Daily Java: See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. (Hebrews 3:12-13)
One of the reasons we meet together as a body of believers each week is for encouragement. In fact, God set up his church so that we would not just meet once a week for this, but be together a lot.
If you look in the book of Acts, the early church did stuff together daily. And because of this, they grew, both in numbers (wildly, in fact) and in fellowship. They grew to love each other and to depend on each other.
That is why God made the church. We could have each been Christians quietly in our homes alone or as families. But he knew we wouldn’t be able to survive with any degree of Christian maturity in that way. We had to band together to grow. We had to have others around us to push us, to challenge us, to help us, to comfort us, to rejoice with us.
It is a natural thing to band together. People have done it since Adam and Eve. We have banded together in cities, hunting groups, armies, bird-watching societies, Rotary Clubs, camper clubs – you name it, we have gotten together for it.
Yet, for some odd reason, people cannot apply that same inbred and innate feeling to the church. They will belong to 75 clubs and organizations, yet think that they can be a Christian by themselves. You can, but it is very hard. And the people that claim that they can are usually weak as Christians.
The strong Christians go to church, go to Bible study, go to meetings, go to potlucks. They know where their strength comes from. They know it comes from the Lord through the agency of his church. We help each other.
And part of that help comes in seeing each other beginning to drift and turn from God. In fact, when one quits associating with the church, chances are high that they have lost that spark of spirituality.
As a church, we need to help each other be strong and encourage each other, as Hebrews 10:25 says, to not forsake the assembling of yourselves together.
In the church is strength.
No comments:
Post a Comment
To comment, post your comment and click the anonymous button. It would be nice if you signed it so I could know who you are.
You are welcome to say anything you want as long as it is nice. If I don't like it, or it is ugly, I will take it off, place it into the garbage disposal, grind it up, and allow it to be flushed into the Gulf of Mexico where it will be eaten by a fish and then excreted where it will lie on the bottom of the ocean until it is covered up by other comments.