Worshiping with the Awareness of His Presence
Edited directly from the sermon transcript of Matthew Miller’s message at Highland Hills Church of Christ on March 22, 2026. Adapted for length and readability while preserving his voice and message.
When we think about our needs, we tend to begin with basic necessities: water, food, shelter, and clothing. But another need reaches into the center of who we are and expresses itself in every time, place, and people. That need is worship.
We are made to worship. We will devote ourselves to something—a career, a cause, comfort, success, or an identity. The real question is what shapes our worship. If you remember one thing from this message, remember this: you become what you worship. Please stay with me for the rest of it, but that is the core.
When we hear “worship,” we often think of music, an experience, or a service. Scripture speaks of a deeper orientation: what receives our hearts and allegiance, and how we align our lives with the one to whom we are devoted.
That raises an important question: How does God want to be worshiped? If worship forms us, then the way we worship matters. In Acts, the early church devoted itself to the apostles’ teaching, prayer, fellowship, and the breaking of bread. They were a worshiping people, living the way of Jesus.
To understand how worship forms us, we need to hear what Jesus says. John 4 gives us a conversation between Jesus and a woman about this very subject.
Jesus leaves Judea for Galilee and travels through Samaria. For a first-century Jewish audience, that detail matters. Jews and Samaritans had deep divisions. Yet Jesus comes to Jacob’s well, weary from his journey, and asks a Samaritan woman for a drink.
To us, that may sound ordinary. A tired traveler needs water. But this conversation crosses boundaries people did not normally cross. The woman herself asks how he, a Jew, can ask her, a Samaritan woman, for a drink.
Jesus tells her that if she knew the gift of God and who was speaking, she would ask him and he would give her living water. She is confused. He has nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Is he greater than Jacob, who gave them this well?
Jesus says that whoever drinks from this well will thirst again. But the water he gives becomes a fountain springing up into everlasting life. Think back to Psalm 1: a tree planted beside streams, continually nourished, bearing fruit, its leaves not withering. Jesus offers the source of that life.
The woman asks for this water. Jesus tells her to bring her husband, and she says she has no husband. He reveals that he knows the depths of her life. He wants her to recognize that his claims have substance. He knows her more closely than she realizes.
Recognizing him as a prophet, she brings a burning question: her people worship on this mountain, while the Jews say Jerusalem is where people ought to worship. Which is right?
Jesus tells her that the hour is coming when worship of the Father will be tied to neither this mountain nor Jerusalem. He shifts her attention from location to the new reality arriving through him. Worship is about encountering God’s presence closely.
The Samaritans worshiped on Mount Gerizim; the Jews worshiped in Jerusalem. Those places had been another dividing thread between the two peoples for centuries. Jesus clears away the boundaries to reach the heart of the matter.
God’s presence is centered on a person. That helps us understand why the early church could worship in different settings. The question becomes what kind of worshipers we will become.
Jesus continues in John 4:22–24. Salvation is of the Jews, and the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
Truth matters. Worship must be shaped by God’s revelation in Scripture and by the life he has given his people. False beliefs, false ideas, and a false heart hinder worship. Our preferences alone cannot supply its foundation.
Jesus also speaks of worship arising from the inner life. This is about the devotion at the core of who we are and the one with whom we walk. Spirit without truth can lose its anchor and become absorbed in our feelings. Truth without the Spirit can become form without life. We must hold them together.
We need the life of God at the center of a people seeking him honestly and listening faithfully. Worship is one of the streams through which we encounter him, alongside prayer and time in his word.
Sometimes debates about worship become so consumed with competing preferences that we lose the heart of it. We gather before an audience of one. Our worship is directed toward God.
And notice what Jesus says in verse 23: “The Father is seeking such to worship him.” We often ask whether we are seeking God, and that is important. But here Jesus tells us what the Father is seeking: people who worship him in spirit and truth.
We ask God what he wants in our lives. Here is part of the answer. He seeks lives shaped in the direction of Jesus. Paul speaks of this in Romans 12: rather than being conformed to the world, we are transformed through the renewing of our minds. Worship involves the trajectory of our lives.
Worship forms us. We become what we worship. True worship is a life shaped by the Spirit and grounded in the truth of Jesus. That truth is accessible in his word. We can read, listen, and respond to it.
Gathering with the church is a profound step. Together we practice devotion to God. Evangelism matters because we bring people to Jesus. But what do we do when we come to him? We worship. In glory, the work of evangelism will reach its fulfillment. Worship will continue forever.
So we need to cultivate worship beyond Sunday. Gratitude, prayer, and meditation on Scripture honor God. We bring both heart and mind. If our hearts are out of alignment with him, we can turn that over to him honestly. Worshiping with the church also helps form us, because no Christian is called to be an island. This community shapes our devotion.
Think about the water wheels around which people once built their communities. The wheel did not itself grind grain, produce flour, or feed the village. But it stayed in the current. The flowing river turned the wheel, which powered the mill, which produced the flour that fed the town. If the wheel stopped turning, everything downstream was affected.
Worship is like staying in that current. We allow God’s love to flow over and through us, realigning our hearts and reordering our loves. That matters for every part of the church’s mission. What we win people with is also what we win them to.
People have enough shallowness in the world. They need a deep, abiding life in Jesus. We cultivate it by placing ourselves in that stream and allowing him to form us. We become authentic worshipers, rather than treating worship as something we watch or perform. Worship is the work of the church.
What place does worship have in your life? Years ago, while looking for areas of my spiritual life that needed to grow, I completed a spiritual growth assessment. Worship was lowest on the list. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I had been doing other things, but had given little thought to worship. It had become routine. Yet worship is formative. Worship is battle.
At the end of the conversation, the woman says she knows the Messiah is coming and will explain all things. Jesus tells her that he, the one speaking with her, is that Messiah.
If you have kept searching for something that will fill the emptiness in your life, and other answers keep coming up short, consider Jesus. The Messiah has come. He wants to reveal truth in your life and bring you to goodness and new life in him.
