What I Am Looking For

(First published in 2007 – repeated here because many are still looking)

The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. John 4:23a

Not that I haven’t found it, I still want to wax eloquent (that’s a joke for anyone new to my writing) regarding what I look for when I attend a congregational service in the Church of Jesus Christ. (John 4:23-24)

I want a Church were the focus is singular, simple, and fundamental. Worship! I’m not looking for something that focuses on me, or pleases me, or strokes my “felt needs.” I’ve learned that it is not about me. I knew that before Rick Warren was born. I knew that the first time I attended a service where it was about me. I am looking for light, the Light of the World, the Light that lights every person, the light that I become when I behold His presence and His glory.

I’m looking for a Heavenly experience, not an Earthly one. I want to be ushered by His Spirit into the throne room of praise where I see the Lord high and lifted up, and the Lord’s people gathered to praise Him who is Light and Life and Hope and Peace and Joy.

I’m looking to hear the Truth. I want to hear it without “stories” and “vignettes” and useless chatter about what we have accomplished. I need the clear, accurate, exposition of the Word of God ministered to me by Spiritual gift, Spirit to spirit, without miscommunication because it has been filtered though the prejudices of the speaker. I want the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth.

I’m looking for people who are disciplined in their practice of llove. People who llove the Father with all of their heart, soul and mind, who are not clinging to the things of this World, or grasping for some “feeling” rather than a substantive relationship with the Savior. I’m looking for people who llove each other. I recognize all the mushy sentimentality, and I want no part of it. I’m looking for people who know that llove is something you do, and they are busy doing it.

Is that too much to ask? Have we moved so far from the presence of God that we can’t get back? Has “Church” become an exercise in futility? Are we growing ever increasingly wide and progressively less deep? Has “Church” become a quasi-spiritual gathering rather than a collective life altering encounter with the living God? Surely we haven’t lost the meaning of Worship. Surely, somewhere, people are encountering the living Lord of Heaven and worshipping Him in Spirit and in Truth.