A long time ago when I was a little boy of seven or eight years of age, my cousin told me a story concerning his friend’s younger brother. According to my cousin, the little guy went to the corner store and bought a dime’s worth of candy—back when a dime bought quite a lot. Anyway, the young lad paid for his treasure with some stones he collected from his yard. Obviously, the woman who gave him the candy thought he was cute and took the stones as payment. Of course the stones had no value, but the incident is priceless.
As Jesus was speaking with the woman at Jacob’s well in chapter four of the Gospel of John, we find that he referred to something similar between us and God. Notice what he says:
“But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such the Father seeks to worship Him. (John 4:23 MRC)
He was calling into question the value of worship. Some may regard this as arrogant, that someone who is supposed to be characterized by love should desire worship. However, it is precisely because God is Love (1John 4:8, 16) that we can understand the heart of God in Jesus’ words. He told the woman that the service done at Jerusalem and that done in Mt. Gerizim in Samaria were, more or less, of about as much value to God, as those few stones in the story above were to the woman, who owned the store. It was only because she thought the little boy was cute, and that he really believed his stones had value, that she responded with the kindness that was in her power. In a similar fashion God responded to the Jews and the Samaritans.
Was God hungry that he needed all the burnt offerings offered in daily worship to him? Was he thirsty for all the animal blood that was shed in his name? Did these beasts or their blood hold any intrinsic value for God, who lived in the heavens? Obviously, God has some other kind of interest in us than the sum of our possessions. While these things do have value to us to the satisfying of our flesh, the flesh has no real value for God.
At this point, I am not speaking of sin. I am referring to our gold, what we eat and the things we possess that give our lives comfort and joy. For you and me, these things have great value, but of what value can any of it hold for God who is Spirit? This is what Jesus implied, when he spoke to the woman, about those things concerning Jerusalem and her own religious traditions.
Apart from the Spirit all our service to God and all our prayers are about us—what we desire and what we value. We dress up our prayers in God-clothes and speak of our wishes for a world of our own making. We pray for God’s will to be done, assuming his will must be exactly like what we desire.
Let me draw from a parody of a childhood superhero as though he were God. “Look up in the sky! It’s a bird—it’s a plane! No—it’s God! Able to leap off the pinnacle of the Temple in a single bound; more powerful than all our enemies—and who, disguised as Jesus of Nazareth, fights a-never-ending-battle for truth, justice and the American* way!” [*replace with your own nation or religious institution].
Isn’t that what we believe? Don’t we see God on our side? Isn’t he a god of our making? He certainly is not the God of the Bible. We fashion our world after our desires, and the world and our desires are like two logs in a fire, each feeding off the other. Take either log away and the fire in both will go out. Remember Jesus claimed his Kingdom is not of this world, so why do we try to put God into our politics? Is he supposed to be the leader of the political party we aspire to? Don’t you know—none of these things have any value to him? They are all like the little stones in the little boy’s hand. The only difference is, the little boy was cute—world politics is not.
So, what does God really value? God is Love, and Jesus is the Love of God made flesh (John 1:14). If Jesus is, indeed, building the new Temple of God (1Peter 2:5; Ephesians 2:20-22), as I claimed in a previous study, then the work, we labor to do, is the work of God and has value to him, just as his original creation had value. God is pleased in his own labor. Through his Spirit, he gives us the tools for working the work of God. Our prayers in his spiritual House are in response to the impulses of the Spirit, engaging our spirits to speak back to him his own word to us. When he speaks, it is not merely to hear his own voice. He expects a response in kind.
Genesis chapter one shows us that when God spoke kind produces kind. This tells us that, if God speaks to us, our response must be according to his will (Kind + kind) for God’s will to be brought out into this world. Is it wrong to pray for our own needs? Of course not; it is God’s pleasure to provide for our needs. He never created a world that didn’t have enough—man’s rebellion produced that kind of world. Nevertheless, Jesus told us to seek first the Kingdom of God, and the rest will be added to our accounts (Luke 12:31).
Most of us know what it is like to be in-love. It is a wonderful experience. If my beloved spoke to me about her wanting to bear a child into the world, but all I could speak about was whether or not I should get that new car or express concern over the suspicious activity of the neighbors, would I be addressing the will or need of my beloved? God loves us. He has a plan for us that exceeds our hopes and desires. If I don’t seek his will and pray for it to come to pass, will it be fleshed out in my life? How can I ever expect to enjoy that which far exceeds my hopes and desires, if I am not actively seeking, praying, for the will of God?
Kind produces kind. This present evil world has been produced through our own desires to please ourselves. Isn’t it about time we pray for the kind of Kingdom God desires for us, instead of trying to patch up an already failed project? Kind produces kind, and we need to pray for God to produce through our lives the kind of Kingdom he wants for us to enjoy. He is the Lover of our souls and desires our worship, spelled L-O-V-E, in return.
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