Why We Keep Showing Up

There is always a reason to skip the meeting. You are tired, you had a bad week, you do not feel like being around people, or you fell again and cannot imagine sitting in that room as if nothing happened. The writer of Hebrews seems to have known men like this. Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, he writes, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.

He treats gathering as something that has to be protected, because he knows how naturally men drift out of it. The pull toward isolation is strongest exactly when you most need the room, on the weeks you feel least worthy to be there. Those are the weeks to go anyway. The point of showing up is not to perform your progress. It is to be stirred, to have someone breathe a little courage back into you when your own has run low.

If you have been drifting from your team, the enemy is happy to keep you home. Go back this week, even ashamed, and let God use the ordinary faithfulness of showing up to hold you.