to which mankind by which we must be saved. So the truth that we need to follow, the truth that we need to live for, is Jesus. So John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me, Jesus said. So are you worshiping in truth? Are you being genuine? Are you being honest with God? When you come before God's throne and you you pray and you like, I think, okay, Holy Spirit, help me to, is there any sin in my life that I need to confess that's getting in the way of me worshiping the Lord or being blessed? Help me to confess that right now and be truthful, be transparent. God already knows, but he wants to hear it from you. And then maybe after praying for forgiveness, maybe you ask for some help so that you don't keep doing it again and again. So to worship in truth, to be truthful, to be transparent with God, to be honest about where you are in your faith. Uh sometimes being honest about the questions that you have is a good thing. Uh, renewing your mind. Romans 12, uh, verse 1. Uh, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true worship. So sometimes God doesn't want to hear all of your eloquent words when it's just the Pharisees would do that. The Bible says that Jesus said they'd love to pray standing. So they would like to blow a little trumpet, you know, like, do look at me, everybody. I'm on the corner and I'm praying. And everybody's like, oh, isn't he wonderful? Oh, that is a good prayer. Good prayer. Because these Pharisees love to be seen by men. Uh, it wasn't truly a prayer to God. It wasn't true worship, not true worship, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true act of worship. What can I give God? I can give him my brain, my mind, I can give him my ears, I can give him my mouth, so I can give him my hands and my feet. Uh, so many things and my body and my resources that I can present to God as an act of worship. Maybe uh you serve in this church and nobody knows it. You're one of those behind-the-scenes servers, and so nobody knows how valuable you are and how much you do. You don't you don't stand up here and share a message, you don't sing up here, and no, nobody sees you working behind the scenes, but you are giving your all to serving Jesus and uh presenting what you have and the skills that you have to glorify the Lord. And it is an act of worship. Maybe you show up on the work day, uh which is what, next Saturday from 10 to 2, and the Saturday after that from 10 to 2, and you do your work with your skills. Maybe you bring your tools, and what you're doing is an act of worship. So you're like, I love Jesus, I love church, I want to do everything I can to use what God has given me to make this a better place, to help preserve uh what we've got here. You know, it's always a good season to do the work on the church when it's not super cold and it's not super hot or super buggy, which I think that that would mean that these coming two weeks would be a really good time on the schedule for that. So, anyway, a living sacrifice. We are giving God what we have, what he's blessed us with, giving it back to him as an act of worship. Don't be conformed, verse two, don't be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what the what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God. So we're worshiping in truth, we're worshiping genuinely, we're worshiping with what we have, we're worshiping and being honest with what we have. And then three, worship wherever they are. So again, um, we don't have to go to a particular place to worship. We come here to a worship service, and it's great, but you can worship God anywhere. You can worship God while you're driving down the road. Some people think that, oh, I don't go to church, but I worship God in the woods. Well, that's cool to worship God in the woods, but you're also supposed to be part of a local church where people know your name. Together you encourage each other and serve the Lord together, and so we're supposed to be part of the body of Christ in a local church also, but to be able to worship God wherever you are. So in Deuteronomy 12, um, they were told where they're going to worship. You must seek the Lord your God at the place of worship. He himself will choose from among the tribes, and so God had chosen a place. But in the New Testament, it says your bodies in 1 Corinthians 6 19. Your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you've received from God. It says, Do you not know that? But uh, you are not your own. You are bought at a price, therefore honor God with your bodies. So you can use um the time that you have in the place that you are to worship the Lord. And sometimes, sometimes you are out at the lake or at the cabin and you can't get to church and you can't tune in church, and so you come up with your own church service for whoever's at the cabin with you, your family, your friends, or whatever. And so you do what you can so that you can worship the Lord. Number four, worship with your actions. Worship with your actions. So James 4, 6 says, Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, purify your hearts, you double-minded. Um Hebrews 10 22, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. So we are to worship with our actions. We are to worship with the opportunities that we have and the things that we do. So uh hang on a second. I'm on the wrong page. Okay, here we go. Warren Wearsby gives a working definition of worship, and he says, worship is the believer's response of all that they are mind, emotions, will, and body, to what God is and says and does. This response has its mystical side and subjective experience, and its practical side and objective experience to the to God's revealed will. Worship is a loving response that's balanced by the fear of the Lord, and it's a deepening response as the believer comes to know God better. So true biblical worship so satisfies our total personality that we don't have to shop around for man-made substitutes. William Temple made this clear in his masterful definition of worship. For worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by his holiness, the nourishment of mind with his truth, the purifying of imagination by his beauty, the opening of the heart to his love, the surrender of will to his purpose, and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion, which our nature is capable, and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness, which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin. So many more things could be said about worship. But my last point is that worship attracts others. Worship attracts others. Your worship, your Christian life, the way that you live your life should draw others to Christ. It's a great thing when people say, What makes you different? Why do you do that? And then you talk about how you came into a relationship with Christ. You tell someone, like in the series here. So in the same way with Matthew 5, 16, in the same way, let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. And then John 13, by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. So, in one final verse, in your hearts, revere Christ as Lord. In 1 Peter 3:15, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you, to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. So if I truly love the Lord, I'm gonna be excited to tell other people about my faith. I might be embarrassed that I don't know everything about the Bible, or I don't know everything about theology, or I don't know everything about faith. But I can tell you what I do know is that I was a sinner in need of salvation, and Jesus saved me, came into my life, and has been changing me, and I've never been the same since. And I'm growing in the knowledge of the Word of God and the will of God and the ways of God and how to be used by God. And so as I do that, I experience great joy, and it's changing who I am. And you share stuff like that, and then people ask you questions you don't know the answer to, like the Samaritan woman, you know. She's like, Oh, I see you're a prophet. Let's talk about where we're supposed to worship, you know, and say that's a really great question. Um, let's talk about that in a minute. Let me finish sharing this. And then so you move forward. But everything that you do, the way that you live your life, the choices that you make, even when things don't go your way, the um the way you deal with hardship, the way you deal with success, sometimes success can destroy you more than hardship. Sometimes when you get that raise or that promotion or that inheritance or whatever, that can be the thing that pulls you away from Christ more than anything. But the way that you deal with all those things and you stay faithful is worshiping in spirit and in truth. And the Father is seeking worship like that, and he's also seeking worshipers like that, which means what can you do, because you love God, to bring, to help bring more worshipers to the Father. What can you do to say, hey, how about this one? And you're praying for this person, you're sharing with this person, and you're trying to help lead, you can't lead them to Christ, but you're trying to help. The Holy Spirit can use you, you're available, and then you're like, okay, uh, you know, here. Now together we're worshiping, and the Father is pleased with that. So next time we get together, we're going to talk about how to prepare for a rewarding heart harvest, and we'll just start in the same place next week, but let's pray. Lord, I thank you so much that you can take your creation. Um, we are simple, imperfect people that are very fickle and make lots of mistakes. But turn our hearts towards you. Help us to continuously, continuously worship you in spirit and in truth. Help us to serve you the way that you desire. There is great reward in that, there is joy in that. Um, it is an eternally significant uh way to live our lives. Uh when we come to memorial services and funerals, it's awesome to hear how people's lives have been transformed. And if if we could, you know, see that we were making an eternal difference, that'd be even better. But Lord help us to do this. Help us to be those kinds of worshipers the Father seeks. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.