Preparing Our Hearts for What?
Some of my thinking is changing. I guess, since none of us are perfect, we should all have a continual progression of thinking.
Maybe it’s a little thing, or a big thing.
We say this in church, but do we ever question it? We address our time of worship and ascribe to it the purpose of ‘preparing our hearts to receive the Word’. It struck me today. "Wait a minute! We worship God to worship God. It is not a device of mental preparation."
I’m not going to totally discount the value that worship might have for me personally. The value is a reality, however, I’m not going to focus on it. My motivation for worship should never be, in any way, personally beneficial. Allow that to be a side issue. Priority number one: God is worshipped because God should be worshipped.
As I continued to think about it, I found the opposite to bear more truth. Learning the Word should prepare our hearts to worship. That sounds way more appropriate to me.
This is what I’m thinking about right now.
October 26, 2009 at 1:17 am
“Priority number one: God is worshipped because God should be worshipped.”
YEAH!!!
October 26, 2009 at 1:38 pm
I struggle with how systematic we’ve become with our worship – how we’ve refined and defined in down to 4 or 5 “songs” with the express intent of “preparing our hearts”. More often than not, the worship is just part of the ceremony – for that matter, the teaching / preaching / message is too – just part of the ceremonial order.
With all the time allotments, order of service and conveniences, it’s really hard to make room to actually pour out our hearts to God. It’s even harder to encounter Him and receive any measure of revelation as He encounters us. I guess it’s just easier and less messy to continually fill our heads with knowledge (that will fade away) and to fortify our precept driven belief system.
The “worship” and the “teaching” should flow as one, one into the other, confirming each other. In our modern church, the time between the “worship” and the “teaching” feels like a guillotine in the spirit. Whatever the Holy Spirit was leading or doing – however He was ministering, whatever He is teaching, is suddenly interrupted and abruptly cut short.
Not sure about the solution but I think you’re onto something (see your previous post about getting out and serving). So what about church??? As church leaders, I think it’s time to stop playing church and re-consider what we’re doing.
November 24, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Amen. Worship is the point! And as we grow in the Word, it will most definitely affect our worship. This is especially true because the more we understand God’s Word, the more we will be blown away by how awesome grace is! And we will then just want to fall on our faces that much more!
December 7, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Always amazed at the thread of thought and comment here. It’s been weeks and weeks since I visited, and I read this post and Bam!! This very thing has been growing in me. JW, you said ” the time between worship and teaching feels like a guillotine in the spirit” That’s a sharp but correct illustration of what I feel is happening in our fellowship. It seems that the worship service is solely a preparation for the teaching of the message. God is worshipped because He is worthy to be worshipped, not because we need a warm fuzzy to be in tune with God. That conduct is no better than the ultra pentacostals that need to work up into a frenzy to believe that they are more spiritual and that they are ‘hearing’ from God. Of course every fellowship is different, I just wish that our Service was more of a flow than bullet points!