Good thought sheer.
It is very difficult for institutionalized believers to worship in spirit and truth when their leaders push and sucker them into a dumbed-down version of worship that requires so much physical paraphernalia and hired experts; consuming billions of $, driven by cleverly twisted truth. I used to be fully committed to these truth trumping traditions. I am so thankful God helped me to understand the simple and plain scripture that calls for 24/7- everywhere-you-are worship. My heart is sad for the saints who are angered by what I have just said about their habit patterns and mind set. I've heard so many sincere yet bogus sermons on worshiping God in "His house" so I can show Him I love Him.

Hate to sound a negative note, and I love Tozer, but this is a typically anti-Jewish interpretation of John 4. It does not fit a well-rounded profile of Jesus the Jew to suggest that he was telling the Samaritan woman: "Now we worship in ways that make old rules about diet and garments unimportant."

I'd rather you'd picked a better example to start. I have only the best wishes for you in this series.

Derek Leman

"...how hard it is to worship God in spirit." An understatement, if place side by side with Tozer's words below.

"A real Christian is an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he never seen, talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest, and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passeth knowledge."

"There is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance or death" Shakespeare said.

What life could be odder than that of the One (mathematically, number "one" is the father of all odd numbers for if added to any even numbers will produce an odd number}, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, who chose to be born in a manger, lived with the poor, and fulfilled 333 prophecies, a chance of 1 in 67 raised to the 10 power, a number so astronomical, the odd statistically approaches eternity, er, infinity.

Ah, death! The One's death is as odd as the legend of the thorn birds - the bittersweet essence is intimated in a dialogue below:

Ralph de Bricassart: There's a story...a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree...and never rests until it's found one. And then it sings...more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles.

Young Meggie Cleary: What does it mean, Father?

Ralph de Bricassart: That the best...is bought only at the cost of great pain.