May 24, 2006
Closer to God
David Wilson recently sent a photo of a young girl with her horse that included a hand written caption, “I feel closer to God with my horse…than at church.” Many in Colorado express the same sentiments, only they are looking up at the breathtaking San Juan Mountains! In my experience, those who say they can worship in the woods as effectively as they worship in the church are in reality looking for a plausible excuse to avoid church. Not that we can’t find warm God-given fuzzies in nature, but mountains don’t convict me of sin and a waterfall doesn’t help me grow as a Christian. As the writer of Hebrews tells us, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” Heb 10:25 NIV Now, if the girl in the picture were reading her Bible …that might be a horse of a different color!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Gail;
----I hate to admit this, but I feel closer to God in any variety of situations when I am alone. Very often at work, when I am pressed the hardest by my schedule I feel far closer to God than I ever do at church. I often feel closer to God holding my wife, or just sitting in the living room and watching my girls do what they do than I feel at church. But this does not bother me.
----I understand that when I am at church I am surrounded by people who are each different in many of their beliefs. We all relate to God in many ways differently than everyone else. Out of respect for the relationships that my brothers and sisters have with God, when I am at church I must be careful to not show with certainty some of what I believe in order to avoid offending others. And this is good, because this is what God has called us to be when together. So our time with God becomes limited by our time with each other.
----We are servants to each other when we are together. That is what makes church to me to be about you. And by serving you I serve Jesus. Without this service to one another at church there would be no encouragement in the Lord, there would be no building up of His people, no strength through the Holy Spirit, no increase in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, because God made His body to be that mechanism through which the nourishment and life force of the new life flows among those who have been made alive.
----We have not been made alive just to enjoy feelings. We have been made alive to have our sorry backsides safeguarded from the coming destruction. The need for one another is about physical survival in the least and preservation of that safeguard in the more. I go to church for the love of my brothers and sisters whom the Lord says I must love if I hope to love Him. In turn, I am strengthened and corrected by them as well.
Gail;
----I failed to state this outright, and I should have stated it: When I am alone is when my feelings of closeness to God are the greatest. But when I am at church is when my feelings of closeness to my brothers and sisters are the greatest. Maybe this is why I have these attitudes (dillusions, as would say the contemporary leader) that serving the Lord at church is accomplished through serving one another. And church is whenever you are with another. It requires the presence of others, not the presence of trees, and certainly not the internalized monasticism of "It's about God alone!". We may as well be alone in the woods if being at church is about directing attention to God alone.
Post a Comment