Unlocking the Heavens: Release the Supernatural Power of Your Worship Read Online Free PDF Page B

of Jacob’s Well, which long before was an altar of worship, He revealed to a woman who had come to draw her day’s water from a natural well how to find the ever-renewable resource of a heavenly well. Worship was the key.
    This woman’s life was in a mess. No amount of well water could wash her clean or satisfy her thirst for love. While Jesus knew that worship would restore and heal her devastated life, she could not understand at first. He needed to talk about true worship. The problem was this woman’s concept of worship had been skewed by the deep-seated cultural hatred between the Jews and her people. In order to position her to receive all of what He wanted to show her, Jesus first had to explain three common fallacies about worship.
    FALLACY NUMBER ONE: YOU MUST WORSHIP IN THE RIGHT PLACE
    The Samaritan woman said, “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship” (John 4:20). She was making the same mistaken assumption that many church people do today—that worship must occur in a certain place, or that worship is something that happens only on Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, and Wednesday nights. We Christians have erected great shrines to mark our places of worship.
    In reality, worship transcends place. In fact, it has little to do with a place, but everything to do with a Person. You could even say that assigning worship only to a particular place is a form of idolatry.
    The human race has a tendency toward idolatry, but sometimes it is hard to see. For example, consider the idolatry that Hezekiah opposed. (See 2 Kings 18.) As one of the righteous kings who came after King David, Hezekiah had his work cut out for him. He became king at twenty-five years of age, and his first act as king was very unusual. Did he erect a monument to his father or try to improve the economy? No. His first act as king was to reestablish true worship in Israel.
    Second Kings 18:1-8 records the following things King Hezekiah did to refocus the people in true worship:
    He removed high places.
    He broke the images.
    He cut down the groves.
    He broke in pieces the brazen serpent of Moses.
    The people at this time were steeped in idol worship, and yet it is interesting to note that some of the things Hezekiah destroyed were
not
dedicated to idols, but rather to the worship of God. The brazen serpent of Moses had been fashioned according to the instruction of God for the healing of the people of Israel after they were bitten by serpents (see Numbers 21). This was a God-ordained, sacred object, so why would he destroy it? For the simple reason that the people had made it into an idol. They had started offering incense to something that God had once used, but they were not really looking to God Himself. Anytime our worshipful attention gets directed toward an object, a methodology, or a place instead of God, it becomes idolatry.
    Several years ago, I was trying to help a church that was experiencing a split. The conflict had started because they were renovating the sanctuary to accommodate more growth. A certain group within the church was against the renovation project because it altered their “sacred” sanctuary. In prayer, I was rebuking the devil of division in this church when the Lord interrupted me: “This isn’t the work of the devil; this is Me.”
    I said, “Lord, I don’t understand. How can this be Your work?”
    He replied, “This group of people has made this place more important than Me. It must be destroyed or others will be swept into their idolatry. Sometimes I have to pull down and destroy so that I can build.”
    Please do not misunderstand; I strongly believe in the importance of corporate gatherings in houses of worship. I love the local church—I am a pastor! Clearly, however, we have to avoid the belief that
church
means a place, a building. We are the Lord’s body, and we carry His presence everywhere we go. True worshippers enjoy the