Worship: Wasted Religious Activity

I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go into the house of the Lord." -Psalm 122:1

There is probably not another field of human activity where there is so much waste as in the field of religion....

In the average church we hear the same prayers repeated each Sunday year in and year out with, one would suspect, not the remotest expectation that they will be answered. It is enough, it seems, that they have been uttered. The familiar phrase, the religious tone, the emotionally loaded words have their superficial and temporary effect, but the worshiper is no nearer to God, no better morally and no surer of heaven than he was before. Yet every Sunday morning for twenty years he goes through the same routine and, allowing two hours for him to leave his house, sit through a church service and return to his house again, he has wasted 170 twelve-hour days with this exercise in futility....

I need only add that all this tragic waste is unnecessary. The believing Christian will relish every moment in church and will profit by it. The instructed, obedient Christian will yield to God as the clay to the potter, and the result will be not waste but glory everlasting. Born After Midnight, 100-101,103.

"Lord, what an awesome responsibility to come before Your people week after week as Your messenger! I can only do this as Your Holy Spirit feeds my own soul and then enables me to enter the pulpit with a fresh word from heaven. Feed me today, Lord, as I prepare for this Sunday. Amen."