5. It’s What We Need
Any careful reading of the New Testament will tell you that gathering is who we are and what we do, because it’s what we need.
In Colossians 2v2 Paul longs for the believers to be deeply united together in love for Christ and for one another, so that they will grow in their understating of all they have in Christ. Apparently it’s only as we are a loving, united gathering of people that this depth of understanding will come.
...being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ...
According to Hebrews 3v13 I need daily exhortation from my brothers and sisters, so that my heart isn’t hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Hebrews 10v24-25 tells me that I need my brothers and sisters to stir me up to love and good works.
Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,not neglecting to meet together
Ephesians 4v15-16 describes the church as a body, growing in love, as each part of the body does its share in building up each other part of the body.
Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
I need this. I need the gathering. I need the comfort, the encouragement, the exhortation, the reminders, the wisdom, the perspective, the support of God’s people. I need the hymns we sing, I need them to reset my heart and mind and draw me out of the small confines of my little kingdom of self. I need to hear the prayers. I need the reading and preaching of his word. I need the fellowship before and after.
So I gather.
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