Don't Waste Your Sunday

Eric Simmons, writing for The New Attitude blog, has a good post about how to get more out of your Sunday morning gathering:

1. Start Saturday Night. Loving the gathering of the church and benefiting from the time with your local church and your pastor starts Saturday night. When I was in college the times I missed church or fell asleep during the message were usually the same times I stayed up till 4am on Saturday night playing basketball with my friends.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with hanging out with friends late. But you have to ask yourself the question, “What’s more important to my walk with God?” We have to make priority decisions that are going to be painful to our schedule. Prepare for the gathering of the church by prioritizing sleep Saturday night.

2. Prepare Your Heart. The gathering of the church is not just a “meeting” it is a reunion of the local church family that you are living life with. This gathering is not a place to sit and be a spectator. This is your family and you are a participant.

One way to prepare for this and wake up a little earlier and seek the Lord as to how you can serve your church with your words. Who can you encourage? Who can you talk to who is new? What do you need help with? Who do you need to confess your sin to or reconcile with? Come with expectation.

3. Pray for the pastor and people. The gathering of the church is a spiritual event. Pray that God would use you, would use your pastor, and would use your family to help one another and encourage one another in the faith. Pray that God would open the eyes of those who do not know Jesus yet. Pray for the youth and the children of the church that they would respond to the gospel.

4. Serve. Find some practical way you can serve every Sunday. I find the more involved I am with anything the more excited I am to participate. So find a need and fill it.

5. Make sure your ears are on. Here are two things to keep your ears on during the gathering of the church. First, during the time of singing pay attention at times to the other voices. Our time of corporate singing is an amazing time for us to be reminded that we are not alone in this and that we have others around us singing the same song of salvation. Corporate singing is not just about you and God and being edified by the Spirit (though it is). It is also a weekly reminder that you exist in a relationship with other believers in a local church.

6. Be hospitable afterwards. Look for that new person and bring them into your circle of friends. The church gathering is supposed to be the most hospitable place on earth. Let’s make sure it is.

Read the whole thing.