We Need Each Other

As another Sunday rolls around, COVID-19 continues to disrupt almost every one of us. It’s hard to imagine at this point anyone who has not been effected on one level or another. Knowing a handful of people who have suffered through it, I am more aware of the significance of the virus than in its early days. As a nation we rejoice together in its limited death toll, yet we recognize the significant wake it continues to leave all over. Related to the suffering, let me highlight just one area today.

On this Sunday many churches continue to struggle. Some meet in person with social distancing – from my friends and research I guess around 65% of what was normal. Others like us continue to also meet online as part of our pandemic response; nationwide those numbers decrease though. Not one pastor has ever had a seminary class on pandemic ministry. Every church continues to play this out in real time as they seek to minister to their own congregations.

In this short blog, please pause long enough to consider just this statement: We need each other – now more than ever.

Go the Extra Mile Today – Use the Energy God Gives You to Live for His Purpose

If you can breathe and have any health at all, your life today is a gift of God’s grace to you. He provides you your breath and life. He grants you your energy. Even now He is working in you. Notice these key verses:

• “…If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen” (1 Pet 4:11b).
• “…for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil 2:13).
• “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10).
• “…being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;” (Phil 1:6).

Consider what these four verses teach. God grants you your energy, works in you to give you desire to serve Him, is doing a good work in you, and will continue to go a good work in you. Even your ability to read this blog is a manifestation of God’s grace.

We Need Each Other

Let me quote the writer of Hebrews who wrote it so powerfully – consider this:

And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works,
not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some,
but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.
(Hebrews 10:24-25)

We need each other today.

In this day of trouble and suffering with so many struggling with keeping a balance between fear and godly concern, we need each other. We need the exhortation, the care provided by the mutual care of the body, and the love. Other followers of Christ remind us of our life in Christ, Christ’s provisions, and an eternal perspective. These things are just what the doctor ordered.

Therefore…

1. Unless you have a quarantine issue, please give your very best effort to attend your local church service with your church family. To stress this, Please, for the sake of your own soul and the spiritual benefit of others, attend worship with your church family. They need you, and, in this crazy world, you need them.
2. If you cannot physically spend time with your church family today, then make an intentional effort to do two different important things: 1) Attend your service online, and 2) Reach out to someone in your church family. You need what your church family, corporate worship, and the preached word can provide you. You provide what only you can uniquely provide the rest of your church family as well.

We all suffer together through this pandemic. Possibly you face more pressure today than most. In any case, we need each other, our corporate worship together, and the strength provided through both.

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