Assembled Together

You know what it is to enjoy the meetings of God's people, but we would prize them more if we felt that everything else is secondary. There may be occasions to keep us away from a meeting, but if there is such, it should be a real occasion. A dear, godly old brother was feeling ill one night, and someone remarked to him about going to the meeting. "Well," he said, "my heart is there, so I guess the poor body will follow!" He went to the meeting.
That is the kind of spirit that God can bless, to be with God's people and give it the first place. "Where they were assembled together." What a place that has in Scripture. And it is largely a matter of cultivating an appetite for those things—a matter of habit, though I don't like that word. Therefore, form the habit while still young in your Christian life, so that when there is a meeting, you are going to be there and you will be blessed for it, unless you have a definite word from the Lord that He does not want you to go.
We each can make a lot of excuses for missing a meeting. If you want to keep happy in the Lord and go on in the truth, take advantage of the meeting together of God's people. Form the habit! Do not even raise the question if you should go or not, but leave that question entirely out. Take it for granted that you are going. There are some people who miss a meeting, and no one ever knows it. There are other people who miss a meeting, and the next time we see them we inquire why they were not there. They can always give an answer. Isn't it a sad situation when someone can stay away for quite a while and no one ever says a word about it? In such a case they take it for granted that such a person does not come regularly, and for that reason is not expected. But if it is evidenced that our desire is to be with God's people, they desire that we be there.
What a blessing it would be to all Christians if those three things were of primary importance in their lives: prayer, the Word of God, and the assembling together with God's people. Very soon people would begin to take knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. They would find a real blessing in the joy of being with their own company—those that are dear to our Lord—and having the sense in their souls that they are seeking to please the One that brought them to Himself. What is there to be compared with Him? What is there to be compared with walking under the eye of God, with the approbation of Christ in a world like this? May the blessed God enable us all to do this with purpose of heart.