The True Test of Worship

“But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.  God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:23-24)

Have you ever wondered if you’re worshiping God the right way? Does God receive what we do every Sunday in church as genuine worship? How do we know if our worship is true? 

We need to understand that all our good intentions can never substitute for a godly worship. The only time that God receives our worship is if it meets His standards of pure and genuine worship– His test of true worship.

The Standard of Genuine Worship 

In this well-known confrontation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, Jesus gives His greatest insight and disclosure on worship, and gives us His standard to which we should judge the genuineness and purity of our worship.  

In John 4:23, Jesus talks about “true worshippers.” Digging deeper, we see Jesus telling us through this phrase that if there are true worshippers, then there must be “false worshippers”.  False worshippers do not necessarily mean bad people or unbelievers. These are just the people who don’t understand what God considers worship to be. 

It is possible that we are unconsciously gauging the genuineness and effectiveness of our worship through physical factors such as length and sound. However, the Bible clearly doesn’t teach us that true worship is determined by how long, how loud, or how pleasing we sound. Therefore, we must never use these physical factors to measure the purity of our worship.

So, how do we determine if we are truly worshiping God? We just have to remember three things: 

  1. All worship must be directed to the Father God.
  2. True worship has to be in a man or woman’s spirit.
  3. Pure worship has to be offered in truth.  

It All Starts With Knowing God

Worship reveals how much we know and don’t know about God. This is why Jesus saw it was necessary to tell the Samaritan woman.“You worship what  you do not know…”( John 4:22). In other words, we can’t worship someone we don’t know. We can’t worship the Father in spirit and in truth if we don’t know who He really is. 

Worship is saying to God what you have actually experienced and learned about Him. It is important that we know how to walk and talk to Him so that He can reveal Himself to us. The bottomline: We’ve got to learn Him personally.  

Worship must be directed to God and we can only communicate to God what we know about Him, and God will reveal Himself in greater depths to us. 

Remember: If God is not the object of our worship, then our worship is false. If our worship is not directed solely to God, then that is not genuine worship. No matter how beautiful, elaborate, or moving it might be, if the object is not God the Father, then it cannot be true worship. If our worship does not come from our inner man, then it is just entertainment. If our worship is not based on the truth of His Word and of who He is, then it is not worship. 

 It’s about time we go back to the real definition of worship according to God’s standards and ask ourselves: Am I offering God a genuine and pure worship?