This was written by a wonderful lady from my church, and I felt inspired to share it! It’s a fantastic reminder of the importance of preparing ourselves before we step inside the church building.
I’ve been reminded this week of how wrong my heart can be before I ever walk into the doors of our church on a Sunday morning. Sometimes I treat it as more of a chore or just something to do, rather than what it’s truly about. It made me stop and pray that God would prepare my heart for His plan for me as I step in those doors today. I’m curious if we can all experience this attitude from time to time. Do we treat going to church as something “good” that we can check off our to-do list? Do we come for only what we can get from it? Or do we show up with the heart to participate as the part of the body of Christ that we are? Do we come prepared to use our spiritual gifts to encourage and edify the body? Are our hearts prepared to enter into his gates with thanksgiving in our hearts and into His courts with praise?
As we wake up this morning, we can begin our morning praying Psalm 139, asking God to show us our hearts as we enter that building today. And then we can start lifting the following requests to Him.
We can pray for our pastor to continue to preach God’s truth boldly.
We can pray for our hearts to be open to receive the gift of God’s Word of instruction and encouragement.
We can pray for our children’s ministry workers, that God would continue to give them a heart for our children. Thank God for His provision as He continues to bless our fellowship with so many babies.
We can pray for the folks behind the scenes who clean our church and manage our parking lots. Thank God for all that they do to make our environment safe and enjoyable to be in.
We can pray for opportunities to greet someone new and help them feel like they are “home”, like how many of us felt when we knew God called us to this church.
We can pray for our worship team as they stand in front using their God given gifts to lead us into God’s presence to worship the Only One who will ever deserve our worship.
We can pray for our sound booth team. It’s not an easy job often times, but a most important one. They support our worship team, and give us the words on the screen so we can join in singing.
We can pray that our hearts would be prepared to lay aside every thought and distraction that would get in the way of the worship our King of Kings, Creator, and Savior, deserves.
We can pray for our ushers and greeters, our snacks ministry servants, and any one who serves who might not fall into a specific team. How many of us are thankful for a little bite to eat when we didn’t have time to grab breakfast or start to get hangry after church? Or the smiling faces that greet us as we might have had a rough morning wrangling our children together.
We can pray for those who can’t join us in person this morning for whatever reason. We don’t often realize how hard it can be for people to not be able to have the fellowship of the body.
So many things we can be praying for this morning, and every day of the week.
God bless you all, and I hope to see you soon.
Kelly
Pens & Wrenches 
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