God Seeks Worshippers Today
David W Palmer
God Desires True Worshippers; They Will Serve Him Truly
Jesus has achieved immeasurable benefits for us through his death, resurrection, teaching, and exemplary life. Moreover, through his ongoing ministries, he is guaranteeing the availability of all he achieved for those who put their entire trust in God; and he gives it all to us freely.
(Hebrews 7:22 AMP) … Jesus has become the certain guarantee of a better covenant [a more excellent and more advantageous agreement; one that will never be replaced or annulled].
However, Jesus has some expectations of us as well. He expects us to receive his new birth and the baptism of the Holy Spirit; he also expects us to pray, to love one another, and to look after the poor, etc. In the following passage, we see another of his expectations that he hopes we will fulfill:
(John 4:20–24 NKJV) “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.”
God seeks worshippers, and Jesus wants us to fulfill that expectation. However, if we look at the first time Jesus mentions worship, we see that there is some warfare around this expectation:
(Matthew 4:9–10 NKJV) “And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.” {10} Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.’”
From this, we see that much spiritual warfare centres around the fact that not only God seeks worshippers, but that Satan does too. This is borne out in the book of Revelation, where we see the end time war for worshippers played out—forcefully:
(Revelation 13:15 NKJV) “He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed.”
This obvious war for worshippers makes our choice clear: we either obey Jesus’s expectation that we worship the Father in spirit and in truth, or we cower to the devil’s intimidating manipulation to worship him.
On one hand, we have the choice of worshipping God, serving him only. This may endanger our temporal lives, but will ultimately lead to eternal worship of God in heaven. One the other hand, worshipping the devil and serving him and his worldly system will lead to eternity in hell. The choice is ours and the choice is clear; we pray for God’s grace to be his eternal worshippers in spirit and in truth.
What about you? Will you willingly throw yourself wholeheartedly into Jesus’s expectation that we worship Father in spirit and truth? If so, not only are you fulfilling what Father seeks, you are also fulfilling, “and Him only you shall serve.” Yes, the one we worship—in spirit and truth—is also the one we will ultimately serve. If we invest time into actively coming to God, gazing into his face, and listening to him, we will see, perceive, hear, and know the works he has called us to walk in; and the grace we need to do them will be imparted to us at the same time. In other words, we will serve him—first with our spirits, then in the natural realm.
(Romans 1:9 NKJV) “For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son …”
(Matthew 4:10–11 NET) Then Jesus said to him, “Go away, Satan! For it is written: ‘You are to worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’” {11} Then the devil left him, and angels came and began ministering to his needs.
