Did I want to go? Not really, I'm sure I would have rather gone surfing or playing basketball with my friends. But I went to church because I was a child and as a child I was subject to my parents, (Though these days even this simple rule of life is eroding away). The first memories of church were on Saturday mornings. My parents were Seventh Day Adventists and so this is the first place as a child that I learnt about God.
It was also the first place from his childhood my father learnt about God, as his family were also of the same denomination. Then one day my father started attending another church on a Sunday and no longer coming along with my mother and us children to church on Saturday. We soon followed in his footsteps and although I was very young at the time I can still remember walking away from our last service in that place.
What happened? Apparently a friend of my father looked different one day, he had a joy and a glow on his face not noticed before. He had been filled with the Holy Spirit. My father wanted the same, so they prayed and he got it. He experienced God in a way that couldn't be taught, but only experienced. After a short time he felt like the place he had always worshipped no longer satisfied or understood his need to worship God.
He needed to worship, but no longer in the only way he had grown up knowing. He desired to worship in the Spirit he had received and the truth he believed. So he moved on. My next memories are of sitting in a Pentecostal church being bored during worship. I didn't enjoy it, which I am sure didn't always impress my parents, as my father was the worship leader! I grudgingly endured the songs until my father came back to his seat drenched in sweat and needing a new shirt after worshipping God with all his might.
I didn't sing in church, I didn't even like to stand, I believed as my parents believed, and I am sure I would have grown older worshipping as they worshipped, but there was something about the way they worshipped that I couldn't imitate. At night I could hear worship playing and many times I would wake up before dawn and catch my father worshipping, praying and reading the bible. Church on Sunday was twice a day, once in the morning and once at night.
I would bring a blanket to sleep while my parents worshipped. But I couldn't. Worship was all around me, yet completely foreign to me. I didn't get it. I could play video games for two hours no problem, but pray for two minutes? No. I remember as a child rarely saying the name Jesus. I knew it was powerful, I knew it was holy and I heard it all the time, yet it felt unfamiliar to me.
One night I got it
Then one night I got it. I experienced the Holy Spirit, God became more real to me in five minutes than I had known him to be in my fourteen years on this earth. My desires changed. Something in me needed attending to, something needed to be fed, and it wasn't teenage hormones. It was the Spirit inside of me, the Holy Spirit. I couldn't sleep without first reading God's word.
I wanted to pray and fellowship with God and with others who felt the same. I even started to stand in worship during church! And open my mouth! And let words come out. This was when singing in church wasn't so cool yet. People could see you back then, as the inside of church wasn't painted black all over and congregations didn't stand in the dark while the light show was blazing up on stage.
Was it the church I attended that enabled me to worship? No, it was the Spirit of God. It was the truth I now knew. The Father was looking for worshippers. In the gospel of John chapter 4 we see Jesus stopping in Samaria as he journeyed from one place to another, he wasn't going to Samaria for any particular reason, He simply needed to pass through on his way to the next town.
Along the way Jesus became tired and thirsty and stopped by a well where he knew he could get a drink, yet he had nothing to draw with. So Jesus waited. A woman then came and Jesus asked her for a drink. She was confused as to why He would ask her, as Jews in their pride would not drink from the vessel of a Samaritan, let alone a Samaritan woman.
Jesus then begins to tell the woman about a better drinking place than the one they sat by, one with pure life giving water, one from which if you drink you will never thirst again. You see natural water can only temporarily quench our thirst, But Jesus had a fountain inside of him that was the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God is the Spirit of truth.
This lady worshipped on the mountain of her fathers and the Jews worshipped in Jerusalem. So worship was going on all around wherever Jesus went, yet just as Jesus was sitting by a well of water with no way to drink, so too the Spirit of God in Him was surrounded by worship yet none of it was satisfying the Father.
In the midst of worship God was looking for true worship. Not the worship associated with a physical place or special day. But true worship, for as the scripture says, "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 4 verse 24).
Not her parents Well
That day someone discovered a new place to draw water, it wasn't the well of her father and mother, but a fountain of life and truth. A new place of worship was revealed, not on their mountain, nor even in Jerusalem, just as today it isn't in any particular denomination or church.
Rather it is in the Spirit of God. It is in the truth revealed by those who have His Spirit. God needs true worship and we can't give him the glory he requires unless we have received the same Spirit that was in His son Jesus Christ. In fact God's Spirit in Christ was so thirsty for worship that His need to impart truth to the woman became greater than Jesus' natural thirst.
Even when the disciples returned with food Jesus was no longer hungry. Why? God was in Christ and his greatest need was now satisfied, he had established a fountain of worship in a place that had for centuries had an incorrect approach to God. He had told someone the truth, and she would now tell others the truth. God was going to receive worshippers who worship because God gave them truth and they had an experience with a man who had God's Spirit.
How do I know I have God's Spirit? Because I have a need that nothing on earth can satisfy, The need to worship God in Spirit and truth. I don't worship because my father worshipped. I don't attend church because that's what I did growing up. I worship because I received truth.
My testimony
I worship because I have tasted something that gives me life. I had a dream recently where my father-in-law sang a worship song over me and then proclaimed, "Those who have the Spirit of the Lord are the temple of God!" God is looking for worshippers, not Jews or Gentiles or Catholics or Evangelicals or Pentecostals, but those who have The Spirit of his Son Jesus.
This is my testimony, my experience, my truth, and my drinking fountain. My question is obviously, "Are you thirsty?" Maybe you have been sitting in the church and drawing nothing from it. Ask God for his Holy Spirit, and he will send someone who can give you a drink of living water. If you ask, God will send them, for the Father is always looking for worshippers.
Jesus didn't stop by the well because he was thirsty. He stopped to make a worshipper. May He stop by your well also.
Joshua Robbie is from the Gold Coast Australia where he runs a painting and decorating business. He recently started a church fellowship with his wife Rene' in Currumbin Queensland. Though he has many interests, including basketball and surfing, he with Rene' have determined to give themselves in service to the kingdom of God in all aspects of life. .…....
Josh Robbie's previous articles may be viewed at www.pressserviceinternational.org/josh-robbie.html