A lesson from the Sabbath

[Esaias]

For years I had been led to believe (however it happened) that when we go to church we 'get filled up' so as to be able to 'make it through the week'. The idea was that you come to a service, are edified, exhorted, and encouraged, lifted up, taught, etc, and you 'get what you need from God' so that you can carry on throughout the week, throughout your daily life. Throughout the week you will face various trials, temptations, issues, etc and you need to be in service to get charged up so you have the spiritual fortitude to face life's issues.

But the Lord showed me rather bluntly this morning that this approach was backwards. I knew it (in my head) already but he really brought it to my attention today. In fact, I had been operating in this fashion even within a house church structure. I had viewed the meetings as an opportunity for people to spiritually 'gas up', get a 'full tank', to be able to make it through the week.

The Lord showed me this leads to an imbalanced spiritual life, of looking forward to the meeting as a 'big event' to 'get what I need from God' so I could 'make it to the next meeting'. It creates a spiritual drug addict, requiring services/meetings to be 'something special', otherwise it wouldn't 'be enough' to make it to the next one. Thus, each meeting 'must be' some kind of big blowout service. The music has to be perfect, the environment needs to be perfect, the preaching and teaching needs to be perfect, the testifying needs to be top notch, etc etc. It really is a selfish approach to religion, when you think about it. It leads to disappointment eventually, as meetings don't 'measure up' to what you think they ought to be.

But the Lord reminded me. In the wilderness, God gave them manna six days a week, but on the Sabbath he gave them none. They were given an extra portion on Friday to hold them over the Sabbath. Each day they had to go out, themselves, and gather their daily bread. THEY had to work at it. But on the Sabbath, they had to quit working, because the day was to be devoted to the Lord.

The Sabbath was the end of the week, not the beginning of the week. It was the climax, not the start, of the week. Sabbath was not designed to be a 'fill up' to get you through the coming week. It was designed to be a rest, a rest from your OWN labours, from having to gather bread. To be able to focus on God, rather than yourself.

In other words, you are supposed to be gassed up, filled up, prayed up throughout the week. The meeting of the church is designed to be a time when the saints of God gather to offer spiritual sacrifices of praise and prayer to God, and to minister to one another. IF one is going from service to service, trying to get their spiritual tank filled up each service, by the time the next service rolls around they are often running on fumes.

God gave a history lesson through Israel in the wilderness, showing us that each day we - we personally - must gather the bread from heaven. What we need for each day is supplied by the Lord each day. He rains it down from heaven, but we have to get off our duff and gather it. Each day. So by the time service rolls around, we are well fed and stocked and provisioned to PROVIDE for others, to GIVE (rather than receive).

The body grows by that which each joint supplieth. But if each joint is running on fumes, is starving because they only got fed last meeting and have been eating that all week, then nobody really has much to supply to others, so once again nobody really gets what they need out of the service! It's a vicious, self-enforcing cycle of failure and spiritual addiction.

Instead, if we feed on Christ (the bread from heaven) each day of the week, daily, that is, continually, then when meeting time rolls around we have a surplus instead of a lack, we have overflowing abundance to give rather than overwhelming need to receive.

So once again, the importance of DAILY walking with God, and DAILY being charged up by the Spirit of God, was reinforced to me in a new way. Stop going from meeting to meeting, looking for some kind of thing that God is going to do to keep you going to the next meeting. Instead, get all you need from God right now, today, wherever you are, EACH DAY OF THE WEEK. He Himself is the bread from heaven, he's all you need. It's all in HIM. Then, when you come to service, be prepared to GIVE, GIVE, GIVE out of the abundance God has put in your life and your heart.

God is rich, beyond description. His wealth is available to each of us, TODAY, in Christ. Too many of us run around like beggars living paycheck to paycheck, with church not much more than a welfare line or foodstamp office or soup kitchen. If we would appropriate the heavenly manna that rains down all around us each day, if we would just go out there and GATHER IT on a daily basis, we would all be spiritually wealthy beyond belief, and nobody would suffer lack.

I want THAT kind of meeting, where all of us come bringing the bounty that God has provided. The more of us who do that, the easier it will be to actually meet needs, and the less people there will be needing a spiritual handout, because more people would be learning how to gather the manna they need.

It is more blessed to give than to receive, indeed.