I was talking with a woman yesterday about how predators attack the young, the old, and the maimed. How wild killers separate and run down the one who is alone, because there is strength in numbers. That’s the way the animal kingdom has worked since sin entered the world. It was one of those five minute conversations that had no real significance. I thought.
This morning I woke with thoughts pounding through my head like a herd of zebras being chased by lions, and I had to get to the computer to put this in my prayer journal. That’s where it grew into this, a personal look back at a time in my life when, although I was a Christian, I was the one who was alone, and it was by my own doing.
I had been widowed exactly a year when the offense came. I was part of a congregation and had been for years, loved by some, liked by most, or so I supposed. That Sunday morning someone came up to me and asked my forgiveness for a choice I had made one year prior. Immediately I remembered the times the person asking forgiveness had greeted me with a smile and a hug, telling me they cared about me. And that’s when it started.
The Word says that only by pride contention comes and where envy and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. I took my wounded pride, those thoughts, “How can someone be angry at a decision I made the day my husband was dying? How could they hug me week after week and act like they weren’t angry?, and there’s no way I’m going to go sit with people who act like that and then hear a sermon and feel guilt and want to dump their offense on me” and I went home that day and didn’t go back.
For three years, I didn’t go back. Looking back today, in honesty I can only say that I grew in those three years. I grew in pride. I grew in a critical spirit. I grew in conviction that I was fine and didn’t need a group around me to worship God. I stayed home on Sundays, worshiped via You Tube, continued in the Word every day via Internet, and held classes at my home. I was alone. And I can’t even say I was aware that there was a problem with that. Pride’s blinders are subtle.
Oh sure, there was that scripture “Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together”, but I was still meeting with and teaching about God, so I wasn’t really forsaking…
This morning, I realized…if we are the body of Christ (and we are), suppose I am an index finger. Handy, available, pointing the way when asked, but normally just there to work with the rest of the fingers. If I looked at my life as that, when I let pride at offense become a disconnect from the body, that congregation was then missing an index finger. Can a hand function without an index finger? Truly, it can. Can it function in the fullness of what it was intended? With adaptation, the hand will be useful without the index finger, but the function of the index finger will have to be done by another finger. So in my rebellion, leaving the “hand”, the congregation of which I was at that time a part, did not impede the functioning of the congregation.
What did happen, then? What did it matter if I stayed home on Sunday mornings, like so many of us choose to do, especially in summer or family events, or outside activities? It mattered because each member of the body draws its life from the other members. If the human index finger is removed, the hand can still function with adaptation, but the finger begins to die without the blood flow from the other parts of the body. Without the warmth of the other members, the missing “finger” loses life, turns cold, and will eventually rot from the inside out.
In our spiritual walk with God, Jesus said “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I, in the midst.” Jesus also said “I will never leave you nor forsake you” but I can tell you that we have commands to love others as He has loved us and that’s impossible in rebellion and offense while walking alone, even if we have other “also alone” people in our lives.
When offense comes, it is our enemy goading us to walk away. It is our soul telling us we “don’t have to put up with that”. It is a wile of the devil to separate us from the midst of the presence of God that is promised when we gather with people of like precious faith. Only our pride and preferring our own way can get us to that point. If we do not think “more highly of ourselves than we ought”, the enemy has no weapon.
I will never know if my being out there on my own opened the door for the enemy to bring two strokes into my life. What I do know is that when my miracle healing came, there was a limited number of people to rejoice with. And that was kind of sad.
I am now in my right mind, serving God, loving people more than what they think of me, free from caring what that is. Every week,at least once a week, I gather with people of faith, if for no other reason than to be with Jesus “in the midst.” The more I know His love for me, the more I can love.
There are those who will say my stance on “You need to be in corporate worship with people of like faith on Sundays, even when the sun is shining on the lake” is legalism. I tell you it’s not. The One who died for you adores you, whether you ever adore him enough to meet with Him at all. Jesus’ sacrifice was His choice and He gives you the right to make yours.
Gathering with our other body parts is relationship, companionship and support. It is much harder for crazy doctrine to take hold and rest in your head when you’re gathered with people who hold the same truths in their heart you do. We are not safe when we walk alone spiritually. We were never intended to. We might wind up as a disconnected body part.
For His Glory 