Barbie Loflin

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John 4:21-26 Jesus declared, Believe me woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet 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. God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.

I have been pondering worship…

What actually sent me on this journey was a dream (I know, big shock) that brought a quickening revelation to my own heart. For, while I have found my place at His feet for years, I have struggled to explain to people with any type of clarity or accuracy, what worship really means in my life. But the Lord crystallized the heart of a true worshiper for me in one simple yet profound moment.

In the dream I stood on the side of a dusty road that led into Jerusalem. I stood with a crowd of people and they were waiting on something (or someone). They all watched and waited with agitated expectancy, peering down the road and trying to position themselves to see further. Then, from a short distance away I could hear the crowd begin to cheer. It was like the roar of a small wave moving in our direction. The words became clearer as they rolled in, “Hosanna!,” they cried in their excitement, “Hosanna!” I realized that I was standing with the crowd as Jesus made His triumphal entry. The shouts continued and rose as the crowd became more jubilant, and many threw their robes and cloaks in the road before Jesus… palm branches waving in homage. They shouted in joy, shouted out of emotion, shouted in group camaraderie, shouted as moved by the circumstances, and shouted at His presence.

Yes, the service was in full motion…

Then I heard her. I heard something other. Something that pierced through the rest. It was verdantly sweet and resonated in a way that made it distinct and precious among the multiplying noise. It possessed a quality, a tone, a knowing, unlike any of the others. Though her words were the same, she sang a different song. It was a singular voice crying out, drenched with tears, and bathed in deep and sorrowful joy. I watched as this woman threw her cloak at His feet. “Hosanna!” She cried. And her cries rent the atmosphere. “Hosanna!” Her tears wet the earth, each one reverberating beneath my feet, and all I could do was gasp for breath.

And then the dream shifted from the crowd into the very content of her heart. I saw her story… In the depths of the spirit of this woman lay a story, a story of being dragged into the street in her shame and degradation and being forced to stand before the angry, the judging, the religious and pious, who weighed her in the scales and found her wanting. I saw within her heart a story of stones aimed and ready to be released… and then I saw those eyes. Eyes that looked at her with kindness. Eyes that saw her; not what she had done. I saw within her, all that had touched her ears: the anger, the disgust, the names, the threats, the ridicule, the distaste, the condescension, the insults… all repeating what she already believed about herself. Expecting to feel the first stone strike, she heard instead His voice… let the sinless throw the first stone…, and then the pounding of stones dropping at the feet of her accusers. “Woman where are your accusers?” “Lord, I have none…” “Neither do I condemn you…” and in that moment worship was born in the heart of one who knew.

And now, I stood beside her understanding why her “Hosanna” was different, why it rang above all of the rest. It came from a heart that had absolutely found its Truth; a heart that resounded with everything she now knew about herself and the Lover of her Soul. She did not cry out because everyone else cried out. She did not shout out of emotion or prompted by habit. She did nothing our of the shallows or because it was what she had been taught to do. She cried out from a place of life-altering personal revelation. Her worship was a deep honoring and reverencing of His work in her life. Her worship told her story… and His story. She worshiped from a spirit that acknowledged her Truth… He loved her. He covered her. He had become everything to her. She worshiped Him completely.

Then I heard a little boys voice, it rang with the same truth. His heart relived a time of being thrown into the fire by demons, of seizures and fear, then the voice of a man saying, “I will…” His truth was a life of possession now given way to a life of freedom. His hosanna rang true. He worshiped in spirit and in truth.

What they offered was TEHILLAH – A spontaneous new song. A song that abides in your heart that only you can give words to. It is a song offered straight to God. She tehillahed God, and Tehillah is the praise that God inhabits. It is your heart song. Tehillah is praise offered from your deepest level of recognized truth, and in that place, God takes up residence.

Only when our worship becomes deeply honest can we enter into the “spirit and truth” that God desires. When we can begin to sing a spontaneous song from a place inside of us that knows, that really knows, then we shift from being a house that has a lot of good singers and talented musicians, and even anointed gifts, to a house that He inhabits. Because if the praise that He inhabits is Tehillah praise (the praise that enthrones Him is our personal, spontaneous, spirit birthed song), then when we get to that place of honesty within ourselves, that pristine acknowledgment of God from our depths, He inhabits. And in that, we become like the woman on the side of the road, whose sound was different from all of the rest.

Oh Guys, do you understand that when spirit marries truth, the offspring is a new song… the child is Tehillah worship.

Can I tell you something else? You can have great passion and no truth. You can sing louder, run faster, jump higher, shout most radically, run the aisles and never get honest. Passion does not equal true worship. You see, Jesus told the woman at the well that a day was coming when it did not matter where you worshiped, but then the intimation of the next sentence often gets brushed past. He said, “You Samaritans worship what you do not know… we worship what we know… for Salvation is from the Jews.” In other words, the day is coming when you too will enter into a place of worshiping because you know the truth, and when that happens, it is not going to matter where you are. When you worship because you really know… you now enter into the land of spirit AND truth. We are not talking about praise here. We are talking about the sound of a testimony. The sound of awakening on levels we’ve never touched or heard before… the singing of the soul.

Friends, praise can issue from a feeling, an emotion, a delight, a stirring, an experience, but worship must flow from truth. What I want to propose to you and offer up for your consideration, is that the missing element of our worship is truth. It is the element that takes us from being a good church to a kingdom mover. It is the element that changes everything. Across the land there are churches built upon and steeped in worship arts. Dynamic sounds issue from the houses; singers unparalleled in gifts, musicians unequaled. The call has gone out and dancers have struck their rhythm. Praise pounds through the atmosphere, and could we be a listener above the earth on a Sunday morning, we would hear a chorus, a symphony of exaltation lifting from this blue orb. Still, while we have pushed and pressed our way into the sound of heaven, there is a note missing a tone we long for that would cause all to ring and resound. It is that tone, that ring, which will shift us from one level of offering to the next. I believe that sound is Truth. Honest worship.

For so many years we have danced upon the “in spirit” part of this instruction. We, as good Pentecostals, know how to move in the spirit… or at least we think we do. Nobody gets into the spirit like a charismatic (in our opinion – oops! sarcasm). Ah, yes, we know about the spirit. We can get into the spirit; the spirit of the experience, the spirit of joy, the spirit of anticipation, the spirit of expectation. We can work up a great spiritual praise experience. But in order for it to pass the point of praise and enter into clearly delineated worship, deep and profound truth must be added to the equation. And truth requires some transparency we prefer to dance ourselves out of.

You see, while your praise may speak to your level of involvement, your worship speaks to the level of true revelation in your life. It speaks to what you know about Him. Your worship tells your story. It is your testimony fleshed out… for better or for worse. You can praise Him. You can sing. You can dance. You can shout. You can enjoy. You can be saved. You can be a good Christian. You can be a Pastor, teacher, missionary, praise leader, and effective witness. You can be many good things without deep revelation, but you will never be a true worshiper until you can worship Him in Spirit and Truth. Everything about someone entering into true worship testifies… it acknowledges, it awakens, it pierces, it penetrates. True worship is resonant and resident. True worship has a story. True worship has a dance. True worship has a scent, a tone, a fragrance… a voice unlike any other. Worship is birthed in your life when your God becomes very real to you; when you finally get the hugeness of what He has done in and for you, and begin to understand how undeserving you are of that goodness. Only revelation can birth that in your life.

And when you know… I mean really know…

Your soul sings.