Wendy Goes to Church

Wendy was raised in a Christian home. She attended church with her family every Sunday morning, unless there was a gathering with extended family, a sports event, vacation, or people were just tired. During worship, once she outgrew the nursery, she she spent the hour in junior church, and then graduated into youth church. If on ocassion there were no youth church, she would join the main worship service, but of course she sat with her friends in the balcony.

College disrupted that pattern of life. She was on her own, an adult in a city and community of her own choosing. Many other choices confronted her immediately. Early rising or sleeping in? Fast meals or sit down? And worship? What would that look like? Would it have a place at all? At home, she was carried along by the current of family life. But now she had to steer her own boat, and perhaps even dig her own channels. For the first year, she just followed the new currents. Those were established by (she would later admit) laziness (she would sleep in on Sundays, having been up until 3 a.m. the night before) and the hurriedness of life at an academically demanding college.

As Wendy began her sophomore year, she decided she had to become more serious spiritually and, as she put it, "make time for God." She began reading the Bible each night before bed (something she had never done with any regularity), and she also began attending a Bible study in her dorm. A whole new dimension of life opened up. It was like emerging from the forest and seeing the sky for the first time. God was speaking to her through his word. They Holy Spirit would apply passages, illuminating circumstances and troubling her conscience in ways she had never experienced before. She started praying regularly. She realized that her Christianity had been like a new car sitting in the garage, owned but never operated. Now she found that a driving faith is what faith ought to be, and driving felt good.

By her junior year, Wendy was no longer "making time for God." That is, she saw that it was not good enough to give God a small guest room in the mansion of her life where she could drop in on him from time to time. She had grown beyond that. She had learned in her study of Paul's Letter to the Romans that Christ had redeemed all of her, that he had redeemed her from the life of self-focus and to the life of Christ-focus. People are either "slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness " (6:16). As someone put it, if Christ is not lord of all, he is not lord at all. She knew in her heart that this was true. That little room in her mansion was no good. The whole mansion had to house him.  "From him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever!" (11:36).

That year, all sorts of things changed in Wendy's life. Relationships. Language. Even eating habits. The Lord lifted burdens of bitterness from her heart because she asked him to. And she asked him to because she knew there is nothing that is not his business and his sphere of blessing. Wendy was changed, and people could see it the way they could see the sunrise.

But her senior year was a time of growth in yet another essential element of the Christian life. Her Bible study group had finished Romans and moved on to the Gospel of John. In chapter four, the Holy Spirit startled her with these words: "Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth" (4:23-24). She worshiped in her personal devotions and also at a student praise event most Thursday nights. That must be good as far as it goes, she thought. But she had become very serious about bringing all of her life under the gracious lordship of her Savior, and she could see that she was offering worship strictly on her own terms: the day of her choosing in the form of her choosing and when she chose to give it. Has God commanded something that she is neglecting, however? Is there something he has told his people is pleasing to him and edifying to them?

At the Bible study, she addressed this concern to a friend, Charis, who lived on her hall and whom she knew to be godly. Charis was active in the church she had adopted for her college years, and, from things Wendy had picked up, she knew that Charis had attended church faithfully at home, morning and evening, and had carried that habit with her to college. She would disappear on Sunday mornings to what she called her "church family" and would not show up again until late evening. She seemed to enjoy it, and come back refreshed each Sunday. This girl surely would know something about what God wants in the worship life of his saints.

Charis did not disappoint. She took Wendy straight to Hebrews 10:25, "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another." She added that, in the Book of Acts, the believers gathered together as a church on Sunday, the first day of the week, the day on which Christ the Savior had risen. And Jesus appeared to them at more than one of those meetings to confirm his approval of that pattern of worshiping together. In this setting, Christians "spur one another on to love and good deeds"--not just college friends, but older saints, and Christians from other walks of life. She also mentioned the blessing that her pastor (who is a wise, older man) sumptuously laid before her each week in his sermons. She was always challenged, always blessed, always grew. She was also grateful for the elders of her church who were wise and took seriously the responsibility Christ had laid on them for the care of his sheep (1 Peter 5:1-5). Charis drew close and looked very intently into Wendy's eyes. She said, "If Christ has given preachers and elders in his church for the blessing of his people, then if I am one of his people I will seek and get that blessing!"

Again the Holy Spirit was pressing these words into her heart, and where the words sank in they seemed to find their natural settings. As usual, where Wendy had previously been quite self-satisfied she now saw a gaping hole that only joyful Christian obedience could fill. Was there anything she was doing on Sunday that was better for her and more delightful than worship with the body of Christ? Was she able to feed and shepherd herself, perhaps with the help of friends, without the contribution of pastor and elders? Apparently, God's answer to both of these questions is, "no."

That Sunday, Wendy went with Charis to church. It required a subway ride and a bit of a walk, but that didn't matter. After a month of this habit, a habit she would never abandon by the way (and she would one day refuse a marriage proposal over it), Wendy marveled at all she had been denying herself by overlooking this dimension of the Christian life. She also reflected on the pattern of church life in which she had been raised. Committed, yet not. Sometimes God, sometimes me, which was essentially always "me." Nonetheless, she thanked God for her parents and for the exposure to Christ and his church they gave her as a girl. But she thanked God all the more for his gracious patience with her meandering, her half-hearted, and distracted pursuit of him. And she thanked him, as she would with her last breath, for Jesus the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for her, and who sought her when she was not seeking him.