Over 2000 years ago, Lord Jesus spoke to a woman at a well and explained to her that a “time is coming” when people will “worship in the spirit” and this is the worship that our Father wants from us. (John 4:23) What do these words mean to you? What does it mean to you to “worship in the spirit”?
These words mean a huge amount to me for many reasons. In 2002 having been a Christian and a self appointed disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ for seven years, God spoke to me when I was praying before going to church on a Sunday morning and the words He said shocked me to my core. He said “I don’t want you to go to church any more. I will show you my church. My church has no walls and is where two or more are gathered in the name of my Son”.
At that time I was not some huge biblical scholar, searching the Gospels and Scriptures every day. I loved the Holy Bible with a passion as reading the Gospels for the first time after becoming a Christian changed my life forever, but I would not have described myself then as someone who could quote bible verses and say exactly where they came from. I can say that I now can do this with more ease but every day I learn more and more. The more I learn the more I want to learn more!
However I had made some very exciting discoveries from the time I said the “prayer of repentance”, asked for forgiveness from the most High God and gave my life to serve Him through Lord Jesus! When I saw from the words of Lord Jesus that He is “the WAY” to our Father in heaven I was amazed. I had traveled a long, hard and tough road through the ‘new age’ movement getting only to dead ends and beyond this had a feeling I was going towards death itself.
Many Christians who have been brought up in a ‘Christian’ home do not realise that the devil and demons are real and they have little or no idea of the danger this fact poses to their lives. I have met so many who are what I would describe as “church goers”, and not necessarily true seekers of our Father, through Lord Jesus. I know this from the “fruit” that I have witnessed over many years of being a seeker of the TRUTH way before I became a Christian and meeting Christians who seemed to have no interest in speaking about God outside of their church!
The reason I became caught up in the ‘new age’ movement is that I could not find Lord Jesus in any church I went to, or any information about the living Lord from Christians I met. The individual Christians I met seemed to be often “dogma” sprouting people who were far from inspiring and more than this, they were mean, excluding and hardly ever spoke about God, Father, Son or Holy Spirit. There was a great “ordinariness” about the churches I went to and the Christians I met.
Lord Jesus did say that “many” would come in His name and to “watch out” as they would be “wolves in sheep’s clothing” and would “rip” us “to pieces”. This was a large part of my experience with the “so called Christians” I had met hence I turned to the new age to see if I could find “the TRUTH” that I had been searching for since I could remember! I wanted so much to know God that I went on and on trying to find what I was looking for with Indian Gurus, researching alternative medicine and different methods of healing.
I “gave up” my life to serve God one day after reading one sentence in a book in which Lord Jesus was quoted as saying that if we would “obey” God we can do what “He did and even greater things”! As I have said many times, these words from the Son of the most high God, blew my mind open. Having walked outside, looked at the sky and asked God to “tell me” what He wanted me to do for Him, I started on the greatest journey that I believe is possible for any human, to serve God, who is in the spiritual realms and bring His will to be done in the physical world.
At that time I was not a Christian! I know that this sounds strange, but I gave up my life to God because of Lord Jesus, but I did not have any interest in ever becoming a Christian. The moment I gave up my life to God, He started to speak with me. He told me very simple things to do, like cleaning, clearing old things I didn’t like away and getting rid of old “stuff” that was no longer useful.
I could go on and on about this first day as it was phenomenal and is with me forever! The day after I was jogging along a road out in the bush and God shouted to me to “STOP”. I looked around to see who had said this so loudly and there was nobody there. I looked down onto the road and there was a two metre Tiger snake coming moving silently, rapidly and in a potentially deadly distance from my bare legs!
The power of God filled my whole self and I stood watching in wonderment as I had never seen a snake in the wild. I was in awe of the way it glided effortlessly across the road. If it had bitten me I would have perhaps been dead in around four minutes. I was alone out in the bush and may not have been found for some time before it was too late!
I watched the snake move on into the Australian bush and then took off “like a rocket” to get back home and share this experience with my husband. I was “on fire”. I knew that the Almighty God had just saved my life! I ran inside, grabbed my guitar and wrote the first of what I call the “message” songs. I had never written such a song before.
It is called, “Song of the bush” and the words of the last verse include these warning lyrics, “If we don’t stop this way of living where we are taking without giving…one day there will be silence…” I had never written a song like this in my life. These words were written in August, 1988. This was the first of my “environmental” songs.
Seven years later, when my husband William and I joined the ‘Alpha’ course out of Holy Trinity Brompton in England, watching on our local minister’s TV having come from this background of the “new age”, environmental songs at that time would have and may still be considered “pagan”. We often found over the years that if we speak of “environmental”issues with Christians, they have looked at us in a blank, vacant and awkward way.
We have seen tiny glimpses though of people in different denominations over the last thirty years, who have shown interest in God’s creation being important, like one of the Popes who made the headlines of the West Australian newspapers, stating that environmental damage is a “sin”. This was a welcome surprise. It is to me so obvious, that the God who said “Let there be light” and made the earth, humans and all living creatures, would be concerned for His creation! Why wouldn’t He be?
He brought us out of the new age to meet His one and only begotten son and since starting to read the Gospels I am in awe of what Lord Jesus has taught us. When He says He is “THE WAY”, I can say I truly know He is. When I discovered that He said “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I will be in your midst”, I realised that He is the way to our Father in heaven, so to do His Father’s will on earth, all we have to do is pray together where “two or more are gathered” He comes, takes our questions straight to His Father and brings back to us His answer!
This relationship has nothing to do with any building or people. It is a relationship that is “in the spirit” as God is in the spiritual realms! So simple.
Can you imagine that Lord Jesus is telling all of us to “get real” and “get GOD” for ourselves. Each one of us individual humans has been made in the image of God. God wants us to talk with Him intimately as He is according to Lord Jesus our ONE and ONLY Father! He says we are not to call anyone else on earth “Father” as we only have “one Father” and this is our “Father who art in heaven”! (Matthew 23:9)
To “worship in the spirit” start speaking to our Father, Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit, as individual parts of the one God, who have different “jobs” and want to help us in different ways. We ask God the Father for His precious guidance as to what He wants us to do for Him. Lord Jesus says we will “not enter the Kingdom unless we do the will of His Father”. How can we find out what our Father’s will is for us? Ask where two or more are gathered, Lord Jesus comes, He takes our questions to our Father and brings back the answers.
Then we take the action our Father requires us to take. We must always remember though the commands of our Lord Jesus who says that a “good tree will provide GOOD fruit” and a “bad tree will provide bad fruit”. We must make sure we know the difference through asking Lord Jesus to help us. When we ask the Holy Spirit, He is our counselor and helper at all times. He has been sent as a gift to us so that as Lord Jesus says we will not be orphans when He went back to be in heaven with His Father.
If you don’t really feel like you know God well, you can start to “worship in the spirit” straight away, even by speaking to our Father, Lord Jesus or the Holy Spirit inside yourself. Start in the corner with Lord Jesus, as He is the “cornerstone”! With love through Lord Jesus, Kelly Newton-Wordsworth, Jesus Rocks My World
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