God knows our thoughts. He is therefore able to receive our worship. God is a spirit, and our worship of him must be in spirit and truth. So often we define our worship as what we sing, pray, or hear. God defines our worship as our thoughts of him while we sing, pray, and listen. If our worship isn’t truthfully and spiritually offered to God, it isn’t received by God. 

Jesus was speaking to the woman at the well. He had just told her, “But 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” (John 4:23). Right now, the Lord is thinking of you and seeking your thoughts of worship. How will you worship God through these words of Christ? 

Jesus was teaching the woman at the well—a woman who had felt shunned by almost everyone in her life—that God was seeking her. He wanted her thoughts to be directed toward him because those thoughts could begin to change her choices on earth. The Lord is “seeking” such people to worship him today, not for his sake, but for their own. 

Jesus told the woman at the well the truth about her life. They weren’t the words she felt good about hearing; they were the words that could help her become good. Our worship of God must be truthful. If something isn’t true, it can’t be of God. He is always and only associated with the Spirit of truth. Jesus is our living example of the priorities of God. 

God doesn’t need our worship, but we need to give it. Like the woman at the well, our honest, spiritual worship changes us. That’s why God is “seeking such people to worship him.”  

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly and you will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.