© 10 Colin Melbourne
Can’t go to Church
Q: I can’t always make it to church on Sunday because of car problems. Is there anything I can do at home to try and forgive my absence? Matt
A: Christians gather for fellowship and worship whenever they want to, we’re not limited to once a week, or Sunday, the Lord’s Day.
Nor should we be under any compulsion to attend.
We meet together because we love to worship, fellowship, testify, and share sound Bible teaching.
Transcripts of the Smith Wigglesworth on the Power of Scripture: teaching the source of his power, and how you can develop it in your life and ministry.
Doesn’t your fellowship at least have; mid-week meetings, Bible studies, youth nights, outreaches, and prayer mornings?
If the church is withered, attendance will become a chore: When there’s revival, nothing keeps believers away.
Home-Church: The Acts Bible Way
Why not start a church in your own home, or village, just like in Acts?
Ask the Lord to direct you, believe, and He will supply all you need.
Invite the neighbours, put flyers in local shops and notice boards, drop Chick tracts in mailboxes inviting everyone to your home meetings.
Car problems: Fixed!
Do you realise that there are more Christians in Asia today than there’s ever been in the rest of the world?
Ninety-nine percent of Asians walk to church services. Think about that.
Walk, jog, hitchhike, get a bicycle, go on the bus, get a lift with a neighbour. Stay with a friend on Saturday night who lives near the church.
Call the Pastor and offer to clean the windows, sweep the building, paint the walls, trim the lawn, fix the drains, anything.
Take an overnight bag, change of clothes, and a sleeping mat, and ask if you can sleep in the Church Saturday night.
Take Nothing for the Journey
Read Corrie Ten Boom’s lovely book, Tramp for the Lord. It will inspire you with possibilities.
Corrie was a Dutch Christian who miraculously survived wartime Nazi prison camp. (See her other book The Hiding Place) Long after the Second World War, she set off walking around the world, to witness of Christ. She was in her Eighties.
What did Jesus do with an old woman like that?
Here’s a hint: Before I got saved, I was hitch-hiking in New Zealand, and once got a lift from a man who told me about a “crazy old Dutch woman” he’d previously picked up.
She never stopped talking about Jesus, he said, Tried to make me into a Christian! he scoffed.
I scoffed along with him, Christians, they make you sick!
It was soon after that, I was born again and read Tramp for the Lord, then I realized the eighty year old hitch-hiker who’d sat in my seat urging the driver to be saved was Corrie Ten Boom.
What a woman: what a Christian: Crazy for Christ.
The point is, make the effort, and the Lord will work with, and bless, you.
“But Mum, how will we get home?”
Not long after I was saved I once visited a small Full Gospel church in North Wales.
Following the service I was chatting to a young mother, and her kids, who were also attending for the first time.
While we spoke, the Lord asked me to give her ten pounds.
So I quietly pressed a folded ten pound note into into her hand whispering, The Lord just told me to give you this, Luv.
She looked at the note, rocked on her heels, and went cow-eyed.
When composed, she explained.
That morning; at her wit’s end, desperate, clueless, and distraught, she shoved the kids into her car and set off for the nearest church, to see if there is a God who cared about her.
The petrol gauge was on empty all the way, and her kids thought she had gone bonkers. Because, even if they got to a church, she didn’t have any money for petrol to get back home.
That’s our Jesus!
© 10 Colin Melbourne
