Why God’s People Should Be in Church
Why do people profess to know Christ but never go to church? People give excuses all the time as to why they don’t or won’t attend church. Some say they know they need to be in Church and intend to get back in church but never do. Others say their Sundays belong to them and still others just don’t seem to want to wake up in the morning-it’s their sleep late day. They’ve worked all week and now Sunday is the only day they get for themselves. Sound familiar?
What it really boils down to is a relationship issue. I don’t have any problem with saying “people who don’t go to church don’t love Jesus.” Am I being too harsh? I don’t think so. To me this issue is a “no-brainer.” People who love each other want to spend time together. I love my wife and I enjoy spending time with her. People who love Jesus want to spend time with Him. Since Jesus loves His covenant people, people who love Jesus should love to be with His covenant people. This fits very well with the message of 1st John.
“Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God; and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him.” (1John 5:1 NAS)
I should stop and give these two disclaimers: This article is not speaking about people who are physically unable to go to church and secondly, I understand the real Christians can be in rebellion (as I have been in the past), but if they continue in this rebellion ultimately, they may never have been saved in the first place.
Then I hear people say, “Oh, I read my Bible and pray everyday.” My response is, “If that is true, you must not be getting much out of it. The reality is, true Bible reading and prayer brings conviction. If you were reading your Bible and praying everyday, you would want to be in church. You don’t want to be at God’s house either because you don’t really know Him or you are out of fellowship with Him. You value your sin and your freedom more than you value the worship of the living God. If you were walking by His Spirit instead of doing your own thing, the Holy Spirit would compel you to be in proper worship.”
Another aspect of this is that God’s people want to be with God’s people. John tells us that the love of the Father manifests itself by the love of His children. The classic excuse is “the church is full of hypocrites” but my question to those who say this is, “Who is doing the will of God, you or the one you call a hypocrite?”
Finally, people who don’t go to church not only are being disobedient to God’s will, but they miss out of the benefits. So you might ask, “What are the benefits of being in church?”
I’ll answer that question in my next posting…stay tuned!
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About
- David and Paula McAfee on Rainbow Trail
Our Story…
David has served in many areas which include serving as an officer in the USMC, law enforcement, information technology, sales and more importantly ministry. He has been a Minister of Single Adults, Minister of Education and Senior Pastor in Lubbock, TX and recently Tucumari, NM. David received a Bachelor of Arts in Law Enforcement Administration, a Master of Arts in Political Science, and has one semester left to complete a Master of Divinity degree. Paula was formerly an executive secretary with Occidental Petroleum, Oklahoma University College of Continuing Education, and Texas Tech University Law School.
Sangre de Cristo Journal is a collection of postings about seminary life in the Sangre de Cristo mountains and is not endorsed by the Seminary, although I think they like it. Hopefully it will give prospective students a better feel for what a non-traditional seminary atmosphere is like and provide some meaningful information that the Seminary website does not provide.
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Quote of the Week
Trifles Which God Gives
“The emperor Augustus, in his great feasts, gave trifles to some—but gold to his favorites.
Just so—honors, riches and worldly pleasures are the trifles which God gives to the worst of men.
God gives His gold—His special love and grace—only to His people.” - Thomas Brooks Heaven on Earth 1667
I have a friend who often comes over to our house and we usually proclaim the gospel to him and even tell him Bibles stories, especially, from Genesis because we’ve been studying this book for awhile now. However, he does not go to any local church consistently and he does not read the Bible personally in his home. Whenever we ask him where he is going to go when he dies. He immediately states to heaven because he was baptized once as a child. He once tried to find a verse in the Bible to defend his baptism, which took him along time to do so and this verse was out of context. The verses he pointed us to was the “Great Commission passage” in Matthew. I asked him if he knew what a disciple was. He did not. We informed him that a “disciple” is some one who is instructed in the scriptures. My sister and I often examine his beliefs about God. We found out that he does not believe in the trinity, and he also believes that the scriptures are filled with contradictions.Even though he could not supply one contradiction. He frequently tells us that everything is relative or random. He is definitely not aware of his antibiblical worldviews.
We know from Scripture that people are deceived and they deceive themselves into thinking they are saved when they really are not. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth ( John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13 and I John 4:6) and true believers are indwelt by the Spirit of truth (1 Cor. 6:19), Who guides them in the truth. A denial of the fundamental truths of the Bible is a denial of the Word of God that was given by the Spirit of truth (2 Tim. 3:16). As I am nearing my graduation and departure from this seminary, I have begun to seek the Lord’s will for a church to pastor. I have been amazed at the church websites I find that present themselves in ways that are contrary to Scripture and they wonder why their church is in decline. God will not bless professing believers who deny His Holy Word. That’s it, pure and simple.
I am usually disturbed when a church has an image of Jesus due to the O.T. saying that we are not allowed to have a graven image of God. Do you think that the images of Jesus are graven images that are sometimes hung on church walls? I know that the New Testament says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God in Colossians. However, Colossians does not depict a physical image . Within the New testament the only the book of Bible that I can think of that gives a physical image of Jesus is — Revelation and most images that I have seen do not look like this one.
First of all, let’s look at what the Scriptures say. Exodus 20:4 says: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.” This seems pretty clear, but we must not separate it from verse five which says: “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me,” What is God’s concern here? It is the abomination of idol worship or having another God before Him. God commands our unreserved love and worship. I too, would be disturbed about a picture that represents Jesus being hung in the center of a sanctuary and people bowing down or crossing themselves to it. However, we do have images of Jesus holding lambs in stained glass windows, etc. Is this wrong? I don’t think so. The bottom line, is what we do with God and what we do with gods…and we have plenty of them in our lives. Let me give a small count: money and materialism, cars, houses, boats, portfolios, celebrities, sports, ourselves (probably should be at the top of the list), video games, TV, movies, food, jobs, and on it goes. These are all things we put before God in our lives.
Now, regarding the latter part of your comment, the two are not related. Jesus is the image of the invisible God. That doesn’t make Him a picture or a statue. I’m preaching this weekend from John 1:14-18 and verse 18 tells us that Jesus has explained who God is. So we have the big question: “What is God like?” Jesus is the answer. As for the depiction of Jesus in Revelation, I think those are more of a symbolic image than literal. Count the number of times the word “like” is used in Rev. 1:13-16. This description carries over to Rev. 19 as well. Grace and peace.