Things to bring to worship. by Mike Wilson

It’s another Sunday morning, and you are fighting to get everything and everyone ready on time. The kids are screaming, and someone is honking the horn. Most families know the feeling. As you come staggering to the car at the last second, did you forget anything? Do you have a checklist of things you must bring to church?

Most of us would do well to ponder every day, and especially every Lord’s Day, what it means to worship God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. If we listen to the word of the Lord reverently, we will find many reasons to be humbled at the very thought of the awesome grandeur of the One who is the object of our adoration. We will not approach Him lightly or frivolously. And when time for worship approaches, whether it is collective or private, we must take certain attitudes with us to His heavenly throne.

A Willing Spirit

King David wrote, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’” (Psalm 122:1). The psalmist’s attitude stands in stark contrast to that of the begrudging priests addressed in the book of Malachi. God charges them with despising His name, offering blemished animals, and saying to themselves, “My, how tiresome it is!" (Malachi 1:6, 13-14). Amos rebukes the Israelites of the mid-7th century BC because of a similar disdain for worship. They couldn’t wait for their religious obligations to be satisfied so that they could get on with business: “When will the new moon be over so that we may buy grain, and the Sabbath, that we may open the wheat market, to make the bushel smaller and the shekel bigger, and to buy with dishonest scales…?” (Amos 8:5). If you have any inclination to be spiritually minded, read Psalm 63 and make this prayer your own. With these words alive in your heart, you will never be able to permit the service of God to degenerate into a burdensome chore again. Worship time should invoke a spiritual adventure: “Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Thy law” (Psalm 119:18). Going through the motions without heart involvement produces worship that is “vain” (Matthew 15:8-9).