Skip to main content

Getting Ready for Sunday

The following are wonderful suggestions by Jason Helopoulos on bringing our best to Sunday worship.

  • Seize the Rest of the Week: Practice family worship and secret worship throughout the week knowing that this will inform and encourage your experience in corporate worship.
  • Be Boring: Go to bed early on Saturday night. Friday nights can be filled with late-night activity, but Saturday nights should routinely be safeguarded. Sleepy heads make for drowsy worshippers.
  • Right Attitude: Cultivate a spirit of joy on Sunday mornings in your home. If this is the highlight of our week, then let’s act like it. Talk about how wonderful the day is going to be, wake the kids up with excitement, turn on good Christian music for the whole family to listen to, and put a smile on your face.
  • Media Blackout: Refrain from turning on the television, watching Netflix, or catching up on Facebook Sunday mornings. Our minds are so easily distracted. Safeguard your mental space.
  • Plan Ahead: Lay out your Sunday morning clothes on Saturday night, so you don’t have to change ten times on Sunday morning before finding an outfit that fits well, looks right, or is ironed (of course, this point was not intentionally directed to any particular sex!).
  • Don’t Be Surprised: Read and think through the Sunday morning text earlier in the week. We should seldom be surprised at the passage we hear preached. Working our way through a passage throughout the week provides more fertile soil on Sunday morning.
  • Early Bird: Rise early on Sunday morning and spend time reading the Word, praying, and meditating to prepare your heart for worship.
  • Talk & Drive: On the car-ride to church talk about the passage that will be preached, sing a hymn together, and converse about the things of God.
  • Timing it Right: Give yourself enough time on Sunday mornings. Rise early enough that the morning isn’t rushed. Leave home with plenty of time to spare. Try not to arrive at church late or even a few minutes before the service. Rushing out the door at home and rushing in the door at church has stymied many worshippers.
  • Collect Your Thoughts: Sit-down, read through the bulletin (if you have one), think through the songs, meditate on the Scripture readings, and pray before the service begins.
    •  
    Read the rest of the article HERE

    Comments

    Post a Comment

    Popular posts from this blog

    Oops!

    I can be a real klutz.  I have very few manual skills and I never grew out of the "tripping over my own feet" stage of life.  I have fumbled and dropped more than my fair share of balls. In other words, "oops" has been a regular part of my vocabulary. It is not only in the physical world that I have fumbled things.  I have messed up relationships.  I have prejudged people before ever getting to know them.  I have used and abused those who love me most in this world.  I have failed and sinned my way into more than one tight corner and created untold disasters.  Oops is not even sufficient for the ways that I have blown it. Perhaps that is why something Paul, our worship leader last Sunday, said resonated so deeply with me this week.  He said "Oops is never said in heaven."  Our God never is clumsy.  He never makes mistakes. His plans never go belly-up.  He never fails.  He never ever has to say oops - and that comforts me.
    Post a Comment
    Read more

    The walking, talking providence of God

    Today I met a man in Israel I will never forget.  Fifteen years ago he was voting in a primary for candidates of the Likud party.  At the polling station, two Palestinian terrorists burst in upon the crowd who were choosing their candidate for the next election.  They sprayed the crowd with automatic gunfire.  Seven people fell to the floor, wounded by the barrage.  The terrorists moved among the fallen, stopping to shoot each one between the eyes to make sure that they were dead.  Six people died that day.  Today I met the seventh. He was wounded four times in the initial burst of gunfire - once in each leg, once in the arm and once in the side.  The terrorists then put a gun two feet from his face and put a bullet between his eyebrows.  I saw the deep scar with my own eyes.  The next year he spent in a coma. Today I met him at the little restaurant he owns outside the gates of the ancient ruins of Beth She'an.  He stood in f...
    Post a Comment
    Read more

    Families' Fridays

    From Focus on the Family 10 helpful tips for single parents Imagine this: you’re the sole parent for your children. You get them up, get them fed and send them to school. You do the housework, maybe you go to work yourself, you get home and you’re still the only adult there. There’s no one to relieve you. No one to pass the baton to while you take a shower or take a few minutes for yourself. You make dinner and gather the family around the table to eat. You play with them, read to them, give them baths, get them to bed and there’s no one there to sit with and process your day. There’s no one there to laugh with you or pray with you. Instead you keep working. You clean up the house again. You pack lunches for the next day. And you eventually crash into bed, knowing you’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow. For many, this is not an imagined scenario. When you parent alone – whether due to divorce, the loss of your spouse or having a spouse who works away from home for long periods of...
    Post a Comment
    Read more