Sometimes it happens, for any number of reasons, we find ourselves a casualty at the bottom of the ever-slippery slope, which has created a chasm between us and what should be our regular church attendance. Life can be complicated, creating unlimited hardships and situations that wear us down, and make it ever so easy for us to turn the alarm off on Sunday mornings, desiring a return to the comfort or absence from reality it had just woken us from. Problems can overwhelm us and distract us from what we should be doing. Time constraints and deadlines often push us to make choices that affect how we use our time, choosing to work on something with a deadline instead of attending church.
Sickness, or aches and pains in our bodies, also present formidable foes, especially when we deal with them constantly. They are strong motivators to rest and recover instead of getting up on Sunday, our one day off. Life is not easy for us, and sometimes external factors contribute to an ever-so-insidious separation arising in our relationship with God, often starting with a lapse in church attendance.
Unlike our human relationships with those around us, which we can touch and must interact with, our relationship with God is more internal, in our minds, spirit, and heart, and without a physical actuator to require attention, our focus is easily diverted from Him. Our relationship with God often becomes the path with less resistance and is more easily strayed from. Then, when life’s issues start pressing in and we look to ourselves for a resolution first instead of God, priorities can easily distract us, and the devil WILL use our logical rationalization to separate us from God. We must attempt to avoid this at all costs, and prioritizing God as our first point of contact for any event or situation is how we accomplish this, even when it seems the Holy Spirit, God’s voice inside us, is telling us to move contrary to our logic.
Another factor that can contribute to our backsliding and resistance to returning to church is an incorrect, self-imposed, and destructive idea that we should only present our most perfect appearance in church (putting on faces) and not let our church family members become aware of the real difficulties we are experiencing in our personal lives. We tend to hide things we think could diminish others' opinions of us, whether it be our shortcomings in adherence to church teachings, embarrassing family issues, financial issues, or any other of a multitude of things we feel might affect others' opinions of us.
First, as a bitter medicinal fact, let me say that these perceptions and ideas are rooted in PRIDE, and pride alone. We are more worried about what someone might think of us and how this might hurt our feelings, ignoring the Biblical principles we have likely been taught, such as Proverbs 16:18, which states, "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Second, we all do it at some level so you are not alone when this happens to you, but it is something we must fight against in our battle with pride, and finally, we are most likely not even correct in our worries about what we might face if we were to show our faces again. We are all sinners, and we ALL have problems in our lives. No single person in that church building is living without issues, behavior, family, or whatever, and no one has the right to judge what another might be going through.
The church is intended to be a hospital and a place of healing for issues that affect us all, not a place of condemnation. If we take our guards down and participate, we will find that our concerns about others' perceptions were likely wrong and instead find that they were concerned for us and are happy to see us return.
Do not be ashamed to enter the Church again. Pray about your feelings, fears, and concerns and turn them over to God.
Closely examine yourself and consider some of the following items:
- Try to understand that embarrassment is a PRIDE thing. Worrying about what someone else will think is not a Biblical concept. Swallow that pride, confess it to God, and ask for His forgiveness. Ask Him in prayer to help you come to terms with your feelings, to learn more humility, and then try applying it to your life. Put it into action by walking back into the church, letting God deal with everything else.
- If you are not attending due to laziness or self-comfort, then an explanation of why this is wrong is not necessary; just get up and go.
- If something happened with someone at church that possibly led to this slide away, consider why you are attending church to begin with. Your motivation for attending church should be to worship God and serve Him by following His instructions to gather in a WORSHIP service with fellow believers, and not just for a social gathering. If you are attending for any other reason than worship alone, then your motivation might need to be adjusted, focusing on the activity more and not the people around you.
Swallow your pride and realize your church attendance, or lack thereof, is likely affected by something relating to YOUR personal feelings, similar to the way Adam and Eve felt after they disobeyed God. They were embarrassed and hid. Pay attention to what the devil is doing to you and how he might be manipulating your feelings to steer you away from God. Search your soul thoroughly, asking God to give you clarification and the ability to understand what you are not seeing.
“Do not be ashamed to enter again into the Church. Be ashamed when you sin. Do not be ashamed when you repent. Pay attention to what the devil did to you. These are two things: sin and repentance. Sin is a wound; repentance is a medicine. Just as there are for the body wounds and medicines, so for the soul are sins and repentance. However, sin has the shame, and repentance possesses the courage.”
~ St. John Chrysostom
“And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.”
Luke 15: 20-24
Randall Gibbons
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