How much time and effort do you put into getting ready for church? Many families I know take time out on Saturday night to ensure that everything is ready for Sunday—they lay out their clothes, put out the kids’ clothes, set the table for lunch, get the crock pot out, ensure the food is thawed, etc. They do this so that come Sunday morning, it’s not a mad rush. How much effort do you expend in doing the same for your soul? I think few people prepare their souls for worship. How can you prepare?
Prayer, I believe, is a good way to prepare for Sunday worship. How often do you ask God, for example, to bless the preaching of the word, anoint the pastor, open your ears, and make your heart receptive to his word? Do you meditate and think back upon your past week in the effort to uncover your sins, whether those of omission (things you’ve failed to do) or commission (things that you shouldn’t have done).
Along these lines another way that you can prepare is by reading ahead. What do I mean? Many pastors preach lectio continua, that is, they preach systematically through books of the Bible. They start with John 1:1 and go chapter by chapter, and sometimes verse by verse, until the complete the book. You can take advantage of this by reading ahead of your pastor the before you arrive at church. If your pastor is preaching in John chapter 1, read this chapter before you get to church—pray over it, meditate upon it, try to anticipate what things your pastor might say about it.
In my church I had simple commentaries available for sale on our book table that covered the books through which I was preaching or teaching. If I was preaching on John’s gospel, then we had several available copies of the Tyndale Commentary on the New Testament on this gospel. People could not only read ahead but they could also study ahead and dig down into the meat of the passage. So often pastors are not able to bring out all of the treasures in a particular passage of Scripture. By studying the passage on your own, you can mine the riches of each passage and benefit all the more from your pastor’s preaching. This pattern is much like the advice that I regularly give my students, but they often fail to follow—do your reading assignments before you get to class. If you don’t do the reading, you might find yourself quickly lost or unable to participate fully in the class discussion. A similar pattern holds true for listening to sermons. Sure, you can (or should) always be able to glean something from the sermon, but if you want more, read and even study ahead!
