If you, like me, have been around the church for a while you’ve definitely heard the phrase “prepare our hearts for worship” more than a few times. But what does that even mean? I know how to prepare for work or for travel or people coming to my house. Back in the 1900s when I played sports I knew how to prepare for a game. I even have a sense of how to prepare my heart for something really joyful, like a wedding. Or really sorrowful like a funeral. But how do we, with a myriad of different circumstances and challenges in our lives, prepare our hearts for worship. Here are a few ways:
- Worship begins by receiving from God, not with what we have to offer to God. We receive his welcome, his love, his forgiveness, all of which we desperately need and all of which is revealed in Jesus Christ.
- Worship is not a performance of your best, but is open-hearted honor of God–praise, thanks, lament–so sometimes worship looks like loud voices and lifted hands and other times it is quiet tears. Both are beautiful and good.
- Worship is not based on how you feel this morning, but on who God is and what he has given us in Christ. You might be having an awful morning, and it is in that low place that Jesus intends to meet you.
- Worship is not reserved for Sunday services or designated times of singing. Yes, we gather to worship together as a church, but we open-heartedly honor God in our vocations, our homes, and our schools. Worship is the daily work of the Christian, so we are constantly “preparing our hearts” and we are constantly receiving from Christ and responding to him.
I originally wrote this post for my church, Immanuel Nashville, in our Daily Pulse email. If you want encouragement from God’s word delivered Monday thru Friday to your inbox, I encourage you to subscribe.
