First let me start off by saying Christians are not perfect. Did you catch that? Let me say it again for the people in the back, CHRISTIANS ARE NOT PERFECT! Ok now I’ve got that out of the way I can move on. That took me a while to grasp myself, for a long time I assumed Christians were meant to be perfect people, holding themselves to a standard that us mere mortals could never achieve! I thought “CHURCH” was this building where all these perfect people came together to praise God and look down on all the unsaved people who weren’t apart of this members only club! When that is your view of church, it doesn’t sound that appealing does it? So it’s no surprise that I never saw myself as a church goer. I can count the times I stepped foot in a church in my life on one hand (before I came to Christ) Like I said before I had urges to know God, but unfortunately the one time in my adult life I found myself attending a service, I left feeling unmoved. I remember feeling that everyone was fake and the only thing that seemed to matter to these people was who was wearing what! I never expected church to feel like a fashion show, or a parade of wealth that didn’t seem to give any glory to God! Nobody seemed particularly welcoming and I left feeling like church was full of hypocrites! Imagine Monday through to Saturday your neighbour Mary or John from up the street supposedly being Christians, but nothing about their daily lives reflected a Christ like nature, they weren’t loving to their neighbours, they gossiped about everyone, they only helped themselves, but come Sunday morning they were the first arrivals at service?! When your expectations of church involve the word “perfect” when you meet the John’s and Mary’s you can’t help but feel the idea of church is pointless and not worth getting up for. That’s definitely how I felt about it, I was one of those people that said “I don’t need to go to church to praise God, I can do it from my home” But I didn’t say that because I really knew what I was talking about, remember I had no biblical knowledge at that point, I just used it as a way to validate my reasons for not getting up early, and I found other people just as clueless as myself to strengthen my opinions, talk about the blind leading the blind!
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So imagine my surprise when two months into confessing my allegiance to Jesus that I felt the Holy Spirit moving me to find a church! At first I tried to ignore that pull, but you can not ignore God, which I learned very quickly! The more I continued with my Bible study the more I was convicted that I NEEDED a church! Ultimately what I was really craving was a sense of community. My coming to Christ wasn’t your typical story, I had built relationships with fellow believers that lived overseas! It was ok when it came to the odd Whatsapp call or message but I still felt lonely and isolated. Having friends but feeling lonely is a trip! All my friends I had here were not religious, or not believers. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17 “THEREFORE, IF ANYONE IS IN CHRIST, THE NEW CREATION HAS COME: THE OLD HAS GONE, THE NEW IS HERE!” When you accept Christ and allow the change that comes with it, it’s impossible to stay the same person! You naturally start to feel the need to be around people who have the same core beliefs and things in common (That’s another blog post cause we need to discuss how hard those changes can be)
People make up a community, people make up a church, church is community! Church wasn’t designed to be just something you “Do” on a Sunday, church wasn’t meant to be something you do in a list of things, which really is just you doing works to secure a place in heaven, to avoid eternal damnation. How many Christians have you come across that actually believe if you don’t go to church that means you are not saved? I’ve heard people say that they have been told this! These same people who are quick to tell you about your salvation might feel righteous because they attend church every Sunday but all week they live in the spirit of unforgiveness and pride, but you’re the one with a salvation problem! The minds of some baffle me! EPHESIANS 2:8-9 “FOR IT IS BY GRACE YOU HAVE BEEN SAVED, THROUGH FAITH- AND THIS IS NOT FROM YOURSELVES, IT IS THE GIFT OF GOD- NOT BY WORKS, SO THAT NO ONE CAN BOAST.” So now we know that your attendance at church is not dependant on your salvation, lets talk about why we should go to church.
God didn’t create us to be lone ranger Christians! Our Triune God who is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, designed us to be in relationship with Him and others! It’s no coincidence that the whole Bible or law is summed up to this, love your neighbour as yourself! (GALATIANS 5:14) When Covid hit in 2020 and lockdowns were implemented, I felt the church was truly tested, churches had never closed their doors before and we were tasked to think outside the box so that we could still find ways to do community worship. I realised then that church was more than a building, here I was watching online services on a Sunday from the comforts of my bedroom, technically in attendance but the feeling was definitely different. Congregations gathered in outdoor spaces, like public parks in some countries, they had their whole services like this, not enclosed in brick and mortar but they were still a church! What made the church was the congregation! The church is the body of Christ and Jesus is the head of that body! The body is made up of believers of Christ, and Christ is the head, the One that leads us! (EPHESIANS 1:22-23)
Think about YOUR body, every part of your body is functional and has a purpose, some parts would have more impact on your life if they were to stop working than others but every part is just as important! Now if we transfer that analogy to the body of believers that make up the church, the body of Christ, that should tell us that we have a responsibility to be more than just church attendees, we all have a role to play, and its not exclusively just for the pastors, church leaders and worship teams! As believers we know that the Holy Spirit lives within us, He distributes gifts to us, and we are called to use these gifts, whether it be the gift of healing, wisdom, words of encouragement to build faith, knowledge, or prophecy to name a few, we are called to use them to edify the church, and these same gifts help us to share the Gospel! So our presence when we attend church should be felt, we should be active members within our churches, and when I say active I mean taking part in fellowship with each other, reaching out to other members, building relationships. If we all operated in this way, when someone new shows up on a Sunday, we would naturally make them feel welcomed, showing them what church is really about, giving them a feel of what community is meant to be, now church becomes something you look forward to, not something you numbly experience.
Life is hard, but life is even harder when you accept Christ! So why would you want to do it alone? We need a community of believers who we can come to for wisdom, counselling, encouragement, knowledge, a place where we can communally worship and honour God and really sit in his presence, not like we can’t sit in His presence on our own but there is something powerful about being in a group of people all calling out to God and praising his name, it really changes the atmosphere of the room! This world is designed to lead us astray, to make us question our faith, it’s very easy to let culture infiltrate the standards that God expects us to hold true, we start to compromise ourselves, then instead of walking like Christ, we start to live like everyone else and the light that Jesus called us to be starts to dim, our views start to become worldly and worldliness is just the absence of God! Once we start down that slippery path it becomes very easy for us to fall away from the faith, because the moral of the story is we need a community, we need our brothers and sisters in Christ to keep us on this narrow road which is not easy to tread! This is why WE NEED CHURCH!
Like I said before we are not perfect, the bible tells us in 1 JOHN 1:8 “IF WE CLAIM TO BE WITHOUT SIN, WE DECEIVE OURSELVES AND THE TRUTH IS NOT IN US.” So bare that in mind when dealing with your fellow brothers and sisters. I know there is a lot of church hurt out there, and there is a lot of unsavoury stories when it comes to the history of some churches, but to me that is just confirmation that perfection doesn’t exist, only Jesus can hold that title! I urge you to find your community, it makes such a difference to your walk. Since I found my Church it has really become a family to me, don’t be mistaken, I prayed over finding a good church, every time I went, my prayer was always for God to plant my feet firmly at my church if this was where He called me to be! I listened intently to the word given and made sure it was God’s word (the importance of Christians knowing their word is also another blog post I need to explore) In no time God ushered me into my church and I am now a part of my worship team, even a few weeks ago I had the privilege of giving my first sermon/word of encouragement, which still baffles me to this day! God has really been present in my life and he is definitely present in my church! I have grown so much more in my faith because of my church, I definitely wouldn’t have experienced the growth I have without it! We need Church like the sick need the hospital, we can bandage ourselves to a certain degree at home with our first aid kits but if we want true healing we need our doctors, and hospitals are where we find them, we need our check ups from our GP’s! So think of the church like going to see our GP for a weekly check up, or think of Church like going to hospital because we are sick and need heart surgery, and our surgeon is King Jesus! Just like we can’t do without hospitals, in that same way know we can’t do without churches!
MY CONVICTIONS 