The dangers of not going to church

January 13, 2008

Last Sunday in California with my relatives offered no opportunity to go to church. Had I asked, one of them would have taken me, or at least dropped me off, however, without any knowledge of the churches in the area, finding something appropriate and nearby may have been a challenge.

Here in Florida we have attended several over the years of vacationing in this area. Some are vibrant and teach the Bible (Yes, it is true; some churches do not) and we will go to one of those this morning. My devotional reading reminds me of one good reason not to miss church very often.

I love staying home, being alone, doing things on my own, but one of the dangers of time alone is the hermit thing where a person starts talking to themselves and hearing voices. In the spiritual realm, if this isn’t prayer and the Holy Spirit, it will be doubts and the enemy who fuels those doubts with his lies.

Some of the questions a loner or a lonely person might start asking are seldom vocalized, but if they were, they would sound like this: Does God really love me? Will He hear and answer my prayers? Does He understand my problems or even care about them? Will He intervene on the behalf of others that I care about and who are in danger?

Today’s devotional reading says, “Although these questions may seem irreverent to some, they simply embody the doubts and fears of a great many doubting hearts, and they only need to be asked in order to prove that these doubts and fears are in themselves the real irreverence. We know what the triumphant answers to such questions would be. No doubts could withstand their testimony; and the soul that asks and answers them honestly will be shut up to a profound and absolute conviction that God is and must be enough.”

“They only need to be asked”—yet when I am alone and get caught up in a fear or a doubt, often I don’t ask. Instead I just stew about my problems, wrangle with my fears, and fail to see the obvious. Yet when I go to church, invariable someone says something that directs my mind away from my inner battle and puts it on the glory and power of God.

The truth I need to hear that day might be in the words of a chorus, or in the sermon, or from another believer, or even something written in the bulletin. Wherever it comes from, God knew what He was doing when He put Hebrews 10:24-25 in the Bible. It says, “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

I need the exhortation of others. I need to be stirred up when I get complacent, encouraged when I’m tired of doing good for others (sometimes with no visible rewards), and reminded that Jesus will return, especially when the same-old, same-old gets me down.

I also need my fears and doubts exposed, either by hearing them said out loud or by hearing the obvious answers to whatever has been flying through my head. No matter how much I think I can survive all by myself, too much time alone makes me vulnerable to oblivion and to forgetting the power and sufficiency of God.