Who are you Expecting??

 

  The Grace Reformed church in Washington D.C. had been the home church for president Theodore Roosevelt and he had attended quite regularly when he happened to be in town. 

    One day someone called the church and asked the pastor a interesting question that the pastor had never received before. The question was asked "Are you expecting the President in the church this Sunday?" 

    The pastor replied "I cannot promise, but we do expect God to be there and we hope that will be incentive enough for a reasonably large audience."

    As a pastor myself I have to say that I approve of his answer. 

    Sometimes in our Christian lives we can often forget that the reason why we go to church is to draw closer to God. We sometimes forget the true meaning and purpose behind why we attend. We sometimes can lose sight on what real worship is. We like this man's question, can focus on who is going to be in the service. Or we can fixate on who just happens to be missing. We can be more concerned about who is preaching rather than the God that the preacher is preaching about. S

    Sometimes if we are not careful we make worship all about us. We can make the church about our preferences, comforts and conveniences. We can focus on things like music, the style, the tenor, and the tempo, instead of who we are singing these songs to. We can become more focused on our comforts than we are about our Creator. We can linger on about the length or the shortness of the message and ignore what God might be saying to us through it. 

    We can even make worship all about feeling a certain way. We might desire for our emotions to be stirred. To feel something or to be moved to tears for some reason. We can sometimes desire the excitement and energy and equate that with the presence of God. Ignoring that sometimes God speaks in that still small voice. 

    Now, don't get me wrong. Its not like those things don't matter and it's not like they don't have their place. However they should not matter as much as we allow them to matter in our worship. The whole purpose for us to go to church is not for us, but for the Lord. It is for us to hear Him. It is for us to draw close to Him. It is for us to place our focus and our attention to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To give honor to the King of Kings. 

    That is what we should be expecting. That is what our desire should be. When we get dressed and get our families out the door to go to church. Our desire, our expectation should be to encounter the One and True Living God! 

    What would it matter if we went to church and it had all the excitement and thrills of a sold out concert? What would it matter if all the famous and influential stars of Hollywood would happen to attend the church service? What value would it be if we had the best speakers, the most talented musicians? What would it matter if we had all this and so much more, yet God's presence would be absent. 

    Would we still want to go? Would a simple service without all the thrills still thrill us? Would we be completely happy with worship if the room is uncomfortable, the songs were simple and not to our liking, and the preacher was long and boring? Would be enjoy it just the same if there was no great crowd? Would we still wish to go because we were simply expecting for God's presence to be there?

    I wonder as I write this if the church in America would even notice if God was absent? Would they realize that the presence of Jesus is absent even though the sermon was captivating, the worship was thrilling and the crowd was grand. Does the average Christian in our American churches even know the diffrence. Do even the pastors behind the pulpits know the diffrence as well? 

A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah. O God, You are my God; I will seek You earnestly; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You, as in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; so I have seen You in the holy place, seeing Your power and Your glory. Because Your loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise You. So I will bless You while I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name.- (Psa 63:1-4)

    It is my hope that you and I, as we prepare to come to worship this Sunday that we might come with the same mindset that David expresses in this Psalm. That when we come to worship we might come with the intention to "Seek" God "Earnestly". I pray that we might thirst for the presence of God. I pray that we might long for the Power and Glory of God throughout this week. That we might prepare our hearts and minds to be ready to praise God with our lips and to lift up our hands in His Name.