Praise the Lord, O My Soul!

It has been a really fantastic day.  I love to go to church and worship in the company of other believers!  God indwells our praise, and I feel him the most when I am worshiping him in song.  There are few things I love more than singing praises to God.  It is so important for us to come together as believers and worship.

I hear people say that they can worship God anywhere and that they don't need a building set aside specifically for worship.  While it is true that God isn't contained by a building, we do still need to come together to worship.  We need other believers to pray with us, and we need to pray for other believers.  Having a church family gives us somewhere to go when we need help or guidance.  One purpose for having other believers in our lives is so that God has vessels through which he can work in our lives.  For example, my husband and I are building an addition to our house and doing the work ourselves.  We needed help in order to close it in and weatherproof it before some rain came, and our church family was there to help when we needed it.  If we didn't attend church and make our needs known to our church family, I sure don't know where we would have gotten help.  I am so incredibly grateful for them!

Another thing I hear people say about church is "I know so-and-so goes to that church so I won't go there" or "Church is nothing but a bunch of hypocrites anyway."  Really??  Those are nothing but excuses.  We are all sinners and we all fall short on a daily basis.  We aren't going to church for so-and-so and we aren't going to show others how righteous we are.  We're going to worship an Almighty God who, despite our failings and shortcomings and total inability to do anything worthy, saved us by His Grace.  El Roi, the God Who Sees, knows all of our own shortcomings and failures and loves us anyway, so who cares what so-and-so thinks or does or how many people say one thing on Sunday and live a totally different life during the week?  We go to church for God alone!  We go because HE is worthy of worship no matter what!

Going to church and corporately worshiping God is refreshing to our souls.  It really keeps me going from Sunday to Wednesday and then to Sunday again.  I learn so much that is helpful to my daily walk with the Lord; things I couldn't pick up just reading my Bible and not discussing it with other believers.  Ultimately, by giving my time, my praise and my worship to the Lord, it blesses me in so many ways.  Amen and amen!