Jude 20+21, But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith; praying in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. 
	We have been spending some time with our consideration of the preparation that God deserves from us as we gather together in His name. We are, Lord willing, desirous to bring a more perfect service of worship unto Him and are seeing the need to ready ourselves to bless Him in our sacrifice of praise and adoration. While the emphasis has been our corporate expression, there is a need to discern what would please God on a most personal level. After all, we are individually responsible to be prepared to worship Him corporately.
	How many of us take the time to ask the Lord and ourselves the following questions: What is my heart before God?  What do I bring unto Him in my time of worship and praise? How do I contribute to the corporate assembly of the saints of God? These are not rhetorical questions. They must be at the fore-front of our personal time of devotion and preparation. Please realize, we are not addressing any issue of me promoting my efforts and my abilities and puffing up my ego as being able to honor God by my virtue and piety. All of that belongs on the death side of the cross of Jesus Christ. No, this pertains to the heart of our desire to worship God. In what manner are we committed to all that God deems necessary in order to bring forth a more pure and honest worship of Himself in our personal lives?
	The Apostle Paul felt the need to encourage Timothy along these lines in 2 Tim 2:21+22. Therefore, if a man cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work. Now flee from youthful lusts, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. There is the encouragement to …flee from youthful lusts, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart… Do we seek to call upon God with a pure heart? 
This is not an easy thing. It requires, as we have previously seen, that we are completely open to the discerning and intense scrutiny of the Holy Spirit. There is nowhere to hide from His cleansing work, if that is our heart’s desire. 
	There is a basic key to this severe and personal examination of our hearts and minds and beings that we must fully comprehend. The fact is that God never forces Himself upon us. He seeks us out and draws us unto Himself in love, but He never makes us do anything. He works in such love and thoroughness that we ask Him to do His complete work in our lives because we come to the place that we want Him to be pleased in us. He will never manipulate or coerce us to ask Him to do His work in our lives. But, when we do ask Him, when we are brought to the point in our hearts and minds that we desire for Him to do all that is necessary to His glory in us, He will complete that work. 
Phil 1:6, For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. This is a caution that we must take to heart. God is absolutely and solemnly serious about His relationship with us. We cannot consider Him in any light or frivolous manner. If we pray for Him to prepare us to worship Him, He will do so, but it will be at the cost of everything that we hold near and dear to our self-preservation. It will be on the sole ground of the righteousness and purity of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
Again, we hear from the Apostle Paul as he writes to Timothy in 2 Tim 4:1+2. I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. If our hearts are after the course of blessing God, we are solemnly placed under this charge to be ready in season or out of season. Many of us may think that we are exempt from the responsibility of this passage because we are not all preachers or teachers in a formal sense. That, however, is far from the truth of our individual hearts of preparation. Every one of us has a responsibility to be ready to minister and to preach the Word of God in the lives that we live before men. If we are a parent or grand-parent, this task is at the very heart of our commission to love our children. What is parenting except that we …reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction? If we are at work, the preaching that we do is the ministering of the life of Jesus Christ on a most daily and visible basis. This is our life in Christ Jesus, and it does mean that we give ourselves wholly to Him for whatever course of ministry we are to live.
That is what should spill over into our worship, as we come together. Our corporate worship is merely the extension of our daily expression of living worship unto God. There very well may be something of His glory and praise and adoration that the Lord is working in our hearts during the week that is to be shared with the assembled body of believers. There may well be a passage that sustained and focused our eyes on Him during the week that will edify and draw forth a heart of praise and adulation from those congregated together to bless the Lord. Maybe it is a prayer of honor and adoration that has been welling up in our hearts throughout the week. Maybe it is a song that gives expression to our heart’s yearning to magnify the expressed goodness of the Lord. It might well be that the Lord is calling forth a message that would enlighten the church as to the glorious work of God in manifested His Word that has become very real to us in the course of our personal growth into Him. Unless we give ourselves, individually to Him in preparation, these times of the ministry of His grace and mercy will be withheld from the melded heart of the church, and from their rightful purpose of blessing God.
This does not mean that we go by every whim and fancy of our emotional responses. By no means do we allow ourselves to sully our expressed time of worship with any sense of indelicacy and emotionalism. We may well be urged, by the Holy Spirit to lead forth in song, and prayer, and scripture reading, but it must always be measured with the heart that asks “Does this please you, Lord?” “Does this honor you and focus our attention on you and not on me?” 
There is a spontaneity of the Holy Spirit that we never want to miss, but it will always be honoring and reverent and uplifting to the praise of Jesus Christ and Our Heavenly Father. That is what the Holy Spirit always does! He focuses on honoring the Son and the Father in worship - never us. 
The Holy Spirit’s leading is an area that we must zealously guard. In this truth, there may be a sense of His guidance that we have missed. Many Christians feel that there can be no planning for the song service, that there can be no pre-arranged order of scripture reading or prayer. They feel that it is a slap in the face of the Holy Spirit to, dare I say the word, organize the order of the worship service. 
Now, before there is an outcry and accusations that we are going to throw out the format of our worship service, please understand that I am not advocating that in any measure. Neither am I advocating that everything is perfect as it is currently being practiced. What we need to realize is that the Holy Spirit needs to be free to manifest His leading and His guidance of our time of worship, just as He needs to be free to guide and to develop our personal relationship with Himself. Of course He can give us direction at an instant’s notice in our worship unto Him. This is a dynamic and living Body of Believers. There is life and there needs to be the freedom to breathe and to express the life that we live in Christ.
But, and this is where many of us may be uncomfortable, the Holy Spirit needs to have the freedom to be Himself. He needs to be able to manifest His Character and Essence of preparation as we have been studying over the course of the past number of weeks. Just as He is able to put a song on our heart during worship, so should we allow Him the freedom to put that song on our heart in preparation for the following week’s service. If we are truly preparing ourselves for worship, we are asking Him to do just that, to give us the guidance during the week into all that will honor Him on Sunday morning. 
I would sincerely be remiss in my preparation for Sunday morning if I was not asking the Holy Spirit to open His Word and to bring forth that which He desires to be shared during the week preceding each message. There have been those times when the Holy Spirit did not open up what I was to share until the day of the service. I still remember one Sunday that He woke me up very early in the morning with the message for that very day. It was a time of great stress and strain as to what was to be ministered and I had no leading until that early morning came. But, it was not because I did not beseech Him throughout the week for what to share. It was not because I was not reading my Bible, diligently searching for what would please Him. It was not because I was not in earnest expectation and writing and writing and writing and in anguish throughout the week. He just chose to wait to reveal His heart in that manner at that time, reinforcing His all-sufficiency, and I was oh so thankful for that release.    
The same is true of preparing our prayers before Him. There is nothing wrong with a written prayer that has been crafted under the tutelage and study of His Word. There are many recorded prayers through out the scripture. There is an aspect of making certain that it is the best that we can bring forth unto Him, with no slippage of words or thoughts or intent. It must be prepared diligently and prayerfully and scripturally for the sole purpose of honoring Him and not for the reason of showing how sharp or eloquent we may think that we are. The Holy Spirit must be given the opportunity to work as He deems fit as the means of bringing honor to the Son and to the Heavenly Father. 
Consider that even the Apostle Paul made provision, ahead of time, for the testimony of the Lord to be evident in the church in Achaia. He was simply making certain that the brethren were prepared as unto the Lord as they had always been. This was a matter of encouragement after what the Holy Spirit had already put into place, so that there was no falling down when the time to show forth the love of God was at hand. 2 Cor 9:1-5, For it is superfluous for me to write to you about this ministry to the saints; for I know your readiness, of which I boast about you to the Macedonians, namely, that Achaia has been prepared since last year, and your zeal has stirred up most of them. But I have sent the brethren, that our boasting about you may not be made empty in this case, that, as I was saying, you may be prepared; lest if any Macedonians come with me and find you unprepared, we (not to speak of you) should be put to shame by this confidence. So I thought it necessary to urge the brethren that they would go on ahead to you and arrange beforehand your previously promised bountiful gift, that the same might be ready as a bountiful gift, and not affected by covetousness. He made sure that the Achaians were prepared with their gift for the sake of their testimony of the grace of Christ Jesus.
	Continuing then with our present reflection on the need for personal preparation to bless God, we are encouraged into the appropriate manner in which we are to deal with others. We need to be reminded over and over again that the way we regard others reflects the way that we regard our relationship with God. Our heart unto others reflects how much we truly value the work that Jesus Christ has accomplished. Titus 3:1+2, Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, to malign no one, to be uncontentious, gentle, showing every consideration for all men. 
	How many of us, in our day to day walk on this earth fit the truth of this encouragement unto righteousness? Being subject to rulers, not just the politicians over us, but the teachers, the bosses, the parents, the civil and spiritual authorities. How many of us are truly obedient, not just in our actions, but in our hearts desire to obey what is right and true? How many of us are ready for every good deed, no matter how inconvenient it may prove to be? How many of us can truly say that we malign no one, that there is no malice or gossip that proceeds forth from our minds? Notice, I did not say mouths, but from our minds, the manner in which we think about others. Then we get to the points of being uncontentious, gentle and showing every consideration for all men, not just those people that we like or from whom we want to get some benefit. For all men. How we interact with others is a direct reflection of how much we truly value Jesus Christ. Our treatment of others directly affects our purity of worship!
	Do we truly want to worship God? If we do, then we need to start at this personal level of preparation and commitment. We need to deal with others from the heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ Who died willingly for the sake of every person that comes into our lives. We need to present ourselves before the awesome and rigorous and inflexible and holy inspection of God’s intent gaze into our hearts and minds for all that would detract and minimize our service of worship. Are we willing to give God free access into every crevice and area of our lives to bring forth a sacrifice of praise that will be a well-spring to His so awesome glory? If this is our heart’s desire, it will be accomplished only by the grace and the love of Jesus Christ as we lay down our lives for others!
	James reminds us that this is no simple thing. James 1:22-25, But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man shall be blessed in what he does. It is vital that we prove the value of Jesus Christ in our worship by the lives that we live outside the doors of our Sunday gathering. It is not enough to sing the correct songs in the correct pitch with the correct tune and rhythm. It is not enough to preach the correct words with the correct emphasis. It is not enough to read the correct scriptures with the proper pronunciation and tone of voice.
	As we are instructed in Col 3:16+17, Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. We need to live the life that Jesus Christ is in our beings. We need to be a faithful and true witness and testimony of Him in every area of our reality. As He lives forth from us, so will we find that our hearts are being prepared to worship and to glorify Him. We must lay ourselves before Him, prostrate in humbleness and contrition, honoring Him in our every interaction with those around us so that His glory will be manifest in a living way every moment of every day of every year that He chooses to have us on this earth. That is the heart in which the word of Christ richly dwells as a living sacrifice of praise and worship.
	1 Chron 16:23-36, Sing to the Lord, all the earth; Proclaim good tidings of His salvation from day to day. Tell of His glory among the nations, His wonderful deeds among all the peoples. For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; He also is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are idols, But the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before Him, Strength and joy are in His place. Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name; Bring an offering, and come before Him; Worship the Lord in holy array. Tremble before Him, all the earth; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved. Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; And let them say among the nations, "The Lord reigns." Let the sea roar, and all it contains; Let the field exult, and all that is in it. Then the trees of the forest will sing for joy before the Lord; For He is coming to judge the earth. O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; For His lovingkindness is everlasting. Then say, "Save us, O God of our salvation, And gather us and deliver us from the nations, To give thanks to Thy holy name, And glory in Thy praise." Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, From everlasting even to everlasting. Then all the people said, "Amen," and praised the Lord. So be it!

This morning’s benediction is Ps 134. Behold, bless the Lord, all servants of the Lord, Who serve by night in the house of the Lord! Lift up your hands to the sanctuary, And bless the Lord. May the Lord bless you from Zion, He who made heaven and earth. Amen.