Every Saturday evening I send a brief meditation to our mailing list to help our congregation prepare for worship the next morning.
Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day, and we look forward to gathering as a congregation to sing, to pray, and to receive from God by His Word and Spirit the blessings that sustain us in the life of faith. We come into God’s house every week with a mixed bag of joys and sorrows. Each of us will have experienced some pleasure and some pain in the prior week. We bring these experiences with us, and they may color our participation to an extent, but they do not define worship for us. When we worship, no matter our temporal circumstances, we are meeting with God and offering prayer and praise with the catholic Church, the Church on earth and the glorified saints in heaven.
It is important to remember the universal nature of the Church in worship. We are praying with the Church and as the Church. We are singing with the Church and as the Church. We are hearing God’s Word with the Church and as the Church. We may be singing an upbeat song of praise and thanksgiving, yet perhaps your heart is full of sorrow. But our song is a reminder that we are praising God for His goodness to all His people, and our individual circumstances are not the whole. On the other hand, we may be singing a psalm of lamentation, imprecation against God’s enemies or bewailing our many woes, and yet your heart is full of gladness and everything in your life is going well. But there are Christians in prison in many countries right now, saints who must worship in secret, others who are being maligned, falsely accused, and viciously attacked. We sing lament to God as the Body of Christ, and my personal circumstances are not a defining issue.
Many of us think far too individually and personally about worship, but the reality is that corporate worship is just that, corporate, not only because it happens in a group assembly but because it happens as a group, assembled by the Spirit, washed in the blood of the Son, and justified by the Father. Regardless of how you may feel tomorrow as you come to worship, the Church’s worship expresses the prayers of the whole Body, the Church both globally and in glory. Worship is not about you or me. It is not for you or me, though we certainly benefit from it. It is all about Christ and God’s blessing upon His people. Come, let us adore Him.
--JME
