Church was awesome today. I miss church awfully bad when I have to miss. It isn't just that I miss the people. I do miss that though. It isn't just that I miss the surroundings, the joy of sitting in an outdoor amphitheatre enjoying the backdrop of God's creation while taking the study in. I do miss that though. It isn't just that I miss the.....okay I miss all of it.

I miss the people who hug us and tell us they're glad to see us. I miss the family in Christ that we have come to have there. I miss the Jesus we see in other people.

I have heard two very talented, godly and Christ-devoted pastors (who could not be more different by the way) who have never met each other talk about church fellowship. Both of them said that what happens when Christians drift away from church, they become weird. Kind of strange in ways. That only makes sense. I've also heard any number of people who don't like church say that "organized religion" is a man-made enterprise that God has no part in. That depends on what you're talking about. If one is talking about the kind of gathering together that the Bible tells us to be faithful about, then one is talking about the kind of thing Jesus organized.

We're told not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together as some do. There are reasons for that. Going to church allows us to rub elbows with like-minded people in Jesus who have different things to share. They have hurts that need talking about, or joys to share to help lift one another up. There are the hugs, the love and the sharing together about Jesus and His Word that is so vital in the life of a Christian. We 'bounce' things off one another.

I think that about the time a guy thinks he has it all sewn up---that he doesn't need or can't appreciate input from anyone else---he's in trouble. At the very least he's in danger of becoming "weird". Someone might be saying, "I know a lot of 'weird' church-going Christians." I do too. Hey, I'm weird myself. I'd be even stranger if I didn't belong to a fellowship of believers. The Holy Spirit lives within each of us as Christians, and we ought to appreciate that about one another. Being confident and independent in one's mature Christian faith and walk is fine to a point, but if it comes down to thinking we don't need to fellowship with other believers....one is fooling one's self.