Worshiping God in "spirit and in truth"

John Piper puts this in words that are much easier to understand.  He says that to worship in spirit and in truth is as follows:

1.  Spirit - your spirit is genuinely enamored by the Lord and as such you worship Him with genuine excitement.  As well, the Holy Spirit can come upon you and help you in doing this because the Holy Spirit lives within you.

2.  Truth - when you worship God because you know Him, and know that He is absolutely worthy of all praise.  Your spirit worships Him with genuine excitement because you know the truth of who He is and the fact that He is so worthy!

From John Piper...

God is most glorified when I am fully satisfied in Him.  This should be an absolute focus of my worship, and my worship to God should be non-stop for my entire life.  Everything I ever do I should do to honour God and worship Him.

If my wife was to say to me, "I love you so much and I want to spend this night with you because I am so happy any time I get to be with you and share life with you"...if she was to say this to me I would be so incredibly honoured.  This is the same attitude we should have toward God in order to worship and honour Him.  Just like in this analogy, I get the honour, Brie get's the pleasure, when we worship, we get the pleasure and God get's the honour.

For this reason, if when I worship, there is no emotional response (genuine emotional satisfaction) toward God, then I haven't worshiped Him.  And this is not something you can force.  If I am truly delighting in the Lord, then that genuine emotional response will occur.


"To live is Christ, to die is gain"

In everything I do, I must do it in a way which glorifies and worships and honours the Lord.  This means that everything I do must be done with the purpose of representing the Lord well, doing my best to show just how magnificent He truly is.  I will never be able to come close to showing this, but I should always rely on the Lord and His strength to try and get as close as possible in every moment.

When I show Christ to others, that is worship.  I can show Christ by showing how he's blessed me and changed me.  I can show Christ by acting as He would have me act in each situation.  This makes sense.  Anyone is honoured when you try and be like them and emulate them.  When we strive to become more like Christ and act as He would act and have us act in each and every situation, that is worship.

Therefore, I worship the Lord when I am patient with my wife and children and treat them with nothing but love and tenderness, because this is how Christ treats me and in turn wants me to act.  I worship the Lord when I am confident in my job or on the golf course and work my hardest to be the best that I can be with the talents He has blessed me with, because that is how He would act, and have me act.  In general, I worship the Lord when I act as He would act in each situation, because I am honouring Him by obeying Him and showing Him that I understand that He is best and is ways are best.  And simply put, honour comes when you emulate someone else, and God gets worship when we try to emulate Him.