TRANSFORMATIONAL EXPERIENCE OF A NON-BELIEVER

Text: John 4:24                                                                             God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. 


Today you will observe with dismay how some people counterfeit the true worship of God in the name of religion. The reason for this phenomenon is not farfetched. They worship in the flesh and not in the spirit. This is the reason Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:5b that:
“Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” 
This also was the message of Jesus Christ to the religiously minded people of His days, as well as the message of the early apostles. They played down the paraphernalia of religious practices that did not connote spiritualism. They worshipped in truth and in spirit. 

How can we put an end to carnal religiosity in our churches today? The solution is simple: we must go back to the basics of Christian teaching as outlined in Acts 2:37-38:
“Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.“
It is a pity that people do not know or have forgotten that genuine repentance is the foundation of the faith that saves. Covering up our past misdeeds without repentance is a waste of time. 

 The Holy Spirit emphasizes this truth through Apostle John in 1 John 1:6-9:
“If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”


The problem with many 21st century so-called Christian worshippers is that they no longer admit sin to be sin; they trivialize sin and regard it as unavoidable “mistakes”, hence, they neither confess it as sin nor strive to live above it with the power of the Holy Ghost. This explains the carnal worship and “plenty-rascality” in the name of Pentecostalism that we observe in some of our churches. Remember the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:19-21. These are the things we must not entangle ourselves with if we would worship God in spirit and in truth. You must be born of the Spirit and live a life of change for acceptable worship in the sight of God.                                                 

Culled from:
OPEN HEAVENS DAILY DEVOTIONAL                THEME: TRUE WORSHIP       by  Pastor E. A. Adeboye, General Overseer of The Redeemed Christian Church of God