Hey Church!
We have so much to celebrate in worship this weekend! It is our third Sunday in Advent, we will light the Shepherds’ candle to remember how they were told of Jesus’ birth, Tom will preach on the third “Emmanuel Song” from Isaiah 11, we will take communion together, AND we have a couple of new songs to sing! All we need now is for the Holy Spirit to do His work in and through the services! With that in mind, I want to encourage you all to do three things this weekend.
- Pray. Not just a tossed-up “Hey God” sort of prayer but a focused, set-apart, unhurried, fervent kind of pleading with God to make His presence known to us this Sunday.
- Prepare your mind. Listen to the songs, especially those that are less familiar to you. Read Isaiah 11 and review your reflections from this past week of personal worship. Think about the profoundly important and wonderful things we get to celebrate together on God’s day and in His house.
- Get to church early. Our new song is first in the order of worship, so you don’t want to miss it! More importantly, the minutes before the service starts are best spent in excited anticipation than in stress. Why rush? Set the alarm 15 minutes earlier than usual and give yourself (and all of us) the gift of your unhurried, focused presence.
Unhurried and focused. Those words pretty well sum up the whole point of these weekend newsletters–to remind us constantly that church is more than a “have-to-do” that we check off the list but a “get-to-do” that is God’s gift of spiritual rest to us, for our good and for His pleasure.
I can hardly wait!
Ryan