God is pleased when our worship is accurate. People often
say, “I like to think of God as... ,” and then they share their idea
of the kind of God they would like to worship. But we cannot just
create our own comfortable or politically correct image of God
and worship it. That is idolatry.
Worship must be based on the truth of Scripture, not our
opinions about God. Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “True
worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are
the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”^2
To “worship in truth” means to worship God as he is truly
revealed in the Bible.
God is pleased when our worship is authentic.When Jesus
said you must “worship in spirit,” he wasn’t referring to the Holy
Spirit, but to yourspirit. Made in
God’s image, you are a spirit that
resides in a body, and God designed
your spirit to communicate with
him. Worship is your spirit
responding to God’s Spirit.
When Jesus said, “Love God with
all your heart and soul”he meant
that worship must be genuine and
heartfelt. It is not just a matter of saying the right words; you
must mean what you say. Heartless praise is not praise at all! It is
worthless, an insult to God.
When we worship, God looks past our words to see the attitude
of our hearts. The Bible says, “Man looks at the outward
appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”^3
Since worship involves delighting in God, it engages your
emotions. God gave you emotions so you could worship him with
deep feeling—but those emotions must be genuine, not faked.
God hates hypocrisy. He doesn’t want showmanship or pretense
or phoniness in worship. He wants your honest, real love. We can
worship God imperfectly, but we cannot worship him insincerely.
PURPOSE #1: You Were Planned for God’s Pleasure 101
God-pleasing worship is
deeply emotional and deeply
doctrinal. We use both our
hearts and our heads.