Worship in Spirit……Truth

“But He said to them, Excellently and truly [so that there will be no room for blame] did Isaiah prophesy of you, the pretenders and hypocrites, as it stands written: These people [constantly] honor Me with their lips, but their hearts hold off and are far distant from Me.”    Mark 7:6 AMP

The apostle Paul, before his encounter with Christ had a religious spirit.  He practiced the most rigorous form of religion, held to the law to the highest degree, and lived according to appearances the most perfected life possible among religious leaders.

He wrote in Phil. 3:4-6: “though I have good reason to have this kind of confidence. If anyone else has reason to put their confidence in physical advantages, I have even more:

I was circumcised on the eighth day.

I am from the people of Israel and the tribe of Benjamin.

I am a Hebrew of the Hebrews.

With respect to observing the Law, I’m a Pharisee.

With respect to devotion to the faith, I harassed the church.

With respect to righteousness under the Law, I’m blameless.”  (CEB)

Yet, he had nothing worth eternity until he met Jesus: “We are the circumcision. We are the ones who serve by God’s Spirit and who boast in Christ Jesus.  We don’t put our confidence in rituals performed on the body…”  (Phil. 3:3 CEB).

We need to ask God to expose any religious spirit in us and in our churches and replace it with true worship led by the Spirit of God.

A Religious spirit will keep you from authentic worship and lead you to think you are really doing well, perhaps that you are better than others.  It may even make you believe that you are a better worshipper, more superior to others.

A religious spirit imitates worship without the encounter with God.

It possesses the form of godliness without the power of God.

Worthless worship occurs when we prefer tradition to God Himself.

Tradition is where a church or group of God’s people has institutionalized a behavior or way of doing things.

Tradition is when we make sacred what is man- made.

It is like, when we are more concerned about how things look rather than how God looks at things.

Time honored traditions can squeeze the life out of worship by demanding that we do things that we don’t even know why we are doing them.

We all have a religious spirit to some degree.  We have what we like and are unhappy or uncomfortable when it changes.

Our worship is worthless when we honor God with our lips and not our hearts.

We also bless God with lips but not with our hearts when we memorize our responses to God instead of actually responding to Him.

Don’t think that you are immune from this happening to you.

“God is spirit, and it is necessary to worship God in spirit and truth.”  John 4:24 CE