What's Our Purpose for going to church?

We go to church to fellowship with other like-minded believers, worship, and praise God as a group.

 

Well I for one, thank God for the Lord's churches & can't imagine life without them. I was taught the meaning of a scriptural church & tried to pass these things on to my children.

The Bible says we'd better stay in church & so I learn as much as I can...not knowing when it will all come to an end.

As I see the day approaching, I watch & stay strong among God's people...the ones who please Him thru' obedience.

Like an ember that grows cold separated from the fire, the devil wants us to be separated from God's people.

Going to church, prayer, Bible-study, help me to go forward, with confidence, to the battle without fear.

 

The purpose in gathering together with the saints, is to come together in God's house to worship Him, learn more about Him, to pray to Him as a body of believers and so the list goes on.

I know for me, that if through sickness or hazardous driving conditions, that I am unable to gather with the saints, I feel totally empty, like I missed the greatest blessing there was for that day.

 

I go tho church to worship God, join with other believers in worship, learn about Him and scripture and how to live it, to be strengthened for the week to come, I go to church so that God would be glorified that His people would give a day to Him and His worship.

 

WORSHIP, PRAISE, LEARN, FELLOWISHIP, in that order.

 

"Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves togethers, as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another, and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching." -Hebrews 10:25

I look at this verse whenever the topic of church or church attendance comes up. I go to church to learn from the preaching of the Word of God, to fellowship with other believers, to worship God openly and freely, and to escape from the world for a few hours. If I didn't go to church and hang out with people of like faith, I'd easily start backsliding. I need that communication with others of the same faith group, and I need and want to learn more than I already know.

Hebrews 10:25 puts it perfectely, as we are not to forsake, or put a stop to, the assembling of ourselves together, like some people do, but rather exhort, or encourage, one another, and even more so, as we see the day approaching. What day, you ask? Christ's second coming. That's the day we're all waiting for.

 

In school it was the three R's

And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. Ephesians 4:11-14

In Church it is the three E's
Equipping for service, Edification, Education.

But these are things that we GET in attending Church. We must not forget that the most important thing to God is what we give. It is well to note that I quoted from the book that Paul wrote to them in Ephesus. A generation later Jesus Himself would speak to this church and, while they were dotting every i and crossing every t, as we might say today, they had left their first love. We should rightly give to God what He is rightly due: Praise, Thanks and Adoration.
Then there is the matter, if I may coin the phrase, our SECOND love, what Jesus commanded us to have: Love one another. I myself miss my Church brethren and I wonder how they are and pray that they are well until I see them again. Church is a great place!

 

All of the above reasons are good, and I'd like to toss in one more. "And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ" (Ephesians 4:11-12 NASB).

I go to church to be equiped to be able to do the work that God wants us to do.

God Bless!!!

Adam