I remember one sweltering summer Sunday as a young boy many years ago. It was during our family’s post-church trek to Grandy’s to pick up some after-church fried chicken, as was our custom, of course. And while meandering through the familiar neighborhoods of East Texas, we turned onto a long stretch of highway. Peering through the windshield from my seat in the rear of the car, I noticed something quite amazing and startling — in the midst of the +100° heat, there laying on the road in the far distance… an oasis. A wonderful, refreshing, albeit curious, pool of water enticing us to come closer, and practically begging us to enjoy its refreshment. It was a bizarre sight for a young boy who couldn’t even see a single cloud in the sky. My mind raced: How did that get there? And why is it in the middle of the road? Is there a water leak somewhere? Man, I can’t wait to see what this is all about.

But as we ventured closer, it slowly began to fade into the scorching and all-too-familiar asphalt that my family and I were already well acquainted with. In reality, the truth was that it wasn’t an oasis at all: it was just a mirage — an optical illusion caused by the refraction of light in heated air.

That optical illusion, a vanishing “promise” of refreshment, is a striking picture of our fallen human condition. Every single morning, as soon as our eyes first open, we are greeted with an onslaught of competing forces that are incessantly vying for the affection and allegiance of our hearts: our adversary (1 Peter 5:8), the world (1 John 2:16), and our flesh (Gal. 5:19-21). But there is also another One in this mixture: our Father who created you along with the rest of the universe, the Word of God who architected and enacted the story of your redemption back to God Himself, and the Spirit who presently persists in the transforming work of sanctification. He, the triune God, is the satisfaction of our souls, and the One who draws near to us as we draw near to Him (James 4:8).

The Object of Worship

While literally wandering in the arid, desolate Judean desert, David perfectly articulated this deep God-initiated longing in Psalm 63:1:

¹ God, you are my God; I eagerly seek you.
I thirst for you;
my body faints for you
in a land that is dry, desolate, and without water.

Notice the posture of David’s heart here. Circumstantially, he is surrounded by a less-than-desirable environment, and he is also full of legitimate and time-sensitive needs. But out of the overflow of his heart, he recognizes that the physical ache in his body is actually pointing to a much deeper ache in his soul, one that will ultimately choke out any space for situational complaining. This thirst is by divine design. God, the One who made us, has placed a holy appetite within us for Himself. As Charles Spurgeon once beautifully observed, “The Lord sets us longing and then completely satisfies us.” Our deepest cravings for fulfillment are not accidental, but a God-initiated rhythm. He sets our hearts longing so that we might seek our ultimate satisfaction in Him.

This soul-thirst, and how we seek to quench it, is the very essence of worship. Worship is not merely a peripheral action, for example, an hour-long musical event on a Sunday; it is the core orientation of our lives. We, as human beings, are inveterate worshipers, created for worship in everything we do. We will be worshiping something at all times. Theologian Harold Best speaks to this when he describes human beings as “continuous outpourers,” designating humans as incurable worshipers, constantly pouring themselves out in service to something.[1] The question is never if we are worshiping, but what we are worshiping.

The Impact of Worship

“There is an ancient phrase first coined by Prosper of Aquitaine in the fifth century: Lex orandi, Lex credendi, Lex vivendi. Translated, it simply means that the law of what is prayed is the law of what is believed, and the law of what is believed is the law of how we live. In other words, how we worship directly impacts how we believe, and our beliefs inevitably dictate how we navigate our daily lives. This is why the mirages we pursue are so spiritually dangerous. When we spend our days pouring our affections into the asphalt mirages of wealth, approval, or self-sufficiency, we are engaging in false worship, exchanging the truth of God for a lie (Rom. 1:25). Over time, our hearts are malformed by the very idols we chase, and our lives ultimately become as empty and desolate as the illusions we trusted to satisfy us. Note the warning in Psalm 115:4-8:

⁴ Their idols are silver and gold,
made by human hands.
⁵ They have mouths but cannot speak,
eyes, but cannot see.
⁶ They have ears but cannot hear,
noses, but cannot smell.
⁷ They have hands but cannot feel,
feet, but cannot walk.
They cannot make a sound with their throats.
⁸ Those who make them are just like them,
as are all who trust in them.

Conversely, when we draw near to the presence of God to drink deeply from His living water, that true worship actively shapes and recalibrates our hearts. This is precisely why our Sunday morning gatherings are so undeniably vital to our spiritual health and endurance (Heb. 10:24-25). When we come together as a church family, we never need to manufacture or ‘conjure’ up an emotional experience with God. Because our God is self-revealing and always initiates our worship (1 John 4:19), we are simply responding to who He already is. We gather collectively to be reminded of what is really real. The world outside our doors is relentlessly pushing its own mirages, but the church gathered is a weekly sanctuary from that heat, as it serves to be a necessary recalibration of what is true — a dedicated space for us to see reality clearly and learn to live faithfully in light of it (Col. 3:1-2). When we encourage and admonish one another through Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Col. 3:16), when we pray the will of God, and when we sit under and hear Word of God together, we are purposefully stepping off the sweltering highway of the world’s false promises to drink deeply from the eternal well of Living Water (John 4:14). Authentic worship, then, becomes the profound catalyst for our spiritual growth. And from that catalyst, from this authentic worship, we grow into the likeness of Jesus as we worship God.

The Measure of Maturity in Worship

And how do we know when we are growing into the likeness of Jesus? Well, I’ve always been more of a visual learner — so if you are too, picture this illustration with me:

Imagine a large triangle standing in front of you. The bottom-right corner is labeled “What I Believe About God.” The bottom-left corner is labeled “How I Actually Behave/Think.” And the peak of the triangle is labeled “Spiritual Maturity in Christ.” Now imagine those two bottom points slowly rising toward the top, drawing closer and closer together as they ascend. That narrowing gap is the key: Our maturity and development in our worship toward God is represented by the diminishing space between what we believe and how we behave. We see this in David’s own outpouring in Psalm 63:2-5 (emphasis mine):

² So I gaze on you in the sanctuary
to see your strength and your glory.

³ My lips will glorify you
because your faithful love is better than life.
⁴ So I will bless you as long as I live;
at your name, I will lift up my hands.
⁵ You satisfy me as with rich food;
my mouth will praise you with joyful lips.

So, to you, a continuous worshiper: I gently invite you to examine your own spiritual thirst as you prepare your heart to gather this coming Sunday. What shimmering mirages might you be chasing? That persistent ache, that quiet dissatisfaction — what if it isn’t something to numb with more striving, but God’s own invitation to come and drink from Him?

I think back to that little boy in the back seat, eyes glued out of that windshield, heart racing at the promise of something refreshing on the road ahead. The mirage vanished, as mirages always do. But here is the staggering news of the gospel: the Triune God does not shimmer and disappear. The Father who designed your longing, the Son who is the eternal Well of Living Water, and the Spirit who even now draws your heart to drink — He is no illusion. The Living God is more real than the ground beneath your feet.

May we gather this Sunday with that gap between belief and behavior narrowing — hearts postured in humble thankfulness, eager to respond to Him, our Triune God who sets us longing and then completely, perfectly satisfies.

In Christ,

Will