DEVOTIONS
What do you think of when you hear the word, “Church”? A “club house for sinners”? “A place where hypocrites meet”? (I always tell people when they refer to the Church as such a place, “Well, why don’t you come along, too? There is always room for one more!”), “a hospital for the saints”? Or the place where Christians meet a couple of times a week? To be honest, it’s all of these rolled up into one. It’s a “clubhouse for sinners” because every Christian is simply a sinner saved by grace. It’s “a place where hypocrites meet”, because sometimes we, as believers, seem to miss the mark for our calling as believers. Each one of us have feet made of clay and when the tidewaters of persecution, or the tidewaters of temptation come our way, we occasionally wash out because of fear of what others might say about us, or because we can’t seem to stand up to sin, especially to those sins that we so easily give way to. And therefore, it certainly is a “hospital for sinners” because each of us needs forgiveness and healing from heartaches and from our own accusations of “not being able to stand up against the wiles of the Devil”. Therefore, we scold ourselves for being so “weak kneed and ineffective”. But most of all, it is that place where Christians meet several times a week because we need to come together as a body of believers, in order that we might receive encouragement for our life struggles, and because we need to experience our Lord’s presence through worship and song.
You see, Jesus established the Church for all these reasons and more. He knew we would wash out from time to time and would need encouragement, and He knew that we needed to know what it was to walk in His presence. One of the greatest promises He gave us is the one that says, “And lo, I am with you always, even unto the ends of the earth.”
