Do you love going to Church?

Does your head pop off the pillow sunday morning because you are so excited about going to Church and spending time with below believers? Or are you like most of us where sunday morning is the hardest day to get up. Maybe you were up to late on saturday, or your church starts way to early. Maybe its getting all those kiddos dressed, fed, and out the door on time not to mention you getting ready in the midst of all of that. Or maybe it is a spiritual thing where you know you are going to be convicted and so you drag your feet. For a lot of us I think we have this experience maybe more often than we should. And for others of us maybe the Church we attend we are tired of, we don't like the music, the pastor is not all that great, you feel lonely when you go. Maybe you are not sure where you fit in and so you just sort of wander in and out when you feel like it. Sure, there are so many reason why we should not love going to Church. But they really are all selfish reasons. I think that we as Christians need to develop a love for Church one again in our lives. A time to worship Jesus, Spend time with one another, share with each other, give of our time, gifts and money, pray with one another, fellowship, laugh, listen to God's word, reflect on our lives. We need to love the drive to and from with family and friends. A time to share what God is going to do and what He did in our life at Church. We need to develop an excitement about Church that goes far beyond the building. so that we don't just love going to Church but we love being the Church wherever we are.

Feeling Empty?

Some days just feel empty spiritually. Maybe it is because you have poured out all that you have for a season or for an event or walking with someone as you do life together. Maybe it is because you have walked far away from God and your emptiness is an absence of that which gives you life. Or maybe your tired and its just a gloomy empty felling sort of day. I often find spiritual emptiness like the emptiness of our stomach when we are hungry. Out stomach moans, and groans because it wants food. It churns and sometimes cramps up because it needs nutrients. Our body gets weak, we get headaches, and our muscles don't feel as they should. And when we are spiritually empty the same thing occurs in our heart and mind. We moan and groan cause we feel the way that we do. We pace and stress and wonder and question why God feels so far away. We know that we need Him yet we feel weak cause we don't feel Him. An so our spiritual life gets weak, and our spiritual muscles get tired and fatigued. But what I find so interesting about this spiritual emptiness is that there is a need to be filled. Yet for so many of us all the moans, and groans, and headaches, and wonder and questions don't push us to fill that need with Jesus. Instead we fill that need with other things. For each of us it is different. But what each and everyone one of us has is a need and I believe that everyday we all feel an emptiness and a need to fill it with something. For many of us when we have that need physically we fill it with junk and this is why we are overweight which shows us our poor choices in an obvious way. But in the spiritual realm we can fill our need with junk and maybe hide the results. But this need is not something that is going to go away. We will wake up with it every morning and walk with it all day long. I believe that God put the need there for us to fill our lives with Him. Well so many people ask what does that look like? When you decide to fill your life with God you have chosen to live in a way that fills others needs through Christ. So God uses us to fill others needs when they are empty. We can show love, a listening ear, serve, give, show compassion, mercy, grace, maybe be a strong voice of change in someone's life. Whatever it might be the very things that we can be to someone else are the very things that we desire for ourselves to be filled. I often find so many unhappy Christians, maybe it is because we have only fed the emptiness with things like anger, hatred, gossip, lust, sarcasm, and other things. Rather than fill each other's emptiness with good things in Christ. Maybe there would be less junk in others lives if we could walk with one another through emptiness. I have felt empty at times in my life and all I wanted was someone to walk with me and fill me with the good things of Christ. My prayer is that as Christians we begin to not feed the emptiness with junk and thus create more emptiness but to feed the emptiness with the good things of Christ in order for people to find true satisfaction in Him.