Acts 2:42 – They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
Acts 11:23 – Then when he arrived and witnessed the grace of God, he rejoiced and began to encourage them all with resolute heart to remain true to the Lord.
Sunday and Wednesday Bible classes and worship are critical to our spiritual growth and stability. We need each other because we live in a world that can pollute the spirit if not cleansed with one another. We need each other to stay faithful – it is one of the blessed opportunities and responsibilities of Christianity. It is somewhere between difficult and impossible to go it alone. It also is dangerous to be sloppy or treat the services of the church as optional because God deserves our worship and fellow Christians need each other.
The following illustration helps us comprehend the need to be present at all services possible:
Not long ago, the world watched as three gray whales, icebound off Point Barrow, Alaska, floated battered and bloody, gasping for breath at a hole in the ice. Their only hope: somehow to be transported five miles past the ice to open sea.
Rescuers began cutting a string of breathing holes about twenty yards apart in the six inch thick ice. For eight days they coaxed the whales from one hole to the next, mile after mile. Along the way, one of the trio vanished and was presumed dead. But finally, with the help of Russian icebreakers, the whales Putu and Siku swam to freedom.
In a way, worship is a string of breathing holes the Lord provides His people. Battered and bruised in a world frozen over with greed, selfishness, and hatred, we rise for air in church, a place to breathe again, to be loved and encouraged, until that day when the Lord forever shatters the ice cap.
…Mike