Many typically active participants in worship and fellowship have not seen their brethren in a month. Preachers are standing in empty buildings or sitting in their own homes, sharing messages through the internet. But, in most cases Christians are not together.
Even the few who remain able or willing to meet on the Lord’s day have limited their time together to a single hour once a week. Staying at arm’s length and leaving quickly, the loving closeness of a spiritual family is greatly missed. It is obvious to some that a “virtual” assembly is a pale imitation of a congregational meeting to worship God. If others were not aware of the great disadvantages of these electronic communications, it is becoming obvious as the pandemic lingers.
Some observations are in order:
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Some Christians have been “forsaking the assembling of ourselves together” (cf. Hebrews 10:25), just as in the first century. For them, there really is no difference this past month to the distance they have been maintaining from their brethren. They may be chafing at total isolation, but if it bothered them that they weren’t with their spiritual family, they would have been coming before! By forsaking the opportunity to worship with God’s people, they have long been a discouragement. They weaken themselves, but they weaken their brethren as well.
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Some Christians are shut-in. Though they would love to be with their brethren, health or circumstances preclude it. No, they are not forsaking the Lord or their brethren, they simply can’t come. Now that you have experienced what it means to be isolated from God’s family, you can imagine what they have suffered through for months or even years. They need your encouragement, your compassion, your edification, your help. Please include the shut-ins as you pray, call, and eventually visit. They need their spiritual family.
Surely all of us can see that this situation we find ourselves in is not only not normal, but not good. God’s plan is for us to “come together as a church.” God organized His people into local congregations. This is so that we might worship together, admonish and edify one another, and grow up to be spiritually mature. You can’t do it at home. You can’t do it virtually. You have to do it the way God designed for it to be done (cf. Ephesians 3:11-16). When we come together for work and worship, Paul writes, “the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love” (3:16).
We need to be together! Please pray to God diligently, every day. In every prayer petition Him for a quick ending of this unnatural and unfortunate circumstance. Pray so that God’s people can again enjoy and benefit from coming “together as a church.”
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