Wherever We Worship

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. My name is Xochitl Dixon. I'm sharing a personal testimony in today's reading, Wherever We Worship.

My complaints soured my experience. The poor sound quality and video quality distracted me, but then a voice on the video warbled a familiar hymn. Tears flowed as I sang these words, Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart. Not be all else to me save that thou art. Thou my best thought by day or by night, waking or sleeping, thy presence my light. Focusing on the gift of God's constant presence, I worshiped him while sitting in my living room.

While scripture affirms the vital essential nature of corporate worship, God's not bound within the walls of a church building. During Jesus's chat with the Samaritan woman at the well in John chapter 4, he defied all expectations of the Messiah. Instead of condemnation, Jesus spoke truth and loved her as she stood next to that well. He revealed his intimate and sovereign knowledge of his children. Proclaiming his deity, Jesus declared that the Holy Spirit evoked true worship from the hearts of God's people, not from a specific physical location.

When we focus on who God is, what he's done, and all he's promised, we can rejoice in his constant presence as we worship him with other believers in our living rooms and everywhere. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from John chapter 4 verses 7 to 24. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, Will you give me a drink?

His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?

For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Sir, the woman said, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well and drank from it himself as did also his sons and his livestock? Jesus answered, Everyone everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.

Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. He told her, Go call your husband and come back. I have no husband, she replied. Jesus said to her, You are right when you say you have no husband.

The fact is you have had five husbands and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true. Sir, the woman said, I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem. Woman, Jesus replied, Believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the father in the spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the father seeks.

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the spirit and in truth. Let's pray. Amazing God, thank you for the gift of community and corporate worship. Please prepare our hearts to overflow with gratitude as we worship you, wherever we go, whatever the circumstances, and whenever we have an opportunity to rejoice in who you are, what you've done, and all you promised to do. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.