Inviting you to commit to gathering with God’s people, to recognise the drift into apathy, and change your habit.  If that’s you this morning, will you share that with someone, so they can pray for you and encourage you to come along Sunday by Sunday?And it’s not just Sunday.  We need to be meeting with each other as often as we can.  And many of you do, gospel group on Wednesday, 1-2-1’s, shared bible reading WhatsApp groups.  All aiming to stir one another up, spur one another on.  That’s great.  If you’re not part of that start one, be brave, asking someone this morning and if they say no thanks ask someone else, and then someone else.

The pastor gives the church a don’t and do as they do that.  Don’t (25)“give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing…”  Some have started drifting away from meeting together.  He doesn’t tell us why, but if you read the rest of the letter I think there are some hints about pressure, busyness, distractedness and apathy.  You can’t be spurred on if you won’t meet together.  You’re opting out of being spurred on and that has consequences.

Have you ever played pooh sticks?  You stand on a bridge and drop the stick you’ve chosen into the water on the upstream side and then see whose is first to reach the downstream side.  If you’ve played it, has a stick ever swum against the stream?  Has it ever made its way upstream against the current?  No.  It may snag on something and get stuck for a while, but it’s only ever pulled in one direction by the current.

The world is like the stream pulling us only ever one way, in one direction.  It will always pull us away from following Jesus, away from distinctive discipleship, away from holiness.  But meeting with the church is designed to make us salmon not sticks, and give us the strength and spur us on to swim upstream not simply go with the flow.

If we find we’ve drifted from meeting together that ought to be like a warning light flashing on a dashboard, in fact it ought to be not just a warning light but an incessantly wailing klaxon.  Are you in the habit of not meeting with God’s people?  Are you opting not to be spurred on, stirred up, to be distinctive and if so why are you doing that?  What’s going on in your heart as you make that choice?  What’s the real motive behind the immediate motive?  Busyness, or apathy, may be motive level one, but what’s the desire driving that?  Is it that we want to fit in, we want comfort, we don’t want to pay the cost? 

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