It doesn’t matter whether you go to a beautifully-presented megachurch service with worship music that rocks the house and sends chills up your spine like nothing else can, a rigidly rote service that leaves you feeling uptight and unfed, or a sleepy service that makes you doze. No church service is God.
How you feel while you’re in church isn’t an accurate measure of who God is and what it feels like to hang out with him. We won’t get to experience that part until we’re on the other side.
What church really boils down to is how you apply it all during the other days of the week – studying the bible alone and using what you’ve learned around others in daily life. Church’s purpose isn’t how good that one hour on Sunday makes you feel.
Growing up, it was really hard to feel anything but painfully bored. I wondered how I’d make it through each hour-that-felt-like-an-eternity mass with a priest who made absolutely no effort to even seem remotely interested in his own words about God. It was torture. No one should be in charge of leading a church if they are joyless.
Since choosing Christianity for myself, I’ve attended two churches that have both fed and lifted me. Yet our son feels the same way I felt at church growing up – “When will it be over??”
What it all comes down to is that no matter what we as humans do to spend time communing together in order to talk about God, that feeling of getting together can’t be compared with what being with God would really feel like.
If this is how God defines himself…
‘The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness…and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.’
Exodus 34:6
…and if this is what is said about what’s awaiting us…
No eye has see, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.
1 Corinthians 2:9
…then the feeling you get from being in church – whatever kind of church – could never be equated with the feeling of being in God’s pure-love presence.
Going to church is simply a gathering. The music and the sermon may be boring or deeply moving. But that’s just humans doing what they do. I can feel the same kind of boredom watching football, or the same kind of exhiliration watching a Coldplay concert. The important thing is what you make of it – do you connect with others while you’re there? Do you go out the door and pray for them at home? Do you apply what you learn to your life? Do you grow?
Perfect!
Thank you!