Online Church is Not Being the Church

Having online church services is not all bad, but it does have some major potential problems. In our impersonal, consumeristic society, it is too easy for people to stay at home on the couch and watch a screen for "church" instead of taking the trouble to actually go to church. This has become a significant issue in the last couple of years. Many of those who stayed home from church during the pandemic have not come back even though it is now mostly over. Too many have gotten lazy and no longer gather together with other believers at all.

Of course, there are positive uses of online services too. Having sermons available for those who can't be physically present is a generally good thing. Shut-ins or people who are traveling can still watch the service. People who are looking for a new church can view some services before they attend to help them know if the teaching is Biblical. These are valuable uses of our technology.

However, pastors and church leadership should be careful to explain that watching online services is not the same thing as being physically present in church. They need to call the people to actually attend in person, if possible. Watching church is not the same as being the church. It's better than nothing, but it's not a substitute for the corporate worship, fellowship, and accountability that actually going to church is meant to provide.

We are physical creatures, and God has called us to physically gather to worship Him together. There is something that happens when the people of God gather together in one place, in one accord, to worship their Savior as the body of Christ. God is present in a distinct way when we gather, when we sing in praise, and when we pray together. Staying home and watching church online is a little like watching heaven remotely on a screen. Nobody wants to do that! It's just not the same experience as being there. The Bible tells us that when any two or three gather in His name, He is there in our midst. He is in that place. There is a glorious, awesome presence of God in the physical place where believers have come together to bring Him praise and honor. We have to gather together to get those special benefits. We come together as the church to do corporately what we cannot do alone. Alone, we are believers. Together, we are the church. And that's a powerful thing. It's not just about hearing the message or singing the songs. It's about being the body of Christ. 

In addition to that, we need the church family, and the church needs us. All of us. We need to pray for each other, bear one another's burdens, and sharpen one another as iron sharpens iron. God has a right to have our full participation and to use our spiritual gifts for the benefit of our local church body. We are not called to be consumers, but givers, encouragers, servants, teachers, and exhorters of our fellow believers. We used to have a saying in church circles that being a pew sitter is not one of the spiritual gifts, but so many people aren't even sitting in the pews any more. They're withdrawing from the body and leaving all of us poorer for it. I don't just mean monetarily, though that is also a challenge for many churches, but we're lacking the talents and labor and fellowship that those missing believers were meant to be investing in us. And they're missing what we could be investing in them.

There's also another reason that we should be gathering physically as the church. God commands us to do so in scripture. It wasn't just a suggestion.

Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching. Hebrews 10:23-25

Lacking a valid reason that one cannot attend, it is disobedience to sit at home and consume content instead of gathering as the church. Disobedience to God is sin. 

God calls us to leave our comfort zone and come together as the church, messy and uncomfortable though it may be at times. Without the church, we will be anemic Christians -  weakened, impoverished, and prone to spiritual attacks. Just as the predator wants to separate the prey from its herd, our spiritual enemies want us divided, isolated, and vulnerable. This is why God instructs us to gather together and lift one another up. He knows what we need and has provided the church to meet those needs. If we neglect the provision of God, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

It's time to get back to church.

Preparing for Marriage: Self-Improvement

In a previous article, I recommended that Christian singles make an intentional effort to move toward marriage. If you don't aim for marriage and take concrete steps to get there, you may marry much later than you should or, potentially, not marry at all. So, how do you move towards marriage? It can help to have some practical ways to prepare for marriage. That's why I'm starting a series on the topic.

There are several ways to move toward marriage besides building a romantic relationship. You don't need a boyfriend or girlfriend right now in order to prepare yourself for marriage.

Even if you are dating or engaged, there are probably ways you still need to prepare for marriage. And if you aren't dating or engaged now, you can still move toward marriage by preparing yourself in several areas.

I would group these kinds of pursuits into 3 categories: Self-improvement, searching for a partner, and initiating a relationship. In this post, I will talk about ways to improve yourself in order to make yourself more ready for marriage. 

We all have areas we could improve. Working on yourself is something you can do without a date and will help you get closer to marriage readiness. You don't have to reach some magical "readiness" point before you can pursue a relationship or move toward marriage, but some facets of your marriage resume, as it were, are more helpful than others. 

Good Character

The most important aspect of preparing for marriage is developing good character. This is something all Christians should do anyway, whether or not they marry. So you can't go wrong in improving your character. The effort will never be wasted. Identify your character flaws (we all have them) and work on them through prayer, Bible study, practicing better behavior, finding mentors who will help you, and seeking the accountability of the body of Christ. Whether you struggle with anger, lust, laziness, greed, gluttony, pride, selfishness, or any other sin, God calls you to grow in grace and to overcome these sins through the power of the Holy Spirit. Study the Fruit of the Spirit and develop them in your life. They are attractive on everybody and very useful for building a strong marriage.

This point cannot be overemphasized. Your character defines how you will treat your future spouse, as well as everyone else. Your character defines whether you will be faithful, trustworthy, kind, encouraging, loving, and self-controlled. The marriage you build will depend directly and unavoidably on what kind of people you and your spouse are. There is no substitute for good character. It is vital to a good marriage. You should be looking for a spouse of good character, but you should also be a person of good character. You want to be the kind of person that the kind of spouse you are looking for will want to marry.

Social Skills

Another area to work on is social skills. Some people have more difficulty in social interactions than others. If this is something you struggle with, learning how to develop your social skills may help you meet, attract, and build a relationship with a good potential spouse. Social skills are about learning to put other people at ease around you and carry on pleasant and useful interactions with them. Building a relationship headed toward marriage usually begins when someone finds you interesting and pleasant to be around. Social skills really help with that.

Social skills include things like how to introduce yourself, how to make small talk, how to pay attention to non-verbal cues from people, how to have a conversation without either dominating it or making the other person work to draw you out, how to be considerate of other people's feelings, how to confront someone gently, how to apologize, and how to smooth over social tensions. If you are especially shy, cocky, awkward, withdrawn, brash, or insensitive, it can affect how other people see you and how willing they are to get to know you better. You might have lots of great qualities, but if they never get to know you, they won't know that. Don't let poor social skills scuttle your chances of building stable and rewarding relationships. Like building good character, developing good social skills is useful even for those who do not marry. So it is not wasted effort.

Financial Wisdom

One very useful area of self-improvement is financial preparation. Financial issues are one of the most common problems within marriage. Being financially stable and having good money habits helps get a marriage off to an easier start. Now, money is not everything. It's not about how much money you have, per se. It's about how wise you are with the money you have. You don't need a 5-figure nest egg before you marry. However, you do need to know how to live within your means, save for the future, avoid wasteful spending, and pay bills on time, at the very minimum.

For men, it is important that they develop a stable career that can provide for a family. God has called men to be the providers, which means that men preparing for marriage should be demonstrating that they can provide for a family while women preparing for marriage should be learning how to live within their future husband's income. Women should be evaluating potential husbands on their work ethic and responsibility with money because they will need to rely on their husband for provision. If he can't keep a job or spends as much or more than he makes, run away, ladies. Similarly, men should be evaluating potential wives by their ability to handle money wisely, such as living frugally and understanding the value of money. Preparing to show a potential spouse that you can handle money wisely is a big part of being attractive as a marriage partner.

Physical Attractiveness

Yet another area of preparation is physical preparation. This includes physical fitness, mental health, personal grooming, and overall appearance. Let's be honest. You're obviously going to be more attractive to the opposite sex if you're not an overweight couch potato wearing sloppy or dirty clothes and you bathe and groom yourself and don't have neurotic or obsessive tendencies. Get yourself as healthy and attractive as you can.

Of course, health and physical appearance is not everything. Not everyone is model material. Most of us have imperfections. Some people have health problems that are not their fault and that they can't change. Plus, you are likely to have to deal with various health problems as you age and a marriage is going to have to hold up in sickness and in health.

However, if you're trying to get someone to want to get to know you in the first place, make sure any health or appearance issues you have aren't of your own making. And do your best with what you have when it comes to your appearance. Sometimes a change in hairstyle or clothing or exercise habits can make a big difference. Ask some trustworthy friends if there are changes you can make that would make you more attractive.

Another aspect of the physical attractiveness issue is being honest about your own attractiveness. Like it or not, most people marry someone who is similar in physical attractiveness to themselves. If you're a super model, you can probably be really picky about who you go out with, but if you're average, holding out for a super model means you're going to stay single. Be realistic.

Other Useful Skills

One other way to prepare for marriage is to develop skills, habits, and hobbies that will make your future marriage more enjoyable and make you more attractive to potential spouses. Most people like to be around people who can do cool or useful things. Plus, sharing a common interest or hobby is a great way to meet new people. So find something you like to do and pursue it.

For men, learn to do handyman work like basic plumbing, electrical, or carpentry. It saves a lot of money if you can fix simple broken things around the house. It can also be helpful if you can do simple maintenance on vehicles like changing the oil or fixing a flat tire. A lot of women really appreciate a man who knows how to do these kinds of things.

For women, learn how to cook. Food is something your family needs every single day. Making a variety of delicious, nutritious foods on a budget is a vital skill. Developing your skills as a good cook is also a great way to catch a man's attention. Most men would prefer a wife who knows how to cook.

For both sexes, learn more about the Bible. You can never know too much about the Bible. Develop your apologetics skills. Be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you about your faith. This is not only a Biblical command and very attractive to godly potential spouses, but very useful when you have children as you will need to disciple them in the faith. This is also an important part of developing good character. Don't just learn what it says, but practice what it teaches.

If you have spare time and you have your character and social skills and finances in good order, find a hobby you enjoy and pursue it. These can include things like hiking, bird-watching, sewing, coin collecting, flying an airplane, building model cars, painting or drawing, playing a musical instrument, or something similar. Having something that makes you unique and shows you to be capable of investing time in something worthwhile make you a more interesting person. And you just might find someone else who appreciates your particular skills or shares your passion.

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These are just some of the major ways you can improve yourself as you prepare for marriage. And you don't have to stop after you're married either. All of us can improve in various ways. 

      

Discipline Helps Children Feel Loved

We were watching Little House on the Prairie last night with the kids, and it was in the last season where the Olesons have a little girl named Nancy. Nancy is a spoiled little brat who throws a fit whenever she doesn't get her way. She wants attention all the time, and she gets it. But she's always saying how everyone hates her, even her parents, if they deny her the slightest thing she wants. She eventually runs away when her older sister, Nellie, comes back to town and takes up all the attention for awhile. She really believes no one loves her despite all the attention and gifts showered on her on a regular basis.

It occurred to me that this is very accurate. Nancy was suffering a huge lack of discipline. She wasn't being trained to behave herself and think of others. She was allowed to do whatever she wanted all the time, without consequence. This made her feel very unloved. 

It might seem counter-intuitive to a lot of parents today, but children who are spoiled do not feel loved and are not happy. Some parents try to make their children feel happy by showering them with gifts and letting them do whatever they want, but this does not work. Oh, they will feel happy momentarily when they get presents or get away with bad behavior, but they become more and more unhappy over time. 

Now, does a child know they need discipline? Of course not. They're children. They're immature. They don't like discipline as it is very unpleasant at the time. But God has designed children to feel safe and happy and loved when they are disciplined. They won't feel love if they don't get discipline. They need to know there are limits on their behavior. They need to be taught. If they don't get discipline, they can't feel love properly. And the reason they won't feel loved is because they aren't being loved properly. Parents who love their children discipline them. The Bible even tells us that.

Proverbs 13:24 He who withholds his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently. 

Proverbs 3:11-12 My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord Or loathe His reproof, For whom the LORD loves He reproves, Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights. 

Love doesn't just mean having happy thoughts about someone. It means doing what is truly good for them. It is good and necessary for children to be disciplined. They have to be taught to behave. They need consequences when they do wrong. They have to be taught that their own desires are not the standard and how to deny themselves for the sake of others. This will make them happy. Indulgence will not.

If you love your children, you will discipline them. It's not the easy road, but it is far better for everyone in the long run when children are trained to act properly and think of people besides themselves. Children also need training in how to control their emotions. A child who is constantly at the mercy of their emotions is an unhappy child. Parents have to give their children the tools of self-control and a moral compass by disciplining them. This is what love does. It provides for the spiritual and mental needs of the child. They can't feel your love if you don't.

A Recipe for Entitlement

Take one child and give him everything he could possibly want all his life. Make sure he never goes hungry and always has his needs met. Heap to him gifts of all kinds to please and entertain him. Never make him work for these things, but rather have them appear.

Give him an education that costs him nothing, but be sure not to give him a good understanding of how people of the past have lived or how unique his particular upbringing is in the grand scheme of human history. If he counts his blessings, let it be only once or twice a year and drown that out with food and entertainment and muffle it with repetition so that he need not take it too seriously. 

Surround him with other people who are similarly prosperous and be sure not to let him come in contact too often with those less fortunate. Let him make his friends from those who have also never had to go without. They will only convince him that prosperity is normal. 

From these formative experiences, he will almost certainly come to believe that the world he lives in is horrific when it fails to fulfill his least fantasy and this will leave him dissatisfied and depressed at the imperfections rather than grateful for what he has. 

Be sure to tell him he's wonderful and smart and informed as he is, and let him assume from this that he need not learn from his elders or study the past in order to learn from it. He's going to change the world, you see. Why would he need to know about the past? His elders obviously did it all wrong or else all the problems would have been solved by now. But he is better than they. He sees the imperfections they seem not to notice. Arrogance is as important as ignorance if you want a really fine case of entitlement. 

After this preparation, he will be ready to follow anyone who promises him one of his fancies and will, in pursuit of this purported improvement, think himself a very fine person to be changing the world in such a way. The sacrifices of the past that have placed him on this pinnacle will be unknown to him and thus unheeded. And in his ignorance, he will destroy all that has brought about his bountiful prosperity because he does not even know that it exists. It will be to him like water to a fish - just his normal habitat which is always there and which he never sees or thinks about.

Learn to Control Your Mind

It's important to develop control over our minds. It's a form of self-discipline. The Bible tells us to take every thought captive to bring it into subjection to Christ (II Cor. 10:5). It also tells us to think on things that are noble, pure, and true (Philippians 4:8). Part of loving God with our minds is learning to think about things that are pleasing to Him and not giving a place in our minds to thoughts that would grieve our Savior.

We can control what we think about. It's something we all have to learn. It doesn't come naturally. We naturally just follow our passions and appetites as children do. But as we mature, we must practice controlling ourselves, and that includes what we allow to occupy our thoughts. We can't always help it when a thought enters our minds, but we can choose not to dwell on it.

The best way to combat intrusive thoughts is to replace them with something else that is good. Replace wrong thoughts with truth. Replace hateful thoughts with kind and compassionate ones. Replace fearful thoughts with remembrance of God's faithfulness and provision. Replace bitterness with forgiveness. Replace temptation with meditating on God's word or thanksgiving for our blessings. Replace self-condemnation with praise to God for His forgiveness.

Learning mental self-control is also very important for developing self-control in other areas as well. After all, every sin starts with a tempting thought. Learning to stop temptation in the mental stage makes it far easier to avoid turning it into sinful action.

Controlling our thoughts is also important for controlling our emotions. Emotions follow our thoughts. We should certainly learn to avoid spewing our emotions through our behavior, especially where it would be wrong or inappropriate to do so. But we can often stop the emotion all together by controlling our thoughts. Emotions don't have to control us.

Self-discipline of the mind is also how we obey the commands of God. God commands us to love Him and praise Him, for example. But we must do these things authentically. God doesn't want just empty words. True praise and love come from the heart. We develop these things in our hearts by controlling what we think about. If we want to love God, we must think about the good things He has done - both for us and for others throughout history - and the virtues of God's character. We must meditate on His justice, His mercy, His provision, His patience, and so on. That takes purposeful thinking and developing a habit of this kind of thinking.

Controlling our thoughts and emotions properly is not something we learn overnight. It's a habit we must form by constantly checking our thoughts and choosing to think of something better when harmful or wrong thoughts intrude. We can't let ourselves be passive bystanders of our own thoughts. It might take pushing a thought away hundreds or even thousands of times and purposely making ourselves think of something else instead before we find victory. It takes identifying thoughts that are good to dwell on and putting them in the place of harmful or false thoughts. It can be mentally exhausting at times. But it grows easier with practice. And it's a habit well worth cultivating.

Learn to Be Attracted to Good Character

The world has it all backwards when it comes to building romantic relationships. The world says, find someone who is fun to be with and that you're attracted to, then build a relationship (often built primarily on sex first) and if you don't break it off and can still stand each other after awhile, maybe start thinking about marriage. Then, once marriage happens, the rest of the world's advice has to do with how to deal with the various issues that inevitably crop up when you've built a relationship on fun and physical attraction and later find out your goals and values are different. The world will also tell you to leave the relationship, even a marriage, as soon as you find attraction waning or problems that aren't easily solved.

Too often, the church tries to do things the way the world does, except without the sex before marriage. Too many Christian young people were never given guidance on what to look for in a spouse and make the decision based on feeling in love after spending time having fun together. But even where guidance is given, it's often still focused on finding someone you're attracted to who happens to have the right qualities rather than learning first to be attracted to the right kind of person. In other words, even Christians usually believe that attraction is fixed and involuntary and try to center relationships around it anyway.

I suggest a better way. My advice is that we learn to be attracted to good character and the types of traits that make a good spouse. Attraction isn't something that just happens to us. Attraction can be controlled to a large extent. We all have preferences for physical characteristics in the opposite sex, but attraction is more than just noticing someone is good looking, even if that does play a part. These other factors that influence attraction are primarily driven by our mindset and can be modified by our patterns of thought.

In order to control our attraction properly, we should actively think about good character qualities and notice them in others around us and think positive thoughts about those who have them in order to develop a mental pattern of appreciating good character. The opposite should be true of bad character qualities - we should practice seeing them as unattractive. In addition to this, it's important to actively work to downplay the role of physical traits in our attraction so that character becomes the main factor, not more superficial characteristics like height, hair color, or facial features.

For example, a single woman should learn to appreciate men with a good work ethic, leadership qualities, self-control, and an interest in studying the things of God. She should control her thoughts so as to make character the main thing she evaluates about others and so that she values good character. Thus, she should find her interest in an available man growing when she observes good character while she should find her interest in him waning if she finds bad character such an inability to keep a job, passiveness, sexual immorality, or an anger problem (to name just a few issues).

If we teach our young people to value the kinds of traits that make a good spouse and to actively work to be attracted by their presence and repelled by their absence, they will make better choices when it comes to marriage.

For married people, I would suggest a modification of this idea. Rather than working to value just good traits in general, I recommend that we learn to appreciate and become attracted to the good traits our spouses have. Rather than focusing on the flaws, of which all people have some, look for and focus on the good traits and learn to let your heart beat faster over those. Install a permanent pair of rose-colored glasses after the wedding and let patterns of appreciation for your spouse become a habit.

In short, don't be a passive observer of your attraction. Take an active role in building the right mentality so that you prepare yourself for a lasting and loving marriage.