Sunday Morning Before Worship

7:31 Sunday morning.  Lois has worship music playing on a CD.  In a few hours our church will gather for worship.  I sit at my desk praying–thinking really about how I need that worship, how I long for it and love it.

I know worship is more than Sunday morning singing.  It’s living to and for God.  That’s what Paul called us to:  “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).  So, the right response to God’s mercies in Christ is worshiping by loving my wife and teaching my (grown) children and grandchildren by word and example how to follow Jesus–and simply by seeking to do everything I do to God’s glory (1 Corinthians 10:31).

I know I can worship in private.  At this ordinary desk in the aloneness of my room I can strum my guitar and sing to the Lord.  I can quietly read his holy Word and tell him my troubles or simply sit in his precious presence.  “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures.  He leads me beside still waters.  He restores my soul . . . you are with me; your rod and your staff they comfort me” (Psalm 23:1-3a,4b).

But there’s joy in meeting together that I don’t find in daily living for the Lord or in stealing away to be alone with him.  Partly it’s the encouragement the Hebrews’ writer spoke of:  “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24,25).   I need that in-the-flesh reminder that I’m part of “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for [God’s] own possession, that [we] may proclaim the excellencies of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light” (2 Peter 2:9).  I need that group reminder that we are a people “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).  And he’s coming soon.

Partly the joy of meeting together for worship is the preaching of God’s Word about which Paul wrote to Timothy:  “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16,17).  The risen Christ has given “shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 2:11-13).  I need Christ’s gifted and given men to show me Christ in his Word in a way I can’t find alone.  I need to be nourished by that Word to be a living, contributing part of Christ’s body on earth.

But singing to the Lord–how I love that!  I certainly don’t put singing above the preaching.  But there’s nothing that engages the depth of my soul in worship to the Lord like singing to the Lord.  He is so much greater than mere speaking can express.  The difference between saying, “I love you, Lord”, and singing, “I love you Lord” is incalculable.  It catches up my heart, my emotions, my affections into heavenly places.  It seems to turn our ordinary church sanctuary into holy ground.  For it’s then that I–and we–enter into the very presence of our Father.  It’s then that I sing for joy or almost tremble in fear or bow down in reverence or sit silently overwhelmed by the nearness of God who loved me in my sin and gave his Son to live for my righteousness and die for my rescue from wrath.  He is there.  And I feel his presence.  I sense his presence.  He’s like a terrifying yet gentle sea wave rolling over us, embracing us, drenching us with his glory (at least as much of it as we can bear this side of heaven).

“One thing have I asked of the LORD,
that I will seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to inquire in his temple” (Psalm 27:4).

“I will praise the LORD as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God while I have my being” (Psalm 146:2).

” . . . in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

So it’s Sunday morning before worship.  In my solitary silence I long to meet the Lord in our gathering.  Come with me . . .