It’s another Monday. Am I ready for the week ahead? If I assembled with my brethren yesterday, and our assembly accomplished the purpose God meant it to when he ordained it, I should be not only ready, bur “revved up and rarin’ to go.”
On a Monday, you ask incredulously? Maybe you did not get out of Sunday what you were supposed to. So what is the purpose of our assembling together? It may not be what you have always thought.
I think our best verse is good old Hebrews 10:25, only forget the way we always use it, shaking our fingers in the faces of those who miss services. Start with the verse ahead: let us consider one another to provoke to love and good works... exhorting one another...
Too often we focus all our attention on the assembly as if that is the whole of our service to God. What it should be is refueling, so we can go out and continue to serve during the week. Romans 12:1 is key to understanding this: ...present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. You probably have a version that says "spiritual service," but that word can also be translated "worship,” and sometimes is. The way I live my life, if I live it as and because God wants it, is a type of worship to God, not just those few hours a week. By compartmentalizing our religion to a certain day, time, and place, we are giving God those lame sacrifices Malachi talks about in Malachi 1:8. God expects our all, all the time--not just on Sundays. And he has given us our brethren to encourage us and keep us on the right track when we meet together, provoking one another to love and good works as we go about the rest of our week. "One another" means we are all doing that, not just the preacher. Did you do your part yesterday, or did you go just to be entertained?
Somehow we think rituals are the only things that qualify as worship. Many passages in the Old Testament mention the people praying, or singing, or sacrificing, and then "they worshiped," almost as if those other acts were not worship (e.g. 2 Chron 29:29,30). And maybe there is a point there: we can do all those things, at the "right time," in the "right place" (translation: on a pew inside a building with a certain sign over the door), and still not be worshiping. Worshiping is prostrating the heart before God, not the body, and he expects us to do that all day long, every day.
So am I ready to worship God again this week, all week? If I refueled myself, drained out and changed the old dirty oil and filter, and vacuumed out the grime and dust of life, I should be able to serve God with all my might—whatever level that is in my stage of life at this particular time--and make it through another week in a world that should be foreign to my nature, instead of comfortable. And then I will be anxious for another day of replenishment next Sunday, because the need will be so obvious to me.
Through him then let us offer up a sacrifice of praise to God continually but to do good and to communicate forget not; for with such sacrifice God is well pleased. Heb 13:15,16
Dene Ward
On a Monday, you ask incredulously? Maybe you did not get out of Sunday what you were supposed to. So what is the purpose of our assembling together? It may not be what you have always thought.
I think our best verse is good old Hebrews 10:25, only forget the way we always use it, shaking our fingers in the faces of those who miss services. Start with the verse ahead: let us consider one another to provoke to love and good works... exhorting one another...
Too often we focus all our attention on the assembly as if that is the whole of our service to God. What it should be is refueling, so we can go out and continue to serve during the week. Romans 12:1 is key to understanding this: ...present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. You probably have a version that says "spiritual service," but that word can also be translated "worship,” and sometimes is. The way I live my life, if I live it as and because God wants it, is a type of worship to God, not just those few hours a week. By compartmentalizing our religion to a certain day, time, and place, we are giving God those lame sacrifices Malachi talks about in Malachi 1:8. God expects our all, all the time--not just on Sundays. And he has given us our brethren to encourage us and keep us on the right track when we meet together, provoking one another to love and good works as we go about the rest of our week. "One another" means we are all doing that, not just the preacher. Did you do your part yesterday, or did you go just to be entertained?
Somehow we think rituals are the only things that qualify as worship. Many passages in the Old Testament mention the people praying, or singing, or sacrificing, and then "they worshiped," almost as if those other acts were not worship (e.g. 2 Chron 29:29,30). And maybe there is a point there: we can do all those things, at the "right time," in the "right place" (translation: on a pew inside a building with a certain sign over the door), and still not be worshiping. Worshiping is prostrating the heart before God, not the body, and he expects us to do that all day long, every day.
So am I ready to worship God again this week, all week? If I refueled myself, drained out and changed the old dirty oil and filter, and vacuumed out the grime and dust of life, I should be able to serve God with all my might—whatever level that is in my stage of life at this particular time--and make it through another week in a world that should be foreign to my nature, instead of comfortable. And then I will be anxious for another day of replenishment next Sunday, because the need will be so obvious to me.
Through him then let us offer up a sacrifice of praise to God continually but to do good and to communicate forget not; for with such sacrifice God is well pleased. Heb 13:15,16
Dene Ward
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