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There are some things we can only do by ourselves.
No student has ever taken a group SAT or ACT exam. No, you are on your own on those! Only you could have married your spouse. You could not have sent someone for you or had a group come to the wedding and say a collective “We do.” No, it has to be “I do.” When you apply for a job, you have to go it alone in the interview because you are being hired as an individual, not as a group.
This is also true spiritually. You and I are accountable to God and how we respond to His offer of grace. We have our own individual quiet times with Jesus. I cannot ask you to be my proxy and go pray in my place and read the Bible for me.
However, there are some things where we are just simply better together. If you are married and have children and you are to sit for a family portrait, you do not sit alone; you sit with the family. If you play a team sport like football, you do not go out and line up by yourself against 11 other football players. You are doomed if you don’t have your team lined up beside you.
Let’s say you have a very large house with 30 rooms and you have your family over for the traditional Thanksgiving meal. You could have everyone get their plate and go to their individual rooms to eat in silence—but we would never do that! We want to be together. The food is sweeter and the fellowship so much more rich when we share the meal together rather than in isolation.
In corporate worship, the people of God come together and do what no one could adequately do alone—join in the chorus of other believers and worship Him. The Bible commands us to worship with the people of God. Hebrews 10:24-25 states, “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”
There is power in numbers. When a watching world sees the people of God gathering on Sundays, we want them to ask why we are doing that. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, said there are a lot of other things he could do on a Sunday morning than go to church. He is right, but he is also mistaken. Of course, there are many things he could do other than go to church, but there is nothing more important than going to church with the people of God on the Lord’s Day—when we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.
Speaking of being together, I invite you to the annual Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Empower Conference Feb. 24-25 in Irving. You will be blessed with excellent Bible teaching and worship. There is strength in the people of God coming together to be encouraged in our mission of making disciples, so come join us!
