Why go to worship on Sunday? Obedience is a good reason. The fact that going might just encourage your soul is a solid reason. But when you are struggling, and when those reasons are not moving you forward, perhaps remembering that you are needed will help. When a believer is absent, the local church is the less for that absence. We are a body, and we need all our members together for our mutual good. 

Why should I go to church when I just don’t feel like it? Aren’t I just being a hypocrite? Why go if I feel like I won’t get anything out of it this week?

As a pastor, I find myself regularly helping people work through reasons why they should not give up gathering together with other believers (cf. Heb. 10:24-25). Quite often, my words of encouragement go down two paths. On the one hand, I remind believers that gathering for worship is fitting in keeping with the commands of God. Obedience calls you to discipline yourself to gather and worship. On the other hand, I will try to encourage believers that, even when they do not expect to personally gain from the service, they may be surprised. God often breaks through our stony hearts and enlivens our souls when we gather together with his people under his word for his glory. God has designed our worship in the church, not only to honor him—which is primary—but also to feed flagging souls and nourish hungry hearts.

Today, I want to ponder yet a third reason to gather that I do not often point to, but which is of great importance. It popped up in my daily Bible reading.

1 Corinthians 12:21-26

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.

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