Why is it so vital to worship God in both heart (spirit) and mind (truth) [reference to John 4:23-24]?  Answer: so that we can avoid the lethal dangers of idolatry and hypocrisy.

The Danger of Hypocrisy: worshiping in mind, but not in heart
If we think rightly about God, having all our doctrinal ducks in a row, but fail to respond to God with the appropriate passion, we are in danger of hypocrisy.  We honor God with our minds and our lips, giving the appearance of true Christianity, but in reality we love other things and feel nothing towards God. We hoot-n-holler when the Vikings win a football game, but we feel no passion when we worship, pray, and read our bibles. Our theology of justification by faith alone is finely tuned, but in reality we are seeking to be justified by our theology (maybe even our theology of justification).  We fail to truly lean on Christ as our all-sufficiency, so we fail to experience the awesome joy of forgiveness and satisfaction in God.

The Danger of Idolatry: worshiping in heart, but not in mind
If we feel great passion towards god, but our vision of god is so skewed that he only faintly resembles the true God of the bible, we are in danger of idolatry.  In this case our false doctrines and misuse of scriptures have created a false god and given him the name “Jesus”.  Though we worship this idol named “Jesus” with great passion and zeal, we are not worshipping the Jesus of the bible at all.  We are in this case, given to idolatry.

True Christianity: worshiping God in heart and mind
At the extreme end of both of these dangers, lies a religion entirely apart from true Christianity, entirely unable to save our souls.  However, if we are honest, all of us fall into both of these ditches to some degree.  None of us feel completely as we ought towards God, and none of us think entirely accurately about God.  Yet, if we have a saving Christian faith, we do envision God in a way that resembles the God of the bible, and we feel deep love towards this God for rescuing us from our sins… though we do both of these things imperfectly.

The Cure
In seeking a cure from both hypocrisy or idolatry, we should not try to balance the scale by decreasing either our desire for understanding in devotional study or our affectionate fervor in worship.  Rather, we should seek to increase both, filling our minds with knowledge of God and seeking to have our affections kindled by Him, to the fullness!

May God continue to clarify our vision of who He is, giving us a desire to seek Him in His word.  May God also open the eyes of our heart so that we respond to Him with the fervent affection He is worthy of.  Let us seek to know God by studying His Word with devout vehemence, and let us respond to the knowledge He imparts through this meditation with red-hot passion!