By Not Known
How do you prepare for a meeting with an important person? Our preparations tend to increase as the other person’s importance rises.
We meet with God in settigns such as a personal and family devotion and Sunday services
Ofter, we give almost no thought or preparation to these meetings with God. It’s almost as though we are goind God a favour by meetign with him and ‘anything is good enought‘. And so we arrive late, cut the meeting short, have not throught about what we want to do and are content to bring our second best in attention and participation.
This casual preparedness is unworthy of God and harmful to us. Because of who God is, he deserves better from us. Again, our low input into meetings with God may explain why we then complain of low output – the time of worship or prayer was of little use to us because we put so little into it.
Some other religions and some other Christian traditions take meeting with God with greate seriousness. Special clothes are warn, ritual washings are undertaken, people arrive early, and great concern is taken with the liturgy. We see an example of this in Old Testament Israel, when Israel spent 3 days preparing to meet God on Sinai (Ex. 19: 10- 13)
Our particular Christian tradition puts more weight on the heart than on externals. We tend to dismiss external actions as ‘mere ritual‘. But, perhaps the two are not opposities. We are meetign with our Creator, through the mediation of the Son and the fellowship of the Spirit. Doesn’t this god deserve care to prepare our hearts to meet with im? And, should’t this show itself in such externals as arriving early, not dressing to distract others and been ready to give our focussed attention to God?
Prayerfully examine your own preparations to meet with god. What changes should you undertake to make these meetings more worthy of God and more beneficial to yourself?