What if instead of letting our struggles hinder us from going to church, we let them motivate us to go?
I can’t count the times I’ve been in a service where an elderly woman would stand up and testify that all day she had had the biggest migraine or back ache, or had fallen the night before. She would tell of how she barely made it to church, but that she just knew she had to make it to that service. When in such great pain, the one place she truly craved to be was the house of God.
Now, I have also witnessed countless times of others using frivolous excuses for avoiding a service. I won’t go through the trouble of listing them, because I think we’ve all heard them a million times. Whether they be used because someone really had a hard week and this ailment was the “straw that broke the camel’s back,“ because they wanted attention or pity, or because they really had no intention of going in the first place and the excuse was just convenient for the time being, we’ve all heard them.
Disclaimer: I understand that all excuses are not invalid or frivolous. There are times when we simply cannot make it because the struggle is too great. It is not my job to determine whose excuses are valid or invalid. It is God’s for He knows the heart, just as the person who makes that decision. It is truly all about the heart and its motives.
The difference between that elderly woman and others who use excuses, is that she let her struggles and her pain MOTIVATE her to come to church. She trusted in the Lord to help her, and most times that has happened, the elderly woman leaves church without the pain she hobbled in with. Others would like to let their struggles or pains keep them from coming to church, but what if....
Just what if we let those ailments MOTIVATE us to come to the house of God instead of letting them HINDER us? Do we not have the trust in God like this elderly woman that He will heal us if we just come to Him? You may say, it isn’t as easy as you make it sound. And rightly so, but do you think it was easy for that elderly woman to drive herself to church in the kind of pain she was in? Yet she still got there, and she received a great blessing and healing from God.
God will surely meet a sincere heart in need of help wherever they are; it does not have to be within the walls of a church building. But what if we would only change our mindset from, “My back is in great pain and I won’t be able to make it to the service,” to, “My back is in great pain and I must make it to that service!”
What if we worshipped and prayed through the pain, and brought those struggles and ailments to God.
-Allyson Million
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