3.24.24 Willisburg Bulletin
“but now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.” Hebrews 11:16
Desiring To Be Near God
Last week, Steve Niemeier held a meeting at Overland and during his lesson on Heaven, something struck me. While he was in Sierra Leone, Africa, he was talking to a Christian that was blind. They were talking about the glories of Heaven and how he’d have his sight back. However, the man was so joyous he said “I’ve seen Heaven through the eyes of faith.” What a set back that was for me as I have never thought of it that way! We talk about Heaven and all its wonderous beauty of what we can imagine but not that we’ve actually seen it. Maybe if we all had that kind of attitude, we’d desire it a little more and about how we can see Heaven. You know, there is a place that we can be the closest to Heaven; that place is when we are worshipping God as saints together in one place. How wonderful is it that God set the worship services in place to show us what it will be like worshipping our Creator in Heaven. Yes, many things will be different, but the simply fact that when we are at the building worshipping, we are as close to heaven as we can get on earth. God knew what He was doing. Praising God, just as we will be doing in Heaven. Shouldn’t that make you desire to be at worship as many times as the doors are open?!! Just as David said in Psalm 122:1, “I was glad when they said to me, let us go into the house of the Lord.” Do you have this attitude? Do you look forward to going to services? Are you excited to hear His Word being preached? Do you listen attentively to the prayers as if you were saying it? Do you enjoy singing praises to God? I pray we do! It’s a joyous day anytime we can worship our Lord, because this is exactly what we will be doing in Heaven. Why then would someone not want to attend services faithfully? Why would you want to skip Sunday evening for this or that? Or just not come Wednesday because this week has just been rough or we have other plans? And of course one would say the gospel meeting seems right at the time of everything else? But what is more important than God? It should be our DESIRE to attend worship.
Command To Worship
It is a command as well. Hebrews 10:24-25 says, “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 more as you see the Day approaching.” There are several words in this passage that imply we have an obligation to our brethren. It starts off with things we must do WITH our church family. The word consider in this verse means to fix one’s eyes upon; to take notice of them. Stir is to provoke/ stimulate. Love and good works are the articles being used towards and for other people. Then it says do not forsake, meaning abandon, quit, leave, depart, or withdraw from. The act we are not to leave is assembling/ fitting together of all the parts. And if you notice, the “ING” on the end of that word. It’s a reference to all the opportunities when the doors are open to gather together as saints of Christ. If some are missing from the congregation, all of our parts are not put together. It’s not as strong if an arm isn’t present. The next part of that verse flips it to the positive and says rather than missing services, come to exhort your family. Exhort literally means to call to one’s side, to actually put your arms around their shoulder as if you are propping them up like athletes do when a fellow teammate is hurt and to keep them on track. The power of our influence cannot be denied. We are responsible for how we’ve influenced people with our attendance and if and how we stir up good works. It’s simple, if you aren’t there, how are you loving each other or stimulating good works.