Technology! It’s everything today—more than we ever realized! And it’s redefining everything in life: how we relate to each other, parent our children, do our school work, and carry on our day-to-day business. Virtually everyone walking down the street is transfixed by the little screen in the palm of their hand.
But when it comes to God, the fundamental fact dwarfing all other facts in the universe, everything seems upside down. To our fast-lane world, the careful study, contemplation, and enjoyment of God is increasingly obsolete, out of mind, and out of the picture. The One who started it all doesn’t fit in. And when the Father is pushed to the back seat, the Son and the Spirit are soon to follow. Today, even believers have ceased to be amazed by the many facets of our Creator—worship has become for many routine and perfunctory, even “non-essential.” We appear to have traded the issues of divine sovereignty, the meaning of history, the eternal plan, and the identity and mission of Jesus for a focus on our self—a “privatized personal spirituality.”
“When faith is relegated to a privatized, personal, consumeristic realm, everyone loses. Personal spirituality becomes an incoherent mess when it has weak ties to a robust church community. Society at large suffers when local churches aren’t fully functioning. Among other things, churches serve critical needs in their communities (food banks, homeless assistance, educational support, orphan care, counseling, among much else) and contribute to the mental and spiritual health of the larger population.” -Brett McCracken, Why We Don’t See the Church as Essential
If we want our faith to grow, we need to keep it supplied with an ever-expanding knowledge about God, the importance of his Son in our lives, and the rescuing power of the Holy Spirit. That’s always been the real business of the church. There is no stronger place to grow our faith than when we come together as the body of Christ to worship him.
There is an enjoyment of God, a “[taste] of the heavenly gift” and a “[sharing] in the Holy Spirit,” and a “[tasting] of the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come” that cannot be experienced apart from the corporate gathering of Jesus’s church (Hebrews 6:4–5; 1 Corinthians 14:26; Colossians 3:15–16). And there is a manifestation of Jesus’s presence that only occurs when this happens: Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. (Matthew 18:20) –Jon Bloom, Why We Shouldn’t Neglect to Meet Together
What else does the church have to offer the world that it can’t better provide for itself? Looking forward to seeing you in church on Sunday!
Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash
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