Tune Your Hearts to Worship

To celebrate something well, we must plan to celebrate. Weddings, birthday parties even prom and high school formals take months of planning. We brainstorm the perfect theme, research pinterest and online libraries for days on end compiling ideas, we hire event planners and follow their every recommendation.

Easter is next month! You better get planning. You need to be preparing your heart to worship. And it’s much more fun and contagious to prepare with others. We’d like to encourage you to use the next four weeks leading up to Easter to make Resurrection Sunday an enormous event at your church.

This will take planning for worship and celebration in your own heart. And it will take party planning for your corporate body. Here are a few ways to begin the rejoicing internally and externally today and continue the merriment throughout the weeks ahead.

1. Tune your heart to worship the sacrifice of Messiah by reading John Piper’s book Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die. It’s an excellent book for your personal devotion time, conveniently available as a PDF here. Consider inviting others to join you in reading this. Maybe make a book club or prayer group with your small group reading and praying through this in the weeks leading up to Easter.

2. Make an Easter playlist of your favorite hymns and songs that focus on the cross and the resurrection. Check out musician Andrew Peterson for some good ideas for song options. Listen for yourself and your family in the weeks before and after Easter. Then on Easter Sunday, play them all day in your home and during your backyard celebration. I want to encourage you to respond to the miracles in words or songs by celebrating with exuberant dancing, clapping, or singing together. Easter is a day to party like no other.

3. Help your church make Easter Sunday memorable. A good friend of mine, Andrea, a pastor’s wife, said Easter at their church is a party. She said they shoot confetti cannons and encourage all the members to bring bells to ring and banners to wave to enhance the celebration. Last Easter they even gave everyone a cake pop as a party favor on the way out of the service.

Would you be the one willing to organize some volunteers and talk with your pastor about how you can throw a big Easter Sunday party?

Easter should be an enormous celebration. And celebrations take preparation. Now you know what to be meditating on in your heart to prepare and working out in your church to prepare. Join us this year as we are #EasterPeople ready to honor Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection with due merriment.