This month, I’m actually going to be calling back to something that was said in one of Pastor Mike’s sermons from a couple of weeks ago. I can’t remember the exact title of the sermon, but I do remember it was in the Worship series. It’s an answer to the question, “Why do we go to church?” All of this will be from my compilation of notes that I took during this sermon.
First, let’s talk about your morning routine for a minute (you’ll see where this is going). After you grumble and complain that the alarm clock on your phone or on your nightstand is going off, and you actually have to get up, you turn it off. You check your phone after, and you see it: the red or orange low battery symbol on your notification bar (where the time is). So, you plug it in, and by the time you get ready, eat your breakfast and get ready to leave the house (or go to your home office, or couch, or wherever you do work from home. ), your phone is at full battery or you have enough to last you until you get home or off work, or even until lunch when you can plug it in for the hour break that you have.
This feeds into my opinion as to why we go to church. During our week, we are like cell phones. We are depleted from fighting battles with God’s help, that we are at low battery, and the church is that charger (luckily, unlike phone chargers, we don’t constantly have to go to new churches to be charged, like we have to buy chargers when they wear out). It also feeds into the verse that was the topic verse of that entire sermon series.
“Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.” -Psalm 29:2 (NIV)
That is a big reason that the sermon said about going to church. To ascribe to the lord and his glory, and worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. In other words, to worship his glory, His splendor, and His holiness.
But there’s another reason that feeds back into recharging. It’s a point that I distinctly remember from the entire sermon. That is the point of building each other up, fellowship. Specifically, it’s for us to glorify God, give thanks, and spur (encourage) one another. I know for me, I feel spurred on after the service on Sundays, and I feel ready to go into the fight alongside God that week.
Especially in these times, it is so important to encourage one another, and that aids in recharging us for our own individual weeks, because through this, the body of the church can be edified, inspired, and built up. It also reflects heaven here on earth, almost a preview of what we are going to expect. I think of the hymn “When We All Get to Heaven” as a benchmark for what we expect.
“When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be. When we all see Jesus, we’ll sing and shout the victory!”
So why do we go to church? Well, as you can see, there are many reasons as to why, but it all feeds into one answer, to be spiritually recharged, so we can go back into the fight alongside God better than ever.