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When Jesus said the time is here to worship in spirit and truth, he wasn't talking about music. He wasn't talking about raised hands or even church services at all. He was again talking about a Way of life. The Kingdom and the Way, both expressions of the same transformed life, is the experience of bringing the presence of God consciously into every moment of our lives. Paul called this praying continuously. A 17th century French monk, Brother Lawrence called it the "practice of the presence of God." He found God just as present among the pots and pans of his kitchen as he did in any formal worship at chapel.
This is worshipping in spirit and in truth--a way of living in which work, play, prayer, fellowship, formal worship, liturgy all become one seamless flow of connection from our heart to God's, sanctifying everything in its path and making every moment a prayer. Not a spoken prayer, but a living one.
In the church today, worship has been given a more specific and much narrower definition and connotation. We now relate worship almost solely to church services and more specifically to the singing and playing of worship music, which can create a disconnect in our worship-lives...this is prayer-worship time, this is not... But even though our formal times of worship are only a part of the whole, we believe they are vitally important as long as they lead to and call to mind the fuller meaning of worshipping in spirit and truth.
Our lives have become so noisy and busy that it is often only in the context of music that we can turn off (or drown out) the noise and distraction that makes God seem so remote. In essence, the music becomes a carrier wave on which our spirits can rest and be carried away into God's presence. Our musical worship time can then become the touchstone for what true worship is supposed to be, and the vehicle for bringing it out of the sanctuary and into the pots and pans of our moment by moment lives.
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