Tomorrow's Sunday!

Anticipation. Desire. Excitement. As a Christian and a member of a local church, I want to faithfully cultivate affections like these for the church in general and HBC in particular. I want the same for my family and for you, members of HBC.  Tomorrow’s Sunday is a weekly post intended to encourage us to consistently cultivate our affections for gathering as a church.

As believers we gather as a church at least 52 times a year. Apart from faithfully cultivating our love for the church, familiarity will breed boredom or, worse, contempt. Our Sunday routine will become just that—routine. Worse still, our lack of  affection for Jesus’ Bride will breed  infection and spread: to our spouse, to our children, to our church.

Lord’s Day faithfulness and delight are symbiotic: they need each other to maintain their integrity. Faithfulness without delight drifts downstream to drudgery. Delight without a theologically grounded faithfulness floats away into frivolity. So what’s the cure? Well, there is no “cure;” but we can strengthen our immune systems. Thankfully our wise, patient, and generous God has given us a variety of ways to cultivate our affections for gathering with His people as a church. The Bible and the church history are full of fortification to fend off familiarity’s soul-souring.

Lord willing, this series of weekly posts will consist of meditations that mine the resources Scripture and Church history to stir our excitement and enrich our understanding of gathering as a church. They are intended to be read on Saturday evenings or Sunday mornings for private contemplation or used in family worship. If your children are young like mine, you’ll need to read and regurgitate the content after you’ve digested it.

While these meditations are meant to stir your soul through contemplation, they are meant to encourage our church through your communication whether that means sharing the main thought of the mediation with another member or through the contagion of your joy—which no mask can contain (Heb. 10:24-25).

So come take up the weapons of meditation and imagination with me as we together fend off our Foe so that our souls and those of our fellow members aren’t slain on the “altar of familiarity”—to take a phrase from Luther. See you next Saturday.

And don’t forget—Tomorrow’s Sunday!