Here is another passage of scripture that has been bothering me lately: Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching. Hebrews 10:25 from Eugene Peterson’s The Message
I have always thought and been taught that not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together meant that we should go to church faithfully. As a good Christian I did just that; I kept on attending church every Sunday. I kept on going even though the Sunday morning service came to mean so little to me. I hated the music, and just try and worship God with music you hate. I did not believe in tithing or the prosperity message, which renders the whole offering segment meaningless. And I had already heard enough 7 steps to answered prayer to manipulate God into doing whatever I wanted. I just could not give up on the whole Sunday morning corporate worship performance. Then a miracle happened; I was assigned the night shift.
Working the night shift makes sitting through a church service very hard. I found myself sleeping through 99% of the morning. After a few weeks of this and seeing as to how God did not strike me dead I just stopped going. I still attended the Wednesday service, but Sunday morning was gone. I discovered that my lack of attendance did not negatively affect my relationship with God, in fact it seemed to help it. Later on when I was promoted and no longer was on the night shift I just could never get back into the Sunday morning routine. At least for awhile.
I have since then done some serious thinking (serious thinking to me at least. I know some of you outthink me with your casual thoughts) and have made a few discoveries.
The first thing is this: the writer of Hebrews was not thinking of a Sunday morning gathering like we have today when he/she wrote that line. The first church did not meet the way we did, so this must mean something else. Like hanging out in someone’s house or, dare I say this, going out for drinks with some pals. I read things like love feasts in the Bible and wonder what are we doing? I do not see anywhere in the New Testament where believers got together and sang, gave, and listened to a sermon.
We need to be inventive in our meetings.
I also discovered that all believers are priests. That means that no one man or woman has any special calling or ability to direct us in our worship. We all, each and every one of us, can approach God directly.
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