19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” 27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him. (John 4:19-30 – English Standard Version)
Jesus always speaks to the point. The woman questioned about the location to worship and Jesus spoke to the essence of worship. True worship is not about the location, it is about our hearts. True worshipers worship the Father in spirit and truth. There is a reason for the worshipers to worship God in spirit and truth. God Himself is in spirit and truth. This is His channel. We need to tune in to His channel in order to communicate with Him. We may sometimes find it difficult to tune in to the right channel. Imagine yourself driving and wants to listen to some relaxing music. You try to find the radio channel that is playing relaxing music. Finally, you find the right channel, but the reception is not that great in the area and you cannot hear it properly. Now, you drive to an area with better reception and start enjoying the music. Suddenly, you hear rock music. It is so loud. It is from the car next to you. You can see the driver enjoys the music very much but you get frustrated. You can hear relaxing music no more. We encounter different distractions during the process of tuning. We need to find out what are the distractions. It can be external or it can be internal. Once we find out the distraction, we would be able to find ways to deal with it. We would be able to tune in to God’s channel.
“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24)
