3. It’s What God Commands
Gathering with our church family is a voluntary act of joyful obedience and commitment to God. We don’t obey God out of servile fear, but rather out of joyful, grace-fuelled love and gratitude for all that he is to us and has done for us in Jesus.
The Spirit of God has inspired the Bible. This means the commands we read for Christians are inspired by the Spirit. This means they are the will of God for us.
The author of Hebrews in 10v25, inspired by the Spirit of God, writes that believers should “not neglect to meet together”. The word ‘meet’ here means to gather or assemble together. The word ‘neglect’ means to leave behind, abandon, forsake.
John tells us in 1 John 5:3 “this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome”. What God commands us is not intended to weigh us down. God’s commands to his people are good gifts of life to us. God knows what we need, he knows what is good and best for us.
Because our hearts are full of the God who loved us, because we trust his love and care for us, because the Spirit is living in us to help us do what God calls us to do, we can obey this command of his to not neglect the gatherings of his people; our church family.
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