Daily Reading: Hebrews 10
Scripture Focus: And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10.24-25)
Devotional Thought: I have a wood-burning fireplace, and I have noticed that it is the nature of hot coals to cool and go out when they are isolated from other such coals. But, when coals of fire are compacted together in the fireplace, they burn completely and continue to give out heat. They maintain their heat by their proximity to one another. That is true also with Christians.
Church attendance has fallen on hard times recently. Is church attendance important? The Bible says it is. The evidence I have seen across nearly 30 years of ministry says it is. I cannot do any better than Richard Taylor (Beacon Bible Commentary, Hebrews, p. 129) did when he wrote:
We should attend the means of grace regularly if for no other reason than out of 'consideration' for others. But such faithfulness is also one of the 'good works' to which we are to incite them - and surely we can do this in no better way than by example. The sad acknowledgment as the manner of some is, would imply that some of these Hebrew Christians no longer felt it necessary to attend the church services. This might be prompted by a mistaken piety, which supposed that solitary worship was better; or a religious conceit, which imagined that the need for corporate worship had been outgrown; or a decline in spiritual fervor, which resulted in sheer indifference. But regardless of the reason, carelessness in our attendance upon the means of grace is fatal, both to our influence and to our own souls... Only by meeting together can we fulfill the positive duty of exhorting one another.
Are you fired up about church?
Prayer: Jesus, you said you would build your church and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. Help me to do my part through faithful attendance and participation that I may be strong against the enemy. Amen.
Psalm of the Day: 7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 11 Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. 14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. (Psalms 51:7-15)
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