Don’t stop meeting together with other believers, which some people have gotten into the habit of doing.
Hebrews 10:25
I sometimes wonder where we got the idea that attending the gathering of God’s people on the Lord’s Day (Sunday worship) was optional for Christians?
It is clear that the meeting is pivotal to our identity as God’s people. We gather to worship God, to hear the story of faith, to lift up the needs of the world, and to partake of spiritual food. We gather because we are the people called to gather for the life of the world.
The gathering is not optional because in baptism we were grafted into Christ and became a part of God’s own community. Becoming Christian means that we become many, no longer do we walk alone, we are now part of one body.
Our gathering should not be dependent on our “feelings.” Sometimes we don’t feel like going to work, but we do, like going to the grocery store, but we do, or like getting up in the morning, but we do. We do things because we recognize their importance in spite of our “feelings” about them. The discipline of attending the meeting is also about discipline, about our willingness to set aside a time in our lives each week to recognize the Lord of our lives.
As baptized people we need each other. We make covenant to live life together, to lift up each other, and to help each other grow in the way of Jesus. We together, empowered by the Spirit, become God’s people in the world. May our gathering propel us into living out our identity as God’s own in the world.