By: Joel Ramirez
I recently took a class explaining how the brain works when dealing with people who are under heavy duress. The brain is divided into two halves, the left and the right. The left side of the brain focuses more on the logical aspects as opposed to the right side of the brain that elicits the emotional response. Everything you see and every choice you make must go through both sides of your brain. When you have an emotional response, that impulse must go through the logical half of your brain to find justification. If you are working on a logical problem, it must check with the emotional half to see if there is an emotional response needed. This is how the brain is supposed to work. But, as anyone can tell you, this is not always the case. We can reprogram our brains just like a computer but unfortunately, it doesn’t always turn out the way we want. Your brain must have both sides communicating and if you try and reprogram it, like people who are constantly under stress do and try to get by on logic alone, you end up making an irrational connection which may manifest as an emotional response to something that was completely logical. The opposite is true as well when someone has a high emotional response to something that was very logical. If you look at a 2-year-old, you see them trying to program their brains and find the connections that work for their situation. Therefore, a toddler may have a complete melt down over something that makes no sense to the rest of us. To get to my point, we are the physical manifestation of intelligent design by a God who made us in His own image and when we study and worship God, we are to do it in spirit and truth much like the brain and it’s two halves. When Jesus stopped at Jacob’s well to get a drink of water, a Samaritan woman enters a discussion with Christ regarding worship. Christ tells her in John 4:23 “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.” What happens when we over emphasize on spirit? What happens when we focus only on truth? Is it even possible that we can miss what God is asking of us when it comes to how we worship Him?
We know that God requires a specific way of worshiping Him. We have the Old Testament to give us the example of how specific God was in His guidance to the Hebrews in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. This is one of the reasons the book of Hebrews is so beautiful in connecting the old to the new as it gives example after example of how the same God that spoke to Abraham is the same God that speaks to us in the New Testament. When we compare Malachi 3:6 “For I, the Lord, do not change;” to Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” we see that change never was nor is part of the plan. What has changed was the blood offerings of animals that had to be done every year in that Christ is that offering made once upon Calvary’s cross for us. “And not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who though the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”, Hebrews 9:12-14. God wanted His people to worship Him in spirit and in truth but by the time Christ came to earth we see that both had been lost. We see this in Matthew 15:8-9 when Christ quotes Isaiah for the Pharisees and scribes when he tells them “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.” The word vain used here means useless and this was their worship to God. They had taken God’s law and added their own traditions and practices, in essence, leaving the truth that God had given them and losing the spirit in which God asked for their worship. The church in Colossi faced a similar self-imposed hurdle when they began to try and add to the gospel that had been given to them. Paul tells them in Colossians 2:23 “These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and serve treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.” Paul continues with his guidance in 3:1-2 “Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.” It is important that we keep in mind what is truth. Recently I talked to a group that were evangelizing who used the argument of “you can see that there is truth in the book of Mormon.” There is truth in every religion under the sun but we are seeking the whole truth of God and we can only find it in His Word.
Paul also came across those that had a zeal for worshipping in Acts 17 when he came to the city of Athens. Paul says in verses 22-23 “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with the inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.” He follows up with verses 30-31 when he says “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” Once again, we see that truth is required of us and that we can not blindly worship God in a way that seems right to us. Likewise, our ignorance is not justification, and it is not pleasing to God for He is not glorified by accident. Once again, we find the truth by seeking the whole truth of God in His Word. New Testament worship is spiritual, and we know that we are to be spiritual beings. In Galatians 5:16-18, Paul, divinely inspired, says “walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.” Verse 25 states “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” Paul gives us the justification for what Jesus told the Samaritan woman about worshiping in Spirit. We have several examples of how this is to be applied. In I Peter 2:5, Peter tells us “you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” We see that we are building up a spiritual house in which Christ is “A PRECIOUS CORNER STONE, AND HE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED,” verse 6. Colossians 3:16-17 brings truth and spirit together when Paul tells those at Colossi “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.” Like the brain, we see that our worship must be through both halves, that of truth and that of spirit. To try and do it any other way, we are no longer pleasing God and we are creating spiritual anxiety for ourselves which puts us at enmity with God. We must work diligently to make those connections between truth and spirit so that our worship can be pleasing to God. I leave you with the words of Paul to the church of Philippi when he said “Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you. Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision; for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory of Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh,” Philippians 3:1-3.