Don’t Forsake the Assembly of Yourselves Together

I belong to two prayer groups at church. One meets on Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. The other meets on Saturdays at 8 a.m. They’re supposed to meet on alternate weeks, so if I’m attending on Thursday, the Saturday group won’t meet.

On Thursday the guy who leads that day’s group asked me to take over because he was running late. I drove 18 miles in rush hour traffic and paid a $4.25 toll. I set the MP3 player up in the conference room and waited, and nobody showed up. Not one person. Not even the group leader. I was irritated, but I believe God keeps my life on rails because I pray in tongues a lot, so I told God I knew he wasn’t going to send me up there for nothing.

I got ready to leave, and on the way out, I heard a young man holler at me. He’s a musician. He hardly ever talks to me. He started asking me about food. Everyone at church wants me to cook. I started talking to some of the guys, and we ended up discussing the awful Australian music the church favors. It’s Hillsong stuff, I believe. Pretty bad, for the most part. I’m sure it goes over big in places like Australia and North Dakota, where people have no idea what soul is, but it’s very odd to see it played in a church which is maybe 80% black. We have lots of talented musicians, and they have no business playing this junk. It’s like baby food for them; they need something that lets them use their gifts instead of phoning it in. And they really need to write and play more original music. None of them will ever make it financially, playing this boring music. Musicians generally live or die based on the amount of quality original work they produce.

I have offered to let some of them come down and use my piano and amps, provided they work on original stuff. We started talking about this, and I said I might conceivably provide food if they showed up.

I didn’t realize how much they hated this bland music. Apparently, only two people in the entire church like it, and only one is a performer. But the band has no choice.

I also learned that one musician got criticized for taking his music to another church. That’s insane. When did religion become a zero-sum game? We’re all parts of the body of Christ. If our church won’t let someone gifted bless it, then that person has an obligation to find another place to serve God. I will never understand the small-mindedness that pervades churches. It’s amazing that people could be that wrong and not know it. It’s also amazing that they expect young people who live in the ghetto to starve instead of setting out on profitable careers!

It’s the nuttiest thing. If you sing, you can do pretty much whatever you want. If you speak, you can say nearly anything. You can go over on time. You can pour oil on people. You can run around the church screaming “HALLELUJAH!” But a musician who does anything remotely interesting is accused of pride, and he’s not supposed to play anywhere else.

So anyway, they might start coming down here. The neighbors will find that interesting. I don’t mind doing it. It’s no skin off my nose, and it might help motivate these kids to get out there and earn a living.

One of the guys asked if he could talk to me privately, and we discussed someone in the church’s inner circle who has a serious porn problem. This person is offering at least one woman money for photos. Evidently a lot of people know this, but it appears that they’re not doing anything to help. I may be wrong. I doubt they’d publish the news, if they were.

I felt bad about it. This is someone who gets shoved aside and taken for granted. He has a good heart. He’s very sincere. The church has benefited from him a lot, using his testimony and his talents on stage. I said the first thing was to quit telling people about it, and the second was to fast for him, so some of us will be doing that next week.

What’s the point of telling all this? The point is to show that I went to church for a meeting, and I got one. It just wasn’t what I expected. On the way home, I talked to God about it. Very often, God answers a prayer, giving me exactly what I asked for, but because the form is a little different from what I thought I had coming, I’ll feel like I’m cheating when I thank him for it. I’ll feel like I’m rationalizing, trying to make the shoe fit. That aggravates me. If I ask for X, Y, and Z, and I get all three, that means God delivered, period. No asterisk. No qualification. It bothers me that sometimes I feel like I’m giving God credit he doesn’t deserve. It must be a mental habit.

Today I thought I’d sleep late, because there was no meeting. Just before eight a.m., the phone rang. A friend who doesn’t know the meeting is on alternate weeks was on the line. Ordinarily, I would be highly annoyed if someone called at 8 a.m. on a Saturday, but I knew God was up to something.

This is a guy who left the church a while back. He still comes to meetings sometimes. Sometimes when people leave, they get criticized, or people talk as though they’ve failed or let the pastor down. That’s completely perverse. First of all, not everyone is supposed to go to our church. Some people are supposed to go to other churches, obviously. Pastors like to say “grow where you’re planted,” as if it’s treason to leave a church, but they only say that because they want your money. It’s not Biblical, and they ought to knock it off. If people are leaving your church, you’re doing something wrong, and you need to talk to God instead of berating and manipulating the people who pay your salary.

I could tell he was concerned that I would think less of him for leaving, but I made it very clear that I had absolutely nothing negative to say about it. The things he told me about his new church sounded wonderful. They made me envious, quite honestly. And he had concerns about my church. I told him I had the same concerns, and that he shouldn’t misunderstand me or feel isolated from me. I know why he left. I don’t blame him one bit. You go where you need to go. People have needs, and churches are supposed to meet them. If they don’t…sayonara. I wouldn’t go to a restaurant that put empty plates in front of me. For ten percent of your income, you ought to get SOMETHING.

I may visit his church soon. I’m not planning to leave my own church unless I feel led to do so, but it would be nice to sit in a healthy church every so often. I invited him to the Messianic synagogue, so maybe we’ll go this month.

I have no qualms about discussing the failings of any church. The Bible says you should be discreet when ordinary individuals have problems, but it’s also clear that correcting churches, leaders, and doctrine should be done publicly. The prophets did this, and so did Jesus. In the Revelation, Jesus complimented the Bereans for comparing new teachings with scripture, for the purpose of challenging bad doctrine. I don’t serve a church or a man; I serve God, and when man is against him, I have to say something.

Again, to get back to the point, I didn’t think I was going to a meeting, but I got one anyway.

The more I pray in the Spirit, the more I know God is confining my life to the tracks he has built. I’m not going to go far off course. A rollercoaster car goes up and down, but it always ends up where it’s supposed to. That’s what my life is like.

God has been teaching me a lot about love lately. That’s part of the ride. I know love is one of God’s two biggest priorities, so for years, I’ve been praying for him to help me with it. I get deeply involved with my own needs and desires, and I forget other people, and I don’t feel enough love for God himself. Lately, he has been showing me how important it is. Love is supposed to be our primary motivation, and if we really have it, it will lead to the virtuous behavior and thinking God is trying to get from us. If you look at the fruit of the Spirit, with the exception of faith and self-control, they’re all rooted in love or impossible without love. Goodness, kindness, patience, joy, peace, gentleness…you have to have love to get these things. Love itself is one of them.

The best love is the kind that comes from the Holy Spirit. I think it’s God’s love, somehow projected through you. I’ve felt it, and it’s a great thing. I think this is what we’re supposed to feel, because our own love is very limited.

Last night I woke up, and I felt very discouraged. I felt like my life was going nowhere. I knew that was crazy. I don’t know why I felt it, and I rejected the feeling completely. I prayed in the Spirit, and of course, the feeling left me. And while I prayed, I felt a new warmth for God himself. I hope that continues. It’s great to yammer about how much you love God, but I would rather feel the love, as clearly as I feel it for another person.

I don’t think we understand the importance of love. No matter how strong you are spiritually, God did not create you to make it on your own, with just his help. The Bible calls us a body. The Holy Spirit is our nervous system. He ties us together and coordinates our movements, and love is part of the apparatus. If we love each other, we will help each other. We will pray for each other, teach each other, and correct each other. This stuff is not optional. It’s mandatory, and it’s not going to happen without heartfelt love. Duty will only get you so far.

The Bible says a man will not hate his own flesh. If we are of the same body, each of us is the other’s flesh. If you cut one of your hands, the other will apply a bandage, right? Imagine the shape your body would be in if none of the parts helped the other parts. I wonder how many times my hands have given medical care to other parts of my body.

Perry Stone is talking about the same basic thing these days. He just aired a show about the Roman army’s methods. He was discussing “the armor of God.” He showed how they linked their shields together to form a sort of shelter, so a group of soldiers was stronger together than they would have been had they been separated. We really need to get ahold of this, if we’re going to stand in the miserable times that are coming. This is something God intended us to know. He doesn’t stick metaphors in the Bible without thinking.

Last night I was praying and thinking about all this, and I started talking to God about anger. The farther I go in my walk, the less anger I have. It’s something I’ve prayed about, and God has listened. But I still have a certain amount, and it’s more than I would like to have.

We all get abused and cheated. We all run into pastors and teachers who are basically thieves and liars. We all have good reasons to be mad and to hold grudges. But the Bible says, “Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.”

I was thinking about this last night, and I got a fresh understanding of how dangerous anger is. Think of the things it inhibits: love, peace, joy, gratitude, forgiveness, patience, self-control, generosity…generally, it’s the antagonist of the fruit of the Spirit. That’s pretty bad. If you don’t have the fruit of the Spirit, MOST of God’s plan for your life has failed. If a person can put anger in you, he can isolate you from these things and also from God. We know that if we don’t love each other, we don’t know God, so anger that inhibits our love for each other must be capable of coming between God and man.

I know anger has to exist. Sometimes God himself is angry. But it can’t stay in you and fester, long after it has served its purpose. Last night I felt like God was telling me that holding onto anger is like wrapping my heart in broken glass. And it’s like a caged animal. It can’t live unless I feed it.

The supernatural, transforming power of the Holy Spirit is the best antidote to anger. But you need to have anger on your mind. You need to be praying for relief, if you expect to get it. And you should make a reasonable effort in your own strength.

It’s interesting. This isn’t rocket science. It should be common sense. But to me, it comes as a big revelation. Sometimes I think the things God tells us aren’t as brilliant as we think they were. They’re actually simple, but we’ve been blinded to them, so when they’re revealed, we’re much more amazed than we should be. It should be obvious that anger can cut us off from God’s power, but I didn’t have a good understanding of it until this morning.

Keep praying in the Spirit, and be sincere. Things will work out. In God’s kingdom, there are only two ranks: God, and everyone else. No human being is more precious or higher than any other. Anything God does for me, or for anyone else, he will do for you.