When the sermon is not completed by Thursday evening, I spend time on Friday trying to get it into a final draft and then complete on Saturday am. All this is balanced around other demands of work, a day off on Friday and life. It is very much like how everyone else lives.
You have various demands which are important. It is hard on some days to focus on the tasks at hand. But let me ask, how do you prepare for Sunday worship?
I suggest like the preacher, each of us would have a more rich Sunday morning experience if they began by preparing before the Sunday morning alarm clock. Here are some suggestions for how you can prepare for Sunday worship....
- Begin on Thursday by praying for the worship leadership who will guide the coming service. I covet your prayer support as I try to shape the message God desires to be shared. Choir practice is on Thursday, the bulletins are printed on Thursday, perhaps a great day to ask all the congregation to lift all things worship to God.
- Let Friday be a day of prayer for your own heart to be made ready for the message of Christ to come to you in a powerful way on Sunday.
- Saturday make your specific plans to be in worship as fully present as possible. Perhaps even a great day to invite someone to come to worship with you either the next day or on Sunday to come soon.
- Sunday morning come with a heart to be open to be a welcoming soul to others, a soul ready to praise with all your heart, to hear with passion and pray as if it mattered. It does!
So today, I ask for your prayer support. I will write the sermon for this week. Let us together prepare for worship. All to the glory of God!
I love the suggestion of preparing for church starting on Thursday for the congregation. What a blessing that will be to you, to the clergy, lay leaders, choir and to all of those who make our Sunday service so special. As I reflected on the topic of prayer for this week, I thought of the many ways people of other faiths pray. The practice of rote prayers and praying to saints is common in the catholic religion. Are we missing anything in our faith by not having these in our pray life in and out of church? Is their way better? Worse? It seems every religion has there own way to pray. What is so special about ours? Just questions I have pondered for sometime.
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