How much longer can you go on serving the Lord as you are today, how much longer before the joyful service turns into a despised routine?
I often contemplate repetition and how much I despise it, it reminds me of Amos 5:21, “I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.” Those times in the Scriptures where the observance of the commandments of the law in the Old Testament became nothing more to some people than an obligation, a required ordinance that was to be applied in their lives. I think about those people I know who would never dare miss a Sunday morning at church, but who will not spare five minutes during the week to speak to someone about Christ.
How long can someone continue to believe they are serving the Lord before they come to the realization that that service is nothing more than a self-imposed obligation, something they do because that’s the time of day they have done it for so long.
All worship, true worship of the Almighty has gone out of the heart of those who live these lives a very long time ago, if it was ever there in the first place. Every works-based religion is based on this obligation, the following of a set pattern that is meant to show them some form of commitment, and many Evangelical churches have fallen into the same trap. Ask yourself this question, if you can make plans for after the Sunday morning service because you know for a fact what time its going to end, is that a church that is worshipping God, or one that has a set procedure for what they call church. Sunday school is at 9:00 am, church services begins at 10:00, we all walk out the door by 11:05 at the latest, and by 11:15 there is not one car in the parking lot, not even the pastors.
The prescribed routine of what passes for a worship service these days to tell the truth sickens me, most are not there to worship the Most High, they are there because that’s where they think that’s where God wants them to be. Forsaking the assembling of themselves together has become no more than a self-imposed obligation.
Here is another area of contemplation for you, especially if you fit quite well into this genre. If you have company showing up on Saturday night, and they are going to stay overnight with you until Sunday evening, will you be going to church the next day?
An obligation, something to make us believe we are willing servants of the Lord God, a repetition of sameness that is only fooling you. Oh, how people would complain if the pastor announced that the Sunday morning service time would henceforth begin at 6:30 am, or perhaps at 4:00 in the afternoon, and would go for at least three hours, minimum. Am I showing you just how much that assembling of yourselves together truly means to you yet?
Expected repetition despises inconvenience, it detests being asked for more, and it is willing to give only what is believed to be expected from it, no more.
They go for their once-a-week Spiritual fix, and if they are weaker in their faith than even those we have spoken of in this short letter, they will show up for the mid-week Bible study. This type of repetition is nothing more than vainglory, it says to the Lord that for one hour or so a week I will be obedient, unless something unexpected shows up. There’s a lot less wheat and a lot more tares than many people think there is out there I fear.
