The Puritans on Preparing for Worship

Wayne from Windsor Writes:
http://www.blogger.com/profile/8850913

Yesterday I linked to an article by J. I. Packer on The Puritan Approach to Worship. I want to follow up with one more excerpt from the article:

Incomplete though this survey has necessarily been (we have said nothing, for instance, of the sacraments), it has at least sketched in the main outline of Puritan ideals for worshippers -- reverence, faith, boldness, eagerness, expectancy, delight, whole-heartedness, concentration, self-abasement, and above all a passion to meet and know God himself as a loving Father through the mediation of his Son....

But still one question remains. How do we begin to get from where we are to where the Puritans show us that we ought to be in our own practice of worship? How can we, cold-hearted and formal as we so often are -- to our shame -- in church services, advance closer to the Puritan ideals? The Puritans would have met our question by asking us another. How do we prepare for worship?

Here, perhaps, is our own chief weakness. The Puritans inculcated specific preparation for worship -- not merely for the Lord's Supper, but for all services -- as a regular part of the Christian's inner discipline of prayer and communion with God. Says the Westminster Directory: "When the congregation is to meet for public worship, the people (having before prepared their hearts thereunto) ought all to come...." But we neglect to prepare our hearts; for, as the Puritans would have been the first to tell us, thirty seconds of private prayer upon taking our seat in the church building is not time enough in which to do it. It is here that we need to take ourselves in hand. What we need at the present time to deepen our worship is not new liturgical forms or formulae, nor new hymns and tunes, but more preparatory "heart-work" before we use the old ones. There is nothing wrong with new hymns, tunes, and worship styles -- there may be very good reasons for them -- but without "heart-work" they will not make our worship more fruitful and God-honoring; they will only strengthen the syndrome that C.S. Lewis called "the liturgical fidgets." "Heart-works" must have priority or spiritually our worship will get nowhere.

A couple of months ago I started to provide links on "Saturday Night Preparation." The series didn't last long, but here is what was posted:

1. Preparing to listen to preaching.
2. Preparing according to Hebrews 10:24.
3. Preparing sons for Sundays.
4. More on preparing to listen to a sermon.
5. Preparing to meet your God.