The morning sun slips through your window blinds. Your golden retriever joyously hops on your bed, kissing you awake. You can smell the coffee brewing in the kitchen. You want nothing more than to stay at home all day and rest.
Then you remember—it’s Sunday.
The kids need to be changed. Slacks and dresses need to be pressed. Breakfast has to be microwaved. The coffee has to go in a to-go mug. The Bible has to be pulled from the living room shelf.
The lack of desire to attend church is both a natural and an unnatural one. It’s natural in the sense that we are human beings with limits and exhaustion and we can only take so much “go, go, go.” But it’s unnatural in the sense that, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17, CSB). As a member of God’s family, you are given a new will with new desires. And one of those desires as God’s child should be to have fellowship with your brothers and sisters. Below are a few reasons why you should go to church, and a few ways to make it happen.
Why You Should Go to Church
1. We will not grow alone; we must be in fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ. I cannot stress this enough: church is not a building, but a holistic community of believers.
Remember that the early church was known not only for their vigor in spreading the gospel, but also for their consistency in gathering together. They truly were unified: 41 So those who accepted his message were baptized, and that day about 3,000 people were added to them. 42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers (Acts 2:41-42, CSB).
2. God commanded a Sabbath, a day that both rests our souls and magnifies His name.
27 Then He told them, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. 28 Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27-28). The Sabbath wasn’t made to be another mark off your checklist—God made this day for your good! Hebrews 4:9 calls this day “a Sabbath rest.” God values our rest; He gives us permission to relax—actually, He insists upon it.
3. Worship is about God, not about you.
“Proclaim Yahweh’s greatness with me; let us exalt His name together,” says Psalm 34:3 (CSB). Notice the communality of the verse: worship is a corporate experience.
What to Do When You Don’t Feel Like Going to Church
1. Hit the “reset” button on your attitude. When you reset your attitude, you renew your motives. When you renew your motives, you transform your actions.
2. Make church enjoyable for you and the whole family. While you don’t go to church to be entertained, church should be a joyful experience.
“I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’” (Psalm 122:1, CSB).
- Go out to lunch with another family after church; it’s the relationships that make up the church, not the pew seats. Growing up, my Baptist church services were on Saturday nights. Once a month after church, we as a family would roll by the local 7-11 and grab slurpees, then sip them over a movie at home.
- Have a friendly competition with your little ones to see who can get ready for church the fastest. (I remain the champion of “Quickest Dresser.”)
- Similar to an advent calendar, set up a weekly calendar with boxes. Inside those boxes, write ways you and your kids can apply what you learned in church service to your daily life.
3. Be intentional about your church experience with friends and family. Schedule a time to sit down with one another and discuss what you learned. With this practice, church won’t be deemed as “one more thing” you have to do, but something that is intrinsically valuable and actually worth doing.
24 And let us be concerned about one another in order to promote love and good works, 25 not staying away from our worship meetings, as some habitually do, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day drawing near (Hebrews 10:24-25, CSB).
Francis Chan puts it like this: “The core problem isn’t the fact that we’re lukewarm, halfhearted, or stagnant Christians. The crux of it all is why we are this way, and it is because we have an inaccurate view of God. We see Him as a benevolent Being who is satisfied when people manage to fit Him into their lives in some small way. We forget that God never had an identity crisis. He knows that He’s great and deserves to be the center of our lives.”
If you’re looking for 99 more reasons to go to church, check out this blog post—
https://hillsong.com/collected/blog/2014/09/99-reasons-you-should-go-to-church-this-weekend/#.WUlgjxPyui4
Caroline Case is a proud Nashville transplant from Naples, Florida, who serves as the Production Editor for Lifeway’s SmallGroup.com and Discipleship in Context teams. Caroline has a Bachelor of Communication from Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, FL. She is pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in English and Creative Writing at Belmont University in Nashville, where she will go on to pursue her doctorate and teach.
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