Creative Worship: In spirit and truth

Hi friends,

I've been slowly reading through John's Gospel this year, making a lot of notes and trying to immerse myself more in the detail of the text. As I've been reading, there are certain stories and phrases that are very familiar to me (having grown up in the church and studied the Bible for some years now) which I've been struck by afresh. One of those is the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4. Jesus says to her that "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." He had just said prior to these words that the Father is seeking such people to worship him. Despite having heard these words many times, prayed them before a Sunday service, and probably heard or even taught about this, I began to wonder what this really means.

What does it mean to worship the Father in spirit and in truth? Does the spirit refer to the Holy Spirit, so that we worship being led by him, relying on him? Or is this talking about our human spirit, encouraging us to engage every part of ourselves in worship, especially our spirit (the very essence of who we are)? Could it be both? What about truth? Is this talking about worship that is in line with the truth that God has revealed in Scripture? Or does this mean that we should worship without pretence, with complete honesty and openness toward God? Again, maybe it is both.

I know for me that I need God to help me understand what this truly means, so I thought I would journal this page in my prayer Bible, turning these verses into a prayer for God's help and guidance. At the end of the day, the only way I can worship God in the way he desires is to be taught and led by him, so that's what I'm asking for.

I used the new Garden Whimsy set on this page, stamping the butterfly and dragonfly on vellum and embossing with white, before cutting the images out. I added some colour to the back of the vellum using alcohol markers, then glued them to the page that I had painted with acrylic paints. I stamped some leaves from Texture Tiles 11 over the background to add a bit of detail, and stamped the text using a combination of Prayer Time, Lollipop Alpha and Sweet & Simple Alpha. Finally, I added a couple of pieces of wordfetti that I created using the Prayer Time set. Here are the sets I used: