It is a Monday as I write this (but a Sunday as I send it). Bob is off to breakfast with a friend. The house is quiet. I am thinking about church yesterday.
I am so enjoying the perspective of Pastor Laura as she brings messages – some even from Scriptures that I brought messages. Her viewpoint of those passages is profoundly the same truth of the Gospel, but it has been touched by her life experiences, which are different from mine.
I realized this morning that after a little more than a decade of studying and arranging and thinking about what message to bring each Sunday, I am being blessed and refreshed by another’s illumination.
I have been taking notes as I listen on Sunday. My small Bible’s blank pages have already filled up and I am thinking of now bringing a notebook. I have even “stolen” some of Pastor Laura’s thoughts to prompt devotions, as well as my praise to my LORD.
Hebrews 10:24-25 exhorts us to be “concerned about one another in order to promote love and good works, not staying away from our worship meetings, as some habitually do, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” [HCSB]
We need to go to church regularly. I could stay home on Sunday, put on a worship playlist, sing, praise, and read my Bible. But going to church on Sunday allows me to find a new illumination on Scripture, allows me to experience the love and good works others will encourage in me, and gives me a time of refreshing that I could not have if I skipped the “assembling.”