Terrie Kennington is a member of Fellowship Church in Springfield, Ohio. She is on the weekend message team. I kept hearing about this amazing message that Terrie shared recently. I asked her to write an Interruption overviewing her thoughts. She mentioned to me the difficulty of distilling an entire message into about 400 words – and I said emphatically that she could do it.
She did; read it below!
We need to know the reason ‘Why?’
That statement has been sounding in my head for months. I have been thinking of this regarding why we meet as believers in Jesus. It’s a good idea to look at the reasons we do it. It can’t just be out of obligation, ritual, or it’s just the thing Christians do.
These reasons won’t hold up when life gets busy, stressful, there are disagreements, disappointments, or there’s a pandemic.
I entitled this “Know The ‘Why?’” not “Know Your ‘Why?’” I don’t want to know my “whys?”; I want to know God’s “whys?” What are His reasons?
Reason # 1: Because God said so, and His commands are good.
Hebrews 10:25 says, “Do not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing.” This is a command. God is a good Father and doesn’t make up rules just for us to follow. His commands are for our good. Psalm 19 talks about His laws, commands, and precepts being sweet – sweeter than honey. We meet because we don’t want to miss out on the goodness God has for us.
Reason #2: God makes His presence known.
Matthew 18:20 says, “For where two or three gather in My Name, there am I with them.” This is a curious statement since we know that God is omnipresent. God is with me when I’m all alone, so why would Jesus make this statement about Him being with two or three? There must be something special about His presence when we gather with others. He makes His presence known when we worship Him and gather for His purposes. In Scripture, there are many promises that come with His presence: rest, joy, direction, healing, strength, comfort, freedom – to name a few.
Reason #3: We gather to build each other up.
1 Corinthians 14:26 says, “Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.” This verse follows a list of things that the believers did when they met together. Hebrews 10:24-25 discusses spurring each other toward love and good deeds and encouraging one another. We come together to have our faith strengthened, so we can go back out to impact the world.
Reason #4: We come together to discover what God is saying to us and our community.
I love listening to sermons online. I have learned a lot from these, but there is one thing that these will not be able to tell me. What is God saying about our congregation and how we are to impact our community? God usually doesn’t share those specifics with people across the country. He wants to talk to us about it. We gather to get our instructions for impacting our city for the kingdom.
When we come to a gathering looking for God’s purposes to be accomplished, we are going to see people’s lives changed – including our own.
Now you know the “Why?” of our meeting together.