We are looking at some of the things Jesus said about the subject of worship in a conversation which he had with a woman drawing water from Jacob’s well in Sychar, Samaria. The subject came up when the woman, trying to protect her immoral life style, started an argument about religion. This is still the favourite diversion when God begins to probe into our hearts. The opening question was: ‘Where’s the proper place to worship?’. “Our fathers worshipped here in Samaria. You Jews claim that the Temple in Jerusalem is the only valid place to worship.” Jesus said, the place doesn’t matter. Neither here, at the shrine of Samaria, nor even in the great Jewish Temple at Jerusalem does God insist upon. In fact the place is not the important thing at all. Both then, and now, this is a staggering revelation. So it is not the place where you worship that counts. it’s WHO you worship and how, that matters. Too much stress on the place and it can become an idol. To worship God is a corporate personal encounter. The place where God meets his people is not a geographically fixed point, but is amongst the hearts of his praising people. This is the lesson the early church took to heart at once. Thus Paul could describe, in the Letter to the Ephesians that a church at worship is made entirely of praising people wherever it is located. From Ephesians 2: 20-22:
Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
“Jesus, where ‘ere thy people meet, there they behold thy mercy seat
Where’ere they seek thee, thou are found, and every place is hallowed ground.”
A Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, who promised that where two or three people are gathered in your name, you would be there in the midst of them, help all Christians gathered for worship to be more aware of your holy presence than the place where they meet.
Now read I Corinthians Chapter 12.

Church-going is not fashionable in Britain.The strange thing is everybody has a set of opinions about worship which will pour out in conversation as soon as you turn the tap. ‘You don’t have to go to church to worship you know’, and everyone seems to nod approval at that, as if it were the whole truth. ‘I can worship God in the open air on a Sunday’, say millions of folk who are never asked ‘Yes, you can – but do you?’. ‘Well, there are too many hypocrites in church’ say millions, and thereby implying ‘of whom I am not one’. ‘Thank God I’m not like some people I could mention’, is about as valid a thought as ‘I’m an atheist, thank God’. ‘Oh I’m not so positive as that’, says another, ‘I’m an agnostic’. ‘What’s an agnostic? ‘Someone who believes that nothing can be known for sure’. When asked ‘Are you sure of that?’, there is no blush to accompany the reply ‘Course I’m sure. I need proof’.
Well, for one thing, Jesus of Nazareth said that worship is for God, not for us. It’s not what God gets out of it, but what he longs to give us, when we open up, forget about ourselves, and do what all true worship is meant to do – to enthrone God. When we do, we are connected to the main supply of living, sometimes described as ‘living water’. “… but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:14
A Prayer: As a deer pants for springs of water, so my soul longs for you, O Lord.
Now read, as one psalm of three stanzas (as it is in the original), Psalms 42 and 43, each stanza ending in ‘My Saviour and my God’.

Jeremiah was one of God’s all-time greatest servants. He was a shy, sensitive village poet: a man, who loved nature, and would have longed quietly to settle down with a nice girl, and raise a family, just minding his own business.
That was not what God had in store of Jeremiah. He was to be a prophet with a most unpalatable message. He was called to smash the cultural idols of his contemporaries, and this he did with thoroughness, and with imaginative vision. His words were sledge hammers. Nevertheless, when he comes before God in prayer, he is not soothed or stroked, encouraged and molly-coddled. He pours out his bewildered soul to his God, and even accuses God of letting him down. Like a brook which bubbles out of the ground, promising cold, clear, fresh water, only to run into the sand and disappear. The only answer he gets from God is that God will give him the moral and spiritual strength to keep going. He will be made like a wall of brass, an iron pillar – but, thank God, Jeremiah never lost his soft centre.
Read how, in Chapter 15, he dares to talk to God so openly:
Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and incurable? Will you be to me like a deceptive brook, like a spring that fails? Therefore this is what the Lord says: “If you repent, I will restore you that you may serve me; if you utter worthy, not worthless, words, you will be my spokesman. Let this people turn to you, but you must not turn to them.” Jeremiah 15: 18-19
A Prayer: Deliver us, O Lord, from all self-pity and complaining in our service for you, and grant us this day the strength to stand for what is right and true, whatever the cost. Through him who bore the cross for love of us.
A Thought for Today: “The purity of silver and gold is tested by putting them in the fire; the human heart is tested by giving them a little fame.” Eugene H. Petersen’s paraphrase of Proverbs 27:21
Now read Luke 17: 1-10 and read v.10 five times.

Picture the scene. The great prophet Jeremiah was the only one in Israel who could see that to resist the armies of Babylon was like a beetle challenging a dinosaur. ‘We can’t beat them. We must accept them for now’ was his message. He preaches to his people what, to them, was sheer treachery: ‘Surrender to the enemy? Indeed, he must be one of their spies’. So the head of the Temple Guard, a powerful man, had Jeremiah arrested and locked up in the stocks at the busiest place in the City, to be mocked, insulted, ridiculed, even called a religious maniac, a nut case, one ‘deceived by God’ – a target for his fellow citizens to hurl rotten eggs at him, and to spit in his face.
Imagine, it’s night. The crowds have all gone home. The captain of the guard is cosily tucked up in bed with his wife. Jeremiah is alone, cold, stiff and humiliated, left in the stocks all night. So he prays: ‘Lord, I’ve been a laughing stock all day – mocked by everyone because of the message you gave me to speak. Is it all a sick joke against me? Very well, I won’t say another word. I’ll keep my big mouth shut and never preach or prophesy again – ever!’
If you want to read his actual words, you have them in Jeremiah Chapter 20, the whole story, and his discovery that he could no more keep quiet than the sun can stop rising. God’s message was in his very bones, like a burning fire he could not hold in. In fact, although he had vowed in the night to keep quiet, the moment he was released …. He stood and confronted his tormentor, whose name meant ‘Prosperity all round’, saying: For this is what the Lord says: I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends; with your own eyes you will see them fall by the sword of their enemies. I will hand all Judah over to the King of Babylon, who will carry them away to Babylon or put them to the sword. Jeremiah 20:4
A Prayer: Forbid, O Lord, that any of your servants keep quiet in the presence of evil, but rather cause them to speak out such truth, as you have given them. Whatever the cost, whatever the consequences, for Christ’s sake.
Now read Jeremiah Chapter 20 but insert his prayers in between v. 2 and v.3.

Those who know me know that I love that great Old Testament servant of God, Jeremiah. He was so courageous, so sensitive, so vulnerable, so unstoppable, and O so human. And he is nowhere more human than when he prays. See him at prayer, when he has just purchased a field in his home village area of Anathoth. Knowing that the very land he felt God wanted him to buy as a prophecy of hope in Israel’s future was then occupied by the Babylonian army tents and horses. You can read his purchase, followed by his prayer, in Jeremiah 32: “Ah, Sovereign Lord, Nothing is too hard for you, and yet although the city and land will be handed over to the enemy, you tell me to buy the property ….. “. “Think of the money Lord, the money” I always want to add. But although he didn’t understand – I mean, who does? – put simply it is God telling you to throw away your hard-earned money. Well, you and I can feel the same anguish. In Chapter 10, when he is overcome by the senseless brutality of the world’s violence and self-destruction, he cries out for God to punish mindless, power-crazed armies and nations. Yet the terrors continue unchecked. But then you know how he feels, don’t you? Oh the helplessness of real faith!
Try an experiment. Spread out today’s paper, and as you skim over it, pray over, and into it. Then you will be where Jeremiah was, in Chapter 10. Intercession is the hardest work in the world, and most heart searching and heart breaking. This is from Jeremiah 10: 24-25
Correct me, Lord, but only with justice – not in your anger, lest you reduce me to nothing. Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not acknowledge you, on the peoples who do not call on your name, for they have devoured Jacob; they have devoured him completely and destroyed his homeland.
A Prayer: Lord, when Satan whispers in my ear: ‘It’s no use praying for the world to change, God never answers’, despite the agony within me, help me to pray for a lost and bleeding world, for Jesus sake. It is your world, Lord, after all. You must be heartbroken!
Now read Jeremiah Chapter 32 and in it sense the frustration of Jeremiah, but feel the heartbeat of God.

Before a million services in churches, every Sunday, there are prayers – openly asking for miracles, for conversions, for healings, for deep conviction, for spiritual power to descend on the church. By the evening of the same day, when most of those services will have passed off uneventfully, people will comment on it, perhaps saying, it’s been a ‘nice day’ (forgive us), but there is little sense of loss at having missed the many splendoured thing: no grief over our nation’s massive unbelief. In fact, a miracle or two would really upset our routine! Some attend in order to seek God’s peace, hear His promises and then go into another week still clinging to burdens which God said they may cast wholly upon Him. Again, it’s as if we love the words but do not believe them. There will be some who pray ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us’, yet will expect to receive God’s full and free forgiveness, but remain unwilling to let drop the continuing grudge, to forget that nagging insult, to forgive as they have been forgiven. There will be hundreds of thousands of sermons preached, many by people who have prepared them in great soul searching, although some will be intended just to impress the congregation.
There will be young men and girls in church, not sitting together, all looking to the front, and when not quietly giggling, totally unaware that their hormones are on mind-override, and broadcasting ‘vibes’ a little more earthy than the hymns being sung.
There will be some who come to God in humble adoration, and in gratitude for all His mercies, who long to hear His word and to respond in glad obedience and lift up their souls and hearts to Him to become more like Jesus. It is they who are the worshippers.
May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us, that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. May the people praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you. Then the land will yield its harvest, and God, our God, will bless us. God will bless us and all the ends of the earth will fear him. Psalm 67: 1-3, 6-7
A Prayer:
Lord make your people’s worship real, so that those who know that they are sinners become more saintly, and those who think they are saints realise that they are sinners.
Now read Psalm 67 as the hymn of God’s missionary people.

I have had this experience before – well, it happened again. had to go to a meeting of the Baptist Union Council , and as it meets in different locations, I was pleased that this journey was not too far from home. I left early and joined rush hour traffic as I fidgeted my way with the crawl of vehicles trying to get into the town centre. I was not sure of the route because I’d never been to this location before, so I feverishly looked for signs on the road which corresponded to the map. I got as near as I could to the venue and eventually found a parking space on the top floor of an almost filled multi-storey car park. Then there was the task of finding £5.50 in coins for the machine to ‘Pay and Display’ – then the walk across a foot bridge and towards the venue which was surrounded by tall buildings, one of which was still under construction – I was going to a building site with huge cranes heaving vast loads towards the sky. I got into the crowded meeting, still flustered: many ‘hellos’ etc., and quick words of greeting, and feeling on edge and out of kilter, the meeting began. Now I know that millions of folk do this sort of hurdle race in the ‘rush hour’ every day and my heart bleeds for them. This meeting was different however. The man at the front called us to stand and sing ‘He is lord, He is Lord. He is risen from the dead, and He is Lord’, followed by: ‘Jesus we enthrone you – we proclaim you our King. Standing here in the midst of us, we lift you up with our praise’.
Just these two songs, each sung once through, and by the time we were called to prayer before the business of the day, I had been re-focused, re-directed, re-centred. Above the traffic, the weather, the car parks, the chatting, the noise of building and the inner city, Jesus is Lord.
Amid all our frenetic busyness and self importance, there stands the eternal living Lord. I need to hear this verse every day, from Psalm 46 : v10
Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.
A Prayer: You are our refuge, and strength, O God. You are the Lord Almighty,
an ever present help in trouble. Therefore I will not fear.
Now read Mark 4: 35-41

‘Next year in Jerusalem’ – is a wish, a prayer, a resolution and a longing, spoken by millions of Jewish folk for the best part of 3,000 years. I have been at the Waiting Wall in Jerusalem during Passover, a number of times, and to this day the very place exudes an electric atmosphere. It is like the heaviness before a summer storm.
When Jesus of Nazareth was a boy of twelve years old, his parents took him with them on their annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem. At that age boys were made ‘Sons of the Temple’. After the festival, the company of friends and relations returned to Nazareth, but after going north for a whole day, they discovered that Jesus was missing. After a frantic search they turned back to Jerusalem. It took three days before they found him – and by then they were worried sick. It is a terrifying ordeal to lose a child. Normally it is even more terrifying to be a child who is lost. They finally found him in the Great Temple, listening to the nation’s wisest teachers, and asking them questions. [Oh, I wonder what he asked them - wouldn't you love to know?]
The account in Luke’s Gospel Chapter 2 tells us that everyone was amazed at his understanding and his answers. His parents were relieved and cross – ‘We have been out of our minds. Why have you done this to us? We’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ “Why”, said the boy Jesus, “Didn’t you know I’d be in my father’s house?”
Of course they didn’t understand, but as they went back the 80 odd miles north, his mother stored it, with all the other things about him, in her heart.
Today, what questions would you want to ask of the world’s wisest men?
Get wisdom, get understanding; do not forget my words or swerve from them.Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you, love her, and she will watch over you. Proverbs 4: 5-7
A Prayer: Lord, to reverence you is the beginning of all wisdom. Put into my heart a holy fear of you so that there is nothing else to fear.
Now read Luke 2: 21-52

All believers at some time go through what the Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross, immortalised as ‘the dark night of the soul’. That’s the condition in which you feel deserted by God. Alone, bereft, isolated, God has left you. You are alone in the world’s dark night. One of the pictures he painted with words was that of a loving mother who cares about her child growing up. She weans him from her breasts and all the sweet love of those early communions together has to change. He cannot remain a baby for ever. The child may feel that his fountain of love and life has dried up. Where is the blessedness he once knew? He is dry – he feels unloved – but his mother has had to cast away the swaddling clothes. She cannot forever feed him, carry him in her arms – he has to grow up. That means standing on his own feet, learning how to walk unaided. It’s all so strange and he longs to be what he can never again be a new born baby.
His relationship with his mother is not over. It’s simply changing, growing up. This means sealing up the fountains of sweet innocent intimacy which were once instantly available and for as long as he wanted them. Now advancement is not back into helplessness, but forward into a deepening relationship which walks by faith not by touch, which stands in grace and does not lie in blissful feelings, which grows up and uses its muscles, and moves with the God he cannot see and touch, in the assurance that the God who gave him birth and loved and nursed him is still God, though he no longer treats him as a baby This is from Paul’s best known work. His hymn to the love of God in I Corinthians 13. 11-12
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see a poor reflection, as in a mirror: then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part: then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
A Prayer: Blessed be God, who has done, who does, and who will ever, do all things well.
Now read Job 38: 1-18 and 42: 1-6

God answers prayer! Take that into the day with you. God hears and answers prayer. The Bible expressly tells this to the world. When people tell you it is mere coincidence, be prepared to be amazed at the number of coincidences which happen when you’ve prayed. Yet often the biggest difficulty we have is in recognising God’s answers. For as with our children, we don’t jump to their every passing whim and shifting fancy, but we do love them despite their shifting passions, and we take note of what they want, and even more notice of what they need. Well, here are the words of an unknown Confederate Soldier, cast in bronze in the lobby of the Institute of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation in the City of New York. You have heard them before – so have I, but they never fail to touch me:
“I asked for strength, that I might do great things
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked for health, that I might do greater things.
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.
I asked for riches that I might be happy.
I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men.
I was given weakness that I might feel my need of God.
I asked that in all things I might enjoy life.
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing I asked for – but everything I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am among all men, most richly blessed.”
I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live. Psalm 116: 1-2
Now read all of Psalm 116