Hebrews 10:24-25English Standard Version (ESV)
"24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 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."
I recently read a great article about the meaning of Hebrews 10:24-25 and what is meant by "not neglecting to meet together". Reading the article stirred up a lot of thoughts for me about church. You can read the article here. It is lengthy but well worth it. This is one of my favorite quotes: "If you are absent, and others do not know where you are, but they are not surprised by your absence, you are probably out of the will of God on this matter. If you can miss church without being missed at church, something is missing. And if you can miss church without missing church, something is missing."
When I was a little girl, growing up in my home wasn't easy. It's safe to say I probably had more bad memories than good. That's not to say it was all bad and that's also not to say that there were never any good memories. Have you seen the movie "Inside Out"? When I really think about it, some of the best memories I can recall with my family were the rare occasions when we had family game night. We would play Boggle or Yahtzee or cards most of the time and it was so fun! I remember the laughter...one time, we were playing Yahtzee and in that game you have a cup that you throw dice in to shake them up before rolling them out. Well, my Dad always had a cup of pop next to him and he had a blue plastic cup filled with ice and pop that looked similar to the Yahtzee cup and one time he chunked the Yahtzee dice into his cup full of pop. We all laughed so hard! One of my other favorite memories of growing up was when we sat down as a family to share a meal together. It didn't happen often and less and less as I got older. My Dad would sometimes, unknowingly to the rest of the family, set a cassette tape recorder in the corner of the kitchen nook with a blank cassette tape inside and he would actually record our meals together. Sharing stories, laughing...it was great to listen to those cassettes years later. I wish I knew where they were now. Like I said though, it didn't happen regularly so I think in a way, that's what makes it stand out in my memory...that's what makes it special. Me and my sisters are nearing our 40's and 50's and we still talk about "The Food Fight" we had one time at the table growing up. It was epic. We all remember the menu that night...fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans, or was it corn? If you ask us, we all have the same memory...the chicken leg hitting the window and the mashed potatoes on the wall. Makes me laugh just thinking about it.
I recently watched the movie "Burnt". It stars Bradley Cooper who is a chef. In fact, he is a two-star Michelin chef trying to get his third star. He is an angry individual whose anger has cost him jobs and friends. The decisions he's made in his life have landed him in his current situation. Later in the movie, you find out why he's so angry. Someone close to him explains that he had a rough upbringing. His parents were divorced and he got shuffled around with other family members to raise him. In the kitchen of the restaurant where he works, at the end of every shift they have a "family meal" together but Bradley Cooper never participates. They invite him to come eat with them and he always declines and just stays in his office. He places himself on the outside of his work "family" because that's the way he feels on the inside...like an outsider who wouldn't know what to do with a family if he had one.
Over Spring Break, I had a conversation with a teenage boy to ask him how things were going in his family. His parents are divorced and on the weekends he is with his dad and during the week, he lives with his mom. I asked him how things were going at home. He said when he's not there his stepdad takes the family out to eat, or they cook a big meal at home, or his stepdad takes the family bowling. When he's home though, his mom does not cook, they do not sit down and eat together or do anything fun, and they usually eat fast food. I talked to another kid from a divorced home and he said his mom hardly ever cooks and he doesn't like being at home. The general consensus from the two boys I spoke with was "home is not a fun place to be". Nobody eats together, there's no fellowship, no sense of community, nobody seems to care if you're there or not.
When Justin and I first started dating, I was serving as the youth secretary in the youth department for Sunday School at our church. Once we became a couple, we wanted to do everything together including Sunday School so we decided to begin attending the Adult 2 Sunday School class of young married couples. It was great. Everyone was our age going through the same life stages together. We had women's Bible studies in each other's homes and we read books like "Twelve Extraordinary Women" and "Bad Girls of the Bible". We prayed together, shared struggles together, we did life together. After a few years, our Adult 2 Sunday School teachers formed a "home group". There were 4 couples (8 adults) and their children in this home group. We would trade off hosting in our homes and we shared meals together, studied the Bible together, split off into men and women's groups and we would share prayer requests together, hold each other accountable...we did life together. We were wives and mom's raising our children together and sharing all our struggles together. This home group made church come to life. We were connected to the Body. We were eager to meet together again each Sunday. We looked forward to it. It was communion and community and life-giving and life-sustaining. To me, it was a picture of the way church is supposed to be and how it is supposed to function. It was Hebrews 10:24-25 in real life action. It was Scripture lived out and fulfilled. To me, it's what the writer of Hebrews meant when he said, "don't neglect the habit of meeting together".
When I consider all of this, the article, my best memories growing up, the movie I watched which in the end was about "family", the boys from the divorced homes, and the picture of the way church used to be for us...it makes me question, "Can I call my church Home my Family?"
"So when the winds blow, the redwoods stand, because they are linked and locked to each other, holding one another up. That is the way Christians stand against the storms of life that assault our faith in Jesus Christ: We hold each other up."
"You must set your mind on the Person and Work of the Lord Jesus Christ if your faith is to be strong, stable, and secure. But our text teaches us that Christians should also set their minds on one another. And this verb “continue” is in a grammatical emphasis that denotes continual or repeated action. Literally, the reading is, “And let us constantly consider one another…” Just as we are to always be thinking about Jesus, we also are to always be thinking about one another. The important point to get from this term is that Christian fellowship is – primarily, essentially, and ultimately – an internal reality. Fundamentally, our fellowship is not geographic, social, organizational, institutional, or programmatic. It is an internal disposition of care, concern, and compassion for one another that results in words, decisions, and actions that express the love of Jesus Christ."
"True Christian love will not only lead you to attend and participate in corporate worship, it will also lead you to prayerfully consider the needs, growth, and concerns of your brothers and sisters in Christ even when you are not physically together."
"Likewise, your true friends are not the people who always agree with you, cosign your agenda, and stay out of your way. Your best friends are the ones who make you better. That involves times when friends put a supportive arm around your shoulder and times when they put a scolding finger in your face. You need both the comfort of tender love and the confrontation of tough love. You need to be with brothers and sisters in Christ who think enough of you to stir you up to love and good works."
"But corporate worship is not a spectator sport where you simply show up, receive the ministry of others, give an offering, greet a few acquaintances and friends, and then go home thinking and talking about how whether the service suited your tastes, touched your emotions, and met your needs. Corporate worship is three-dimensional. God blesses us and we bless God. But it doesn’t stop there. In corporate worship we also bless one another by saying and doing those things that stir up love and good works."
