It may be a good thing if the church where you gather on Sunday is filled with people. It is a much better thing if those people are filled with God. How wonderful it might be if there is a sense of excitement and purposefulness as the doors open and the worshipers arrive. Better still would be if there is a sense of spiritual hunger and expectant submission as the priority of God’s presence is the greatest desire among you all. Large crowds are easier to experience than the substance of God’s presence and it is likely that neither you nor I have ever attended a worship gathering that was blessed to receive ALL that God desired to give of Himself. They are strange thing, corporate worship gatherings but stranger still is the idea that we would go randomly with no real forethought placed on why we do this from week to week. The great risk is that we might enjoy good services with happy people, accurate and meaningful bible teaching, heartfelt songs full of lyrical truth and perhaps even the rare flashes of inner brokenness which always precede true moves of God. This type of service may happen to us hundreds of time in our lives, taking us right to the threshold of all that God desires to do among us…but never ushering us across that point. I’m finding these days that good church services are beginning to feel like the enemy of my soul. I no longer want nice, vibrant services. I want God.
Exodus 33:14-16 – “And God said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And {Moses} said to Him, “If Your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in Your sight, I and Your people? Is it not in Your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and Your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”
Moses could not bear the thought of leading without the presence of God. He was unwilling to experience momentum, progress and accomplishment unless God led him every step of the way. Brother Moses had been graced with the holiest hunger of all; that deep gnawing in the believer’s spirit where the best that the life of faith might offer cannot satisfy what’s going on inside him. Moses could not endure the agonizing potential of God’s people moving toward their inheritance without His presence. He literally told God that he would rather stay put where he and the people currently were rather than to presumably move ahead without Him.
As you leave for church on Sunday, what do you expect of your Redeemer? What will satisfy you this Lord’s Day? A tingle of the spine can be nice when the soloist hits her mark, but is that what we are to desire most? There are some phenomenal exhorters and expositors in this generation, but is this why we gather – to hear a gifted teacher speak? Let us love the saints of God but let us never allow our fellowship with them become primary on Sunday. Evangelism should characterize some of what we do when we gather if there is a likelihood of nonbelievers among us – but sharing the Gospel is not actually the most important facet of a worship gathering. God is. God is not music. God is not preaching. God is not evangelism. God, my friends, is greater than all those things therefore…God is the entire point.
Activity does not necessarily equal accomplishment – we need God and you will likely experience Him at the exact proportion of your hunger for Him. He is available and willing to abide with us in rich depth but the danger is that we will settle for the visible, the easily-accessible and the impressiveness of what sincere, faithful people can produce. Go deeper. Wait longer. Ask with tears. Starve yourself from lesser morsels. Call out. Cry loudly. Wrestle with the angel of the Lord until he blesses you. Welcome the fiery coal from off the altar to touch your lips. Don’t hide behind the doctrine of God’s omnipresence. Ask Him to visit with you, to tabernacle with you, to break bread with you today.
If not for the manifest presence of God, why bother with church?
Perhaps this is difficult in corporate worship because the brokeness which carries us across that threshold is…messy? Or silent?
I know I have squashed Godly tears for fear of mascara running and nervously filled silence with words, all to the end of remaining “in control”. That idea is laughable in itself!
Moses’ time in Sinai, Jesus’ time in the desert, and Jacob’s wrestling match were not a tidy picture. Dirt, hunger, and pain were involved. I’m pretty sure each was silent before God for more than 3 minutes at some point as well. How do we do that with a group?
I’ve gathered in places that squashed these things and in places which manufactured these things prior to God initiating the process. Both were not of God.
I do not have an answer for a group. I can only attempt honest prayer as a flawed individual who remains hungry for God. Perhaps if enough begin this, a sanctuary could be found that could be messy, or silent, as God directs?
Just what I needed to hear this morning, and every morning! Thanks Jeff!
Yet another message that is required for our “last cance at repentance”.