Five Steps to Meet God on Sunday

Five Steps to Meet God on Sunday

by Jul 17, 2019

Five Steps to Meet God on Sunday

by Jul 17, 2019

If you’re going to a Super Bowl party, you prepare food to bring. If you’re going out for a nice dinner, you prepare a nice outfit to wear (or at least you trade out your busted up Locals slippahs for your nice pair of black Scotts). So how do you prepare to meet God at church on Sunday?

Many people roll out of bed, shuffle to church, walk in 5 or 10 or 25 minutes late, mumble the words of the songs, try to pay attention to the sermon but zone out repeatedly, eat a few malasadas, and go home. Shouldn’t our encounter with God be so much more than that? Absolutely. Which is why God said in Amos 4, “Prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” Meeting God takes preparation.

You need to prepare your heart, habits, schedule, and family if you really want to enjoy God on Sunday. Here are a few things our family has learned (the hard way) that we need to do to prepare to meet God:

1. Go to bed early on Saturday.

Since Saturday night is a weekend, it feels like we should be able to stay out late with friends or stay up late at home and watch a movie until 2am. But if we’re tired and cranky on Sunday morning from a lack of sleep, how are we ever going to enjoy God? We’ve learned to go to bed at the same time (or even earlier) on Saturday as we do the rest of the week.

2. Get up early on Sunday.

Carve out some time for personal devotions. Don’t use the excuse that you’ll just be reading the Bible at church. Your personal worship at home fuels our gathered worship at church. Leave plenty of time to get the kids ready. We’ve learned  that there will always be some kind of problem on Sunday morning, so we give ourselves time to deal with it, rather than getting stressed and frustrated.

3. Pray.

The encounter we have with God together will be a reflection of the encounters we have with God in our homes. So take some time to pray together for the service. Our family does this in the car as soon as we get off the freeway on the way to church. Pray for a powerful experience of God through the singing, through the Word, and through the fellowship. Pray for your ability to serve and bless others, especially newcomers. Pray for the Spirit to fill the preacher, worship team, keiki teachers, greeters, etc.

4. Play worship music.

We’ve learned we need to get our hearts in right place. So we put on some uplifting worship music in the house and in the car on our way. You need to turn off the sports radio, Top 40, or whatever else you usually listen to on your way to work, if you’re going to prepare to meet with the living God.

5. Get ready to receive.

Almost every member of our family is serving in some kind of ministry role, which makes it tempting for us to go to church with the attitude that we’re doing some kind of duty for God. We need to remind ourselves that we’re going to receive God’s grace, not to give him something he doesn’t already have. If you’re not in a ministry role, it might be easy to go to church with the attitude that you’re there to consume an experience. But you’re going to receive God’s grace and respond with worship and adoration.