Are you going to wear that to Church?

Psalm 51: 17 “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

Would you wear a spaghetti-stained shirt to church if there were a clean and pressed one close at hand? If you worked a whole summer’s day in the yard would you attend an evening wedding without having showered first? No, we’d like to be presentable for church and we’d like our hug with bride and bridegroom to be a pleasant blessing to us all. Neither then should we go into worship holding on to a sin-drenched spirit. With sin staining our wardrobe and drenching our spirit we won’t be presentable and will not get anywhere near enough to hug the Bridegroom.

While preparing for this post I really thought that I’d be taking this in a different direction from the worship topic but here we are, considering our worship again. With Mission Arizona looming ahead and having just concluded the LCPC devotional fast, I thought a related topic from either of those would be appropriate. Certainly, the fast touches on this since I experienced a couple of setbacks from the repentance aspect of my fast but a shotgun approach to some of my failings didn’t really hit home. However, I am holding onto the power of His resurrection for victory over the flesh. I had hoped, and this was a weakness of my approach, that I’d have an earth shattering announcement to make and that I’d overcome this huge mountain in the way, and that God told me distinctly to do this amazing thing. Oops. I overlooked a very important part of my reading, not by my design, Matthew 5 & 6 before the fast. I should have been looking to only make this for the Father, who is unseen so that the unseen Father would reward me thusly. (Matt 6: 18) It’s not about me. In the LCPC devotional blog Lee Cook said of his reading the Sermon on the Mount “Mostly, I come away challenged and inspired!” That’s the PC version, for me I came away convicted.

I believe that we need to spend a little more time in preparation for worship by turning away from sin and setting aside our personal grudges. In fact, the same should go for anytime we teach or attend class or participate in fellowship with each other, or go on a mission trip. Preparation is the key here for me; I need to make some honest prayer of confession before heading down the hill to the church. Most regularly scheduled services at LCPC contain a corporate prayer of confession but by then we’ve already sung a song or two and maybe heard the call to worship. I’m thinking that if I’m ready personally for worship then when we go into corporate confession as a body, I can then give myself a second review and then look to my repentance in the congregational view of my shortcomings. I want to come before Jesus as clean as possible ready for my worship to be accepted, a broken and contrite spirit. That doesn’t mean that I can’t sing out in victory or let out a shout of triumph; it just means that if I do it will ring true.

I think it would be interesting some day to close the sanctuary and have everyone meet in the courtyard first to pray and offer up our confessions; then, as all good Presbyterians do, file reverently and orderly into the sanctuary and get into worship.

Let’s raise the level of our worship by sinking to a new low of humility before the King.

Psalm 51: 12 – “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” 15. “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.” 18. “In your good pleasure make Zion prosper”