“Sunday Mornings”
Like many of you, I’ve gone to church services on Sunday morning for most of my life. For the better part of the past 35+ years I’ve been a pastor (at some level) on those Sunday mornings. So, when I say that Sunday mornings can be routine, lifeless and empty, I say this from an abundance of Sunday morning experiences.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Sunday mornings ought to come with a healthy dose of wonder. Maybe not jaw-dropping, eye-blinding, knee-buckling wonder, but surely fresh marveling that God—our Father, our Savior, the Holy Spirit—is right here among us and that these things we see and say, and sing are wonderfully true. And what’s more, they’re ours in Christ.
But we can easily get in the way of that wonder. We come with distractions that block us from the majesty of God and His people. We create systems and liturgies that have so much we want to say to God and his people that sometimes God himself can’t get a word in edgewise.
Our hearts can become callused as well. Former pastor and author Ben Patterson wrote in a Leadership Journal article titled “Heart and Soul”: “Sometimes I think our hands are cauterized by the handling of holy things. We've been there and done that so many times that our hearts get calluses.”
I confess I don’t understand just how the worship experience described in 1 Corinthians 14 should be brought over to our services today but consider this description Paul shares with the young Corinthian church:
But if an unbeliever or an inquirer comes in while everyone is prophesying, they are convicted of sin and are brought under judgment by all, as the secrets of their hearts are laid bare. So they will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!” (1 Cor. 14: 24-25) (My emphasis on the last sentence.)
And that is what I want to finally say in this “note.” Each Sunday I remind myself that God is among us. And that I need to be listening for him. Sometimes I hear Him in your voice. Sometimes it’s in the sermon or in a song. But God is speaking and moving among us. I just have to make sure I’m listening and that I’m not talking over him.
