This weekend, Richard Williams from Hinckley has shared his thoughts on ‘Self-sustaining Christians’.
Self-sustaining Christians
Reading: Psalm 139
It’s a huge cliché to say so, but this last year has indeed been a very unusual one. So much has changed and almost every facet of life has been disrupted.
As Christians, one of the hardest things to cope with has been our inability to meet regularly on a Sunday and worship God together, as a fellowship. Sunday services have been the bedrock of our faith lives.
Christians in community are like coals in a fireplace, each kept blazing hot by the heat of the other coals around it. If a coal ever drops out of the fire it cools down quickly but, when picked up and placed back in the grate, it soon starts to glow again. On days when you might be feeling really low, to be in the presence of God among Christian brothers and sisters can really lift the soul.
As COVID-19 has limited our ability to meet, churches have had to learn more innovative ways to worship together. Other than online services though, we’re tending to spend the rest of the week as more solitary Christians. This presents the danger that we could become, faith-wise, like the coal which has fallen out of the grate.
I’ve thought about this a lot over the last year: wondering whether God is trying to use the opportunity to teach us to be more self-sustaining? The truth is, it’s hard to feel on fire for the Lord when alone for weeks on end with only a service sheet or an online service to dial into each Sunday. But there are so many promises in Scripture from which to draw strength. In Psalm 139 verse 7 for instance, the Psalmist writes: “I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence!”
There is nowhere we can go where God is not! Many times throughout history, Christians have faced similar challenges. Whether through war, persecution, or pioneering as missionaries, people have had to learn to keep their faith alive when away from the normal life of their church.
I believe that we should treat this as an opportunity to grow: to make sure that God comes first in all we do and not just in our activities on a Sunday; to become people with an unquenchable fire for God inside us, whether we’re able to be in church or not. Those are the people that God will be able to use to build the church of the future.
Like me, I’m sure that you’re all desperate to get back meeting together on Sundays. Personally, I can’t wait to be able to come and see you all again. But until then, we need to learn to be self-sustaining Christians and emerge from this crisis with our faith stronger than we entered it.
God bless you all and stay safe
You can listen to ‘10,000 Reasons’ by Matt Redman on YouTube: