Prepare Ourselves For Worship
So my great uncle Mark is an amazing guy. I'm not quite sure of his age, but I would guess he is about 90 years old, but to meet him you would not think so. He and his wife Betty are constantly moving about, visiting, and keeping in touch with the family... and when I say family I mean extended. They showed us pictures and its quite clear the breadth of the Moyer influence.
One of the things Uncle Mark does is send out a daily e-mail "newsletter". This newsletter contains the happenings of the family, prayer requests, etc. I tried to turn him on to blogging, but I think he may be plenty happy with the e-mail newsletter. Either way I enjoy just passively reading what's happening in their lives. Making strawberry pies from the strawberry harvest, visiting with Tim who has cancer, talking to family on the phone. But the one thing that strikes me the most is there is a consistent thread throughout some of these e-mail and the the following words are typed...
"Prepare Ourselves For Worship"
This phrase touched me in a way because it reveals how we should approach worship. I'm on the church worship team and I know that for worship to occur, it requires preparation. And I don't just mean practice. I mean getting in tune with God. I have played drums on Sundays when practice went great and we had everything down. Then Sunday comes and we musically fall on our face. There are even times when you play all the songs perfectly, but no worship occurs.
But there are other times when we hardly practice at all or things seem impossible. Just the other Wednesday we were practicing before Wednesday night church and Brandon said to me "Dude, this is not going to be good". He was struggling to even sing. We were having sound problems. Everyone was just rusty. But I had faith, not shallow faith, but faith in knowing. I told Brandon "God's grace will pull this off".
The fact is that you need to till up the hardened soil in your heart. You need to cry out to God. You need to be hungry. You need to seek after God like we seek after our car after a grueling hike. If your heart and mind are not in it like that... then you are not prepared for worship. In fact I believe that in some sense, you don't even need to practice your skills, you can worship God with none of that. God is sufficient for you and that lets you worship.
So Uncle Mark, I hope we can all grasp with seriousness what it means to prepare for worship. Prehaps we need to start on Saturday morning and get our heart and mind right with God. But true worship is like a good meal... it takes time, talent and attention to detail to be great.
One of the things Uncle Mark does is send out a daily e-mail "newsletter". This newsletter contains the happenings of the family, prayer requests, etc. I tried to turn him on to blogging, but I think he may be plenty happy with the e-mail newsletter. Either way I enjoy just passively reading what's happening in their lives. Making strawberry pies from the strawberry harvest, visiting with Tim who has cancer, talking to family on the phone. But the one thing that strikes me the most is there is a consistent thread throughout some of these e-mail and the the following words are typed...
"Prepare Ourselves For Worship"
This phrase touched me in a way because it reveals how we should approach worship. I'm on the church worship team and I know that for worship to occur, it requires preparation. And I don't just mean practice. I mean getting in tune with God. I have played drums on Sundays when practice went great and we had everything down. Then Sunday comes and we musically fall on our face. There are even times when you play all the songs perfectly, but no worship occurs.
But there are other times when we hardly practice at all or things seem impossible. Just the other Wednesday we were practicing before Wednesday night church and Brandon said to me "Dude, this is not going to be good". He was struggling to even sing. We were having sound problems. Everyone was just rusty. But I had faith, not shallow faith, but faith in knowing. I told Brandon "God's grace will pull this off".
The fact is that you need to till up the hardened soil in your heart. You need to cry out to God. You need to be hungry. You need to seek after God like we seek after our car after a grueling hike. If your heart and mind are not in it like that... then you are not prepared for worship. In fact I believe that in some sense, you don't even need to practice your skills, you can worship God with none of that. God is sufficient for you and that lets you worship.
So Uncle Mark, I hope we can all grasp with seriousness what it means to prepare for worship. Prehaps we need to start on Saturday morning and get our heart and mind right with God. But true worship is like a good meal... it takes time, talent and attention to detail to be great.
posted by Jason Kichline at 10:45 AM
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