This week’s devotions are based on this week’s message: Let Easter Change you: Godly Community! (WATCH HERE)
A poll taken in 2022 indicated that only 20% (1 in 5) individuals in our country attend church on a weekly basis. Over 50% in the same poll do not attend at all or very regularly. Over the last 20 plus years church membership has been on the decline and the number of practicing Christians is now just over 60%.
So the question is becoming more common, “Why should I attend church, let alone belong to a church?”
Good question. One could make arguments that one doesn’t have to go to church to be a Christian. Or some might leverage that there are hypocrites in the church and that turns them off. Some would cite examples of impropriety in church leaders that led to a distrust of the church. Some might balk against the authority and institutionalism of the church.
All real reasons. All worthy of a conversation.
So why be part of a church? Why have a godly community (notice I didn’t say “perfect” community…that will be in heaven!) around you? What blessings come from being part of a local church that you wouldn’t receive elsewhere? This week is the opportunity to reflect on these questions and the value of godly community in the church.
Let’s start with a fundamental reality: The Church is God’s doing and design.
When we are connected to Christ, he connects us to his Church.
Ephesians 2:19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
These truths are important to remember, even when we are talking about a visible, Christian church. The gathering of God’s people is the work of God.
Why is this important to remember?
We all have had some bad experiences with a visible church. Let me apologize on behalf of the church that gave you a bad experience. Every visible church is made up of sinful human beings, including the pastors. So every church has the opportunity to sin against you or in some way to present something that is not godly. That is not indicative of the church, it is indicative of sin that lurks in the heart of church goers.
So, let’s not be disillusioned to think that every visible church is perfect. It’s not.
However, that leads us to this reality. Everything that God creates is for the blessing of his people. So God has created the church for you and made you for his church. So, when we are kept away from the church, that is often Satan working to keep us disconnected from a place where God desires us to be blessed and us to be a blessing to others.
We must remember what makes up God’s church and should be the reality for every visible manifestation of it:
- Christ Jesus is the cornerstone. Everything and everyone is to be aligned to him.
- The foundation is the Scripture. Everything the Apostles and Prophets taught forms the teaching of the church. The Bible is the authority, nothing more, nothing less.
- The bricks of the church are the people God has saved by his grace and brought together as his church. The gathering of the church is God’s doing, not man’s.
So why be active in a visible church? We will explore four reasons this week…but to begin with simply this compelling reason. God made the church for you and made you for the church…and when God does something for you, he desires for you to be blessed by it.
Apply: What has been your perspective of the church? Good? Bad? In between? What changes when I begin with the premise that God designed and gathers the church to be a blessing to all in the church?
Prayer: Lord, thank you for doing all to be a blessing to me…including giving me a visible church that is centered on Christ, founded on the Scriptures, and gathering with others who also believe in Jesus as Savior. AMEN.