God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth" (John 4:24)
Worship must be in spirit and truth!
It must be the truth of God and the Spirit of God. When a person, yielding to God and believing the truth of God, is filled with the Spirit of God, even his faintest whisper will be worship.
The stark, tragic fact is the efforts of many people to worship are unacceptable to God. Without an infusion of the Holy Spirit there can be no true worship. This is serious. It is hard for me to rest peacefully at night knowing that millions of cultured, religious people are merely carrying on church traditions and religious customs and they are not actually reaching God at all!
We must humbly worship God in spirit and in truth. Each one of us stand before the truth to be judged. Is it not now plain that the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit of God, far from being an optional luxury in our Christian lives, is a necessity?
Lord, fill me with Your Spirit as I worship You today. I don't want just to carry on church traditions and religious customs. Send the Spirit today, that my worship might be more real! Amen
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The Self-Existent God
"The lord reigneth; let the people tremble: he sitteth between the cherubims; let the earth be moved" (Psalm 99:1)
In this context, I confess a sadness about the shallowness of Christian thinking in our day. Many are interested in religion as a kind of toy. If we could make a judgment, it would appear that numbers of men and women go to church without any genuine desire to gear into deity. They do not come to meet God and delight in His presence. They do not come to hear from that everlasting world above!
Compared to Him, everything around us in this world shrinks in stature and significance. It is all a little business compared to Him - little churches with little preachers; little authors and little editors; little singers and little musicians; little deacons and little officials; little educators and little statesmen; little cities and little men and little things!
Brethren, humankind is so smothered under the little grains of dust that make up the world and time and space and matter that we are prone to forget that at one point God lived and dwelt and existed and loved without support, without help, and without creation.
Such is the causeless and self-existent God!
Lord, as I enter the church service this next Sunday, help me to come expectantly. I'm little; You are big. Let me wait in silence before You. Amen
~A. W. Tozer~
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