Truly Meeting with God on the Lord's Day
A Lesson I Learned in the Pentecostal Church
Slowly but surely, I am learning that I am not an abnormality within the PCA. That comment has nothing to do with my quirkiness, and I would have friends who, at this point, would like to highlight all of my peculiarities. No, that comment has everything to do with my feelings as I moved away from my childhood Pentecostalism into Presbyterianism during my freshman year in college. For the longest time, especially as I began the PCA ordination process, I thought I was the only one with such a drastic denominational move. Many often asked, referring to my “spiritual faith journey,” how I left the Pentecostal church and became a confessional Presbyterian. I was asked this question so often that I admittedly got tired of answering the question. Nevertheless, as the denominational pendulum swung in my life, I tried denying anything and everything I had learned in my upbringing. It wasn’t until Dr. Doug Kelly, one of my predecessors here at First Presbyterian Church - Dillon, challenged me over lunch to not forget the suitable lessons that I had learned from my fellow believers in the Church of God (the Cleveland, TN flavor of pentecostalism).
As I began to wrestle with that appropriate challenge, I thought about everything I disagreed with - spiritual gifts, emotionalism, altar calls, eschatology, sanctification, etc. As my mind automatically started at the negatives, I quickly began thinking that there was nothing I should hold on to theologically. Yet, after a few days, I grabbed hold of a particular lesson that I believe is of utmost importance and one we would all do well to remember - on the Lord’s Day, as we gather together as God’s people, we are truly meeting with a living, powerful, and holy God.
Looking back, I thank God for my parents and their commitment to have me in the local church for morning and evening worship on the Lord’s Day. It instilled within me a biblical pattern for honoring the Sabbath Day and showed me how they truly believed that there was something different about that particular day as we gathered in the courts of the Lord. Honestly, every Christian gathered at the church believed it! There was something special about Sunday. Of course, I now recognize many errors I heard and witnessed growing up, but the importance of the Lord’s Day is not an error. Those believers were committed to meeting with their God. They believed that when they entered the “sanctuary," they were in the presence of their God, and they knew there was no more extraordinary place to be.
In a time when Christians can think of dozens of places they would rather be than corporate worship on the Lord’s Day, this lesson engrained within me in the Pentecostal church is worth noting. Do we really believe that we truly meet with God in corporate worship on the Lord’s Day? Do we truly know that God especially meets with His people when they gather together on the Sabbath? Sadly, I don’t think that we do.
Since our God is omnipresent, we can meet with Him on the beach, in our living room, or riding down the road in the car. Of course, that is true, but the scriptures declare that we meet with Him differently and more intimately on the Lord’s Day as we gather for worship. Psalm 87:1-2 states, “On the holy mount stands the city he founded; the LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob.”
The Psalmist is making a tremendous point. Yes, He loves meeting with His people wherever they might be as they pray and spend time in His Word; however, He more so loves to meet with His people as they gather together on His day. The vision outlined in this psalm is achieved on this side of Heaven in the gathered local church!
The author of Hebrews, who writes in chapter 10 that we should not neglect the assembly of believers, writes in chapter 12:
“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel…Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” (Heb. 12: 22-24; 28-29)
We would do well to heed this lesson from the Pentecostal church. We must know that God especially condescends to us as we gather with His people on His Day. If we truly believe that, we will be motivated to prioritize Lord’s Day worship in our lives. Who wouldn’t, like the Psalmist David, say, “One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple…for a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere” (Ps. 27:4; 84:10).