Worship & God’s Standards

For a time being, I’ve been trying to debate to myself whether God has a standard on how do we Worship Him. Truthfully, each individual or even every group, as I see it has their own standard of worship or perhaps their own ideal kind of worship. Just looking at other denominations, we would see others jumping up & down, lifting their hands above, and that’s how they worship. And in honesty, I respect that, but I prefer still a solemn kind of worship. Somehow I think culture & traditions change our perspective on how we worship God. And I tried to look back to God’s Word for this matter and it pointed me to the story of Jesus at the well with the Samaritan Woman.

John 4
19"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem." 21Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

Herein, we see the place of worship of the Samaritans and the Jews. The Samaritans worship on a mountain, as the Jews worship in Jerusalem. But see how Christ responds to the Samaritan Woman. Christ declared that the Jews have indeed know Who they worship and acknowledge that Salvation has been passed through the Jews and that the Samaritans do not know whom they worship. Yet, Christ said the place of worship is nevertheless will come to a point that it has no value. Reason? Because God is seeking people who worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. It’s not about the place or perhaps even the method of how we worship, but it’s our heart truthfully right with God worshiping Him through the Holy Spirit. It’s not about HOW we do it right but it’s about OUR LIFE REFLECTING WHO WE WORSHIP and our heart being RIGHT WITH GOD, then our mind should be also right affecting our actions and how we worship God. It’s a chain of cause and effect that it begins with the heart. But if the heart is not right with God, then probably one can not truthfully worship God at all. And, definitely how we act or respond in our every life situations reflects what kind of a heart we have. It would definitely be a bad picture if one who says he worships God, yet his life show God has no part in every decision he / she makes. Now the question now is, “How is our heart, our life and our relationship with the Living God?”