What time is it?

I have addressed in other articles some reasons to worship God (Why do we worship) and the differences of worship styles (Putting an end to style wars); now the obvious question is “What do we do now?” “What time is it?”.

I think once again in the subject of worship, we can find the answer in Jesus’ words, in this situation particularly in the gospel of John 4:23“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”

I’m not going to address in this article what it means to worship God in spirit and truth, since I believe you can find the answer in the articles mentioned above; but I do want to challenge you to reflect in the idea that the time to worship God in those terms is NOW.

Let’s consider first the fact that Jesus’ words took place while he was on earth (in this case while he was holding a conversation with a Samaritan women at a well in Sychar, Samaria), and that when he was declaring that the time was “now”, he was implying the day and time the conversation was taking place (the present time according to the meaning of the word in greek “nu/n”), which we may presume was probably around year 30 AC.

If we also consider the fact that as christians we believe Jesus hasn’t returned yet, and that the fulfillment of His Kingdom and spreading of the Gospel among the earth is still pending; then we can conclude that the father is still seeking for those worshipers, and therefore we are still in the time frame of NOW mentioned by Jesus.

I personally have 2 main reasons to be encourage and challenge by this verse, and to take the word NOW as my daily present and not rest in the possibility of tomorrow:

My first reason is that people are dying every single day without knowing and hearing about God’s love and God’s redemptive action of sending Jesus Christ. As I have mentioned in previous articles, through worship we narrate the whole story of love of God for humanity. By worshiping God NOW (in the terms He wants us, which implies integrity in the way we narrate the story and respond to it), people will be able to get to know, love and worship God.

My second reason is because I cannot assure myself that I will have another day tomorrow. I strongly believe that it is only God who knows when our last breath on this earth will be, and I do not want to take a chance not to worship Him now, under the false assumption that I may have a chance tomorrow. This reason it’s not based on fear of the consequences for not to worshipping God while on earth, but simply because of an honest response to the love that He has shown me.

NOW is the time to worship, and that is what pleases God.