The Most Important Part of Our Faith

Emma Langford
Aug 6, 2022
6 min read

The 20th century Pastor, A.W. Tozer, is known by many for saying, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”¹ This famous first line in the book The Knowledge of the Holy is timeless and still relevant to today because it does indeed emphasize a crucial aspect of who we are: how we view and respond to God. For Christians reading this, this may seem obvious. We understand that God is the center of our lives. Perhaps we go to church every Sunday, read our bible and pray everyday. While I strongly encourage these practices, our actions can quickly become self-improvement behaviors. While our minds know the greatness and wonder of God, at the same time, our minds can be empty of worship. As a type A, perfectionist-tendencies person, I want to make sure that I am doing all the right things, but I often forget that the most important thing I could possibly do is worship God in spirit and truth. Doing the right things is not the same as worshiping God, though it can certainly help guide me there. Dear friends, when we think of God, may our minds be filled with worship.

What is Worship?

We hear/read this word so often that it is easy to misunderstand what it means. What does it mean to worship God? I love the definition provided by a pastor on The Gospel Coalition:

Worship is the response of the whole being—heart, soul, mind, strength—to beholding God’s glory. It is enabled by the Holy Spirit. (There is no worship apart from spiritual regeneration.) It is fixated on gospel truth. (We behold God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ.) It is directed by God’s self-revealing Word. (We don’t intuitively figure out what pleases God.) It involves personal and corporate expressions. (We worship in all of life as well as in church gatherings.) Human beings are hard-wired for worship. Thus, worship, of someone or something, is inevitable. But the worship that pleases God—worship that proceeds from a heart that sees and loves Him—is only possible by the saving work of the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.²

Notice the emphasis of worship is on the heart. Singing songs in church and giving praise to God in prayer and conversation should be expressions of worship from within. I don’t know about you, but I often find myself singing hymns and praying to God when my mind is in a completely different place. This is not worship. Worshipful actions that are void of a worshipful heart are empty. This is evident when Jesus tells the woman at the well, “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. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24). What does He mean by “truth”? He means worshiping the one true God - the same God who is one Being and three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The same God who sent down Jesus, who is God Himself in the flesh, to live among us and died on the cross for our sins to reconcile those who trust in Him to God. This is not Buddha, Allah, the earth, or any false god by another name.

What does Jesus mean by worshiping God “in spirit”? This means that our worship is coming from our hearts, or from our spirit within. It is a true expression of love and joy in God. Have you ever been so excited for something to happen that it almost bubbles in your throat until you can’t help but tell someone, or perhaps even just laugh or cry with joy? Have you ever loved someone so dearly that you cannot stop yourself from saying, “I love you”? In the same way, the worship that we express to God is indeed that - an expression of our joy in God that first takes place in our hearts. More than any other book in the Bible, the Psalms show this expression of worship for God:

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!” (Psalm 103:1)
“The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.” (Psalm 28:7)
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises!” (Psalm 98:4)

Singing, praising, even shouting, are some of the ways that the Psalmist externally worships God. But this is an expression that is more than simply an emotion. We do not worship God just because we can. It is an expression of love and joy in God rooted in the truth of who He is and what He has done for us.

Barriers to Worship

Of course, there are times when we really do not feel like worshiping God. Or, perhaps we desire to desire God, but our heart is just not in it - what Christians often refer to as a “dry season” in their faith. Sometimes we don’t feel like worshiping God because our mind is elsewhere, whether it is being anxious about the future (Matthew 6:34), having our minds fixed on things of the world like money or clothes rather than God (1 John 2:15-16), or maybe our minds are to set on ourselves and how we appear to others spiritually, materially, physically, that our worship is not about God at all (Galatians 1:10). Before we give into thinking that our emotions are simply out of control and that is why we feel distant from God, scripture encourages self-examination to find why we feel distant from Him. I can become so fixed on whether or not I am doing the right behaviors that I forget the whole reason these things matter: to worship God. When we find ourselves struggling to worship God in spirit and truth - not to be seen as righteous by others but simply to delight in God and praise Him - being honest with God in prayer and asking for His help is the best way to set our minds and hearts in the right place. Battling to fill our hearts with worship is often a long process, usually involving continued repentance of sin as we slip and go to God and the scriptures again and again for strength and restoration. But we must not give into the idea that our faith is all about what we do rather than who God is in our hearts.

Why Worship is the Center of Our Faith

While growing in our faith is certainly important, the essential part of our faith is worship. I know that for me, I can get so caught up in reading the right Christian books and serving at church that I easily forget why I got to church every Sunday, serve the church, read the Bible, pray, take communion, and worship in song and praise. Scripture says that now that we are dead to sin and alive in Christ, we are cleansed from our sin forever and adopted as a child of God (John 11:25). But what is often overlooked is that because our hearts have been changed to align with God, we are free to worship God in spirit and in truth. Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment” (Matthew 22:37-38). The greatest commandment, the most important part of our faith, is loving God with all of our being. Yet, we cannot worship what we do not love. As the apostle Paul says, faith without love, especially a true love for God, is nothing:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

Because God loved us first, we are able to love Him through His Son. What we do for God is acting out the love that we already have for Him. It is important to ask ourselves, then: Is our worship merely external? Or is it out of love for Him - in spirit and in truth?

The End Goal of Our Faith

Worship itself is a manifestation of the intertwining of love and deep, humbling reverence, or what the Bible often calls “fearing God.” What comes to our minds when we think of God should be worship: love and reverence based on who He is and what He has done for us. The end goal of our faith is not to show God all of the things we have done for Him. We are called to live in self-forgetfulness. We are called to remember that it is not about proving ourselves to Him or to the world but about giving Him all the glory (Psalm 115:1). When the final day comes and we stand before God, His true children will cry out in heaven, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” (Revelations 5:13).