Preparing your Soul to Meet with God: Part 2

Last week I wrote that the goal of Sunday morning worship is to encounter God in worship, prayer, the Word, fellowship, and service. The goal of Sunday morning worship is to commune with our Father who is in heaven, and who, by amazing grace, has saved our souls and reconciled us to himself and promised us life and peace and joy in Christ. The goal of Sunday morning worship is to overflow with thankfulness to God such that we give ourselves to the love and service of others.

Then I shared a little bit about how I prepare my soul to meet with God and his people, focusing mainly on the place of prayer in preparation. This week I would like to add to what I said by saying a word about the place of worship and the Word in preparation.

Kim and I recently rediscovered an old habit, namely, spending some time Saturday night worshiping the Lord in song. It’s amazing what this simple habit does for us: it usually causes us to dream about God and even sing to God in our dreams. It helps us to wake up in a worshipful mood so that we desire to worship God in song in the morning. And it helps prepare our hearts for corporate worship so that from the first note of the first song are hearts are engaged and warm toward him. Oh how I pray that you will discover worship as a way of preparing your hearts for worship!

Another thing that’s helpful to do is to spend some time on Saturday evening, or whenever you have time, studying and praying over the text that’s going to be preached on Sunday. This is easy to do in a church that preaches through books of the Bible because you almost never have to wonder what text we’ll be looking at next!

The reason this habit is helpful is because it warms your heart up to the Word of God so that when it’s preached on Sunday it’s more meaningful to you and you gain more depth of insight.

Whatever you do to prepare your heart for worship, I hope that you will join me in taking your preparation seriously. Our joy in Christ together will increase to the extent that we do.

Longing with you to commune with our Father,
Pastor Charlie