Please turn in your Bibles to John 4:24. Let's read it aloud.
"God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."
Any notions we have of God are off the mark. They may help us aim in God's direction, but fall far short of encompassing God.
Father, Mother, Source, Creator, Maker, Origin, Friend and so on, are helpful as re-presentations of God, but what we are aiming at with these words is not contained within these words, not even and perhaps especially, since it contains so much baggage, the word God.
However, each of us planetary beings speaks a language and we must use what we have. If one wishes to measure the ocean and only has a teaspoon, that is what one uses.
"God is a Spirit." Spirit is life-force, is the energy that brings all into being and sustains it all. The life-force sustains us, is our sustenance. "God is my help in every need. God does my every hunger feed." The life-force (spirit) flows through us, keeps us, opens our awareness. When not enthralled by ourselves, we are pure life-force.
God is a spirit, is the life-force, and those "who worship him must worship him in spirit." Worship means to move in the same realm as. The life-force that we are is the life-force of God.
With our own self-will, we tend to bend and shape our life-force into peculiar forms. This is done out of fear and irritation and habit and is based on an adversarial approach to life.
In musical scale terms, I want the dough and the rays to fall on me, so I may go far in my lah-ti-dah ways.
When we open instead to the spirit of God, to the life-force of our Source, when we flow with the flow of the Flow, this is worship. No separate creature on knees, but a partner in the making.
Now we are worshiping in truth, in reality. We open in lovingkindness, freely giving and freely receiving the life-force energy that we are.
As a friend reminded me the other day, all language is metaphor. Then he left me with these words which sums it up quite well -- May the MetaPhorce be with you!
I follow the language of your metaphor, and it helps me to understand better than any previoius language. I have a new connotation for 'worship,' closer to imitation, emulation, co-habitation than to idolatry, but not quite, is it. I'm still fumbling at the threshold. Translating language and understanding into action, must be a key. I don't think simply turning the knob will open this door.
ReplyDeleteI agree. When we are the knob, the door, the turning, and the turner, all is wide open.
ReplyDeleteGod bless you. I too believe that God is bigger than any language that we can use to describe Him with. He encompasses all and none can encompass Him. I also believe that no one's theology is totally correct other than God's theology of Himself.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that God has revealed Himself to us through the Bible and the verse you referenced is an excellent revelation of God.
The verse states that there is a thing called truth and we must worship in truth. True worship is assigning a correct "worth" to an object or person. When we "worship" God we are saying He is "worthy" of our highest esteem.
The Bible also says that to suppress the truth is wrong.
Romans 1:18 "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,"
So it is important for us to assign worth, that is direct our worship, to the being that has the most worth. Anything else would be a suppression of the truth.
My prayer for us both this morning is that we would worship in spirit and truth and that God would reveal Himself more fully to each of us.
God bless you and have a nice day!!
Thank you, Rich.
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