What’s Required for Authentic Worship? (Podcast) - a podcast by NLW International

 

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Dwayne Moore: How can we know if we’ve worshiped?

Remember, we talked about that and we talked about John 4, one of the places that Jesus talked about worship, one of the few places. Jesus replied, “Believe me dear woman the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. You Samaritans know very little about the one you worship, while we Jews know all about Him for salvation comes through the Jews.”

So he’s talking about worship. “But the time is coming, indeed it’s here now when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit in truth. The father is looking for those who worship Him that way. For God is Spirit, so those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth.” Remember we zoned in on that passage? “Those who worship must worship Him,” how? In spirit and truth.

Now there’s so much depth in here, one conversation and one class is not going to cover it all. You can read books on this and you’ll get so many different insights. I’m only one guy among and I’m not even an expert like some of them. I’m not a theologian, but I have my two cents to add to this. As I told you about that day at the lake when I was working through this, the qualifications that hit me about it that there are authentic experiences years of worship that every moment of my life can be an expression of worship even in the most mundane of ways. I’m writing about that right now. I’m going back and rewriting about it because I’m rewriting Pure Praise. It’s being re-released this fall. I told you that. Our publishers re-releasing it, which is very cool, and so were going back and re-vamping it a little bit.

We say in there, and I think it’s a Biblical idea hopefully. That everything we do can and should be worship. But the reality is, it isn’t necessarily if we haven’t confessed or sins, amen? If we haven’t committed it fully to God. If we’re not communing freely with God, we’re not worshiping. So everything I do is not necessarily worship unless I have that kind of heart behind it. Now that’s important. So what’s the qualifications that make it authentic? We need to know this. If we’re going to lead other people in worship this is a big, big deal to get, okay? That worship, first of all, has got to be initiated and led by the Spirit.

All the connotations of that, “In spirit in truth,” stuff there’s so much to it is hard to understand it all, but one thing I think it least we can take away is that if it’s going to be inside my spirit where it happens, my spirit needs to bear witness with His spirit and He needs to be the one that initiates the worship. Tell me if you disagree, but I can’t make people worship. Can you relate to that?

Student 1: Yes, very much. Very much.

Dwayne Moore: I mean I want to shake them sometimes and wake them up, but it doesn’t work. Sometimes I want to slap them or yell at them, it don’t matter. They don’t worship because I want them to.

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