Encouragement to participate in assembly meetings

This is going to be the Reader's Digest condensed version of a message. I'm coming in on Brother Shutt's coattails here. Very quickly in Romans chapter 12.

And part of it is going to be anecdotal, but it has a purpose. Now, I might fudge a little bit all the time. Chapter 12, I need not even read it because I know it's so very well known to all of us.

Paul is beseeching every one of us by the mercies of God, that ye offer, you present your bodies, your lives, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Now, the verse could follow, but I won't read it for the sake of time. I want to speak to you a little bit about this matter of how much we owe to the Lord.

I think anyone that has been effective in the Lord's service or in the life of Christ has had a number of crises in their life. If they haven't, they've missed something. To drift along passively on a calm sea with no turbulence or no difficulties really indicates a lack of God's dealings with us or a totally submissive spirit.

And I could tell you I could look back to five or six points in my life when things have come to a crisis. A point at which I knew God was dealing with me. A time at which I had to face issues that had a lasting impact upon my life.

I'm not here to brag because I could tell you very often times I tell the Lord I really deserve to take up the words of Jacob. Few and evil have been the days of my life and have not attained of the years of my father. My father, I could talk about him for a long time, but I'll leave that.

That's another subject. But I was in the Navy when I left home. You don't like the Navy, that's all right.

I learned a lot in the Navy. I got a lot of benefits from it and the Lord used it in a very remarkable way. I can't go into those details.

I'd love to do so, but I can't. But I was very interested in surgery and I went to Surgical Technician Training School in Portsmouth, Virginia. And at the end of the training session, of course, they give you your choice.

The Navy is very nice. They give you your choice of where you'd like to have your duty. So I had four places.

I said Memphis, Tennessee Hospital or Great Lakes Hospital or Portsmouth, Virginia Hospital. All these lovely places to go. And they sent me to Naples, Italy.

That was a shock. Because that dashed all my plans. That all changed everything in a moment of time.

And it was not going to be the same. But the Lord had a reason for it. I can't go into the details about Naples, Italy, but it was a tremendous blessing to me that God sent me there.

Because it changed the whole direction of my life. I had to face issues that I'd never confronted before. I had to face the fact of the Lordship of Christ that I'd never had a thought about it.

I'd been drifting in my life up to that point, doing what I thought was right and outwardly appearing perhaps correct. For the first time I heard a man preach about the Lordship of Christ. And I thought, that's something I'd never learned before.

Changed my life. But the point I'm coming to is that in those four years, three years over in Naples, Italy, there was not an assembly I could enjoy fellowship with. And I told the Lord.

I was attending different meetings, chapel services on the base and different other activities. I came to the point in my life where I told the Lord, Lord, if I could ever get back to the assembly, I will do everything but warm a seat. I won't sit and listen to a preacher, like was a common thing that I got so sick and tired of, shall I say.

I told the Lord, Lord, I will not sit and warm a seat if I ever get back in fellowship in an assembly again. That was a crisis. I'm just telling you that because when I came back, I went to school at the University of Washington and studied microbiology.

I determined from the very first point of my life, I'm in an assembly again. I could enjoy fellowship with God's people again. I could function again according to the way the New Testament teaches it.

And I was not satisfied just to come to the meetings and sit and listen to other brethren take part. Now, I'm not going to be, I hope I'm not being hard on anybody. I don't want to be.

But I want to say to my brethren, especially, assemblies depend upon you to function as you really should. It takes spiritual brethren to maintain a spiritual assembly. It takes exercise believers to function as they ought to.

And I'm very concerned. I'm being very frank with you. I'll be very honest.

I don't like to terminate a conference session like this, but it's been on my mind and in my heart very heavily. We don't believe in a one man ministry. We don't believe in a two or three man ministry.

But we do not believe in an everyman ministry necessarily either. But we do believe, don't we? And brethren, in the assembly fellowship, coming with the attitude and the preparation to contribute something to the assembly meetings. I don't know how to say this.

But I'm fearful that there are many who don't appreciate what the assembly really is to the Lord. That I'm coming there to give something to the Lord. I'm coming there to contribute something.

And if I'm just coming there to warm a seat because I know somebody else will speak or somebody else will pray, somebody else will participate. I forget what the assembly really is all about. Listen, if you've ever been in a situation where you don't have the privilege and the enjoyment of participating.

Knowing what you really ought to be in, where you ought to be. Knowing how an assembly ought to function. And to be in a place where you can't do it.

You realize in a fresh way what a joy and a privilege it is to be able to be in a place. Where I can actually help to carry out the pattern of the word of God. I've come very convinced lately.

And I'm just speaking, you know, without notes obviously. Don't have any notes. I'm just speaking to what's on my heart in a very deep way.

We need to get beyond what an assembly is to me and what it is to the Lord. I'm really convinced that we need to appreciate the preciousness of an assembly where brethren come together with an exercise of heart. To participate and to take part in a spiritual manner.

I wonder dear brethren, I'm going to ask you directly. I'm just looking at a big audience here. I wouldn't want to ask you directly, individually necessarily.

But do you come expecting to take part in a local assembly meeting every time? Do you come prepared to take part? A very practical question. I think sometimes we can get to the point where we simply come and we know Brother Joe's going to do it. Or Brother John or probably some.

And we sit. And there are silences. Silences are good.

I just want to stir our hearts dear brother. Because it's been on my heart for months. That I'm afraid we're sinking into a pattern that is more and more like.

Well shall I say, I don't like to say a denomination. But away from the pattern that we see in the New Testament. When I look at the New Testament, look at what we have in 1 Corinthians chapter 14.

Paul says, what is it? Every one of you when you come together hath a hymn or a psalm or a prophecy or a word. I can't quote it exactly. Every one of them he says is coming together with something to contribute.

Dear brother, when was the last time you got on your feet to pray, to praise or acknowledge something to the grace of God? I remember Brother Robert, Robert Brant. Les we know him here very well. Some of us in Garneville.

Brother Robert Brant was an elder there in the assembly in Garneville. The more I knew Robert, the more I appreciated him. Because I knew after a while I recognized that he came prepared to every meeting.

And if another brother didn't get up to give ministry, he did. He came prepared to participate in the Bible reading. If a brother didn't preach in the gospel, he did.

He wasn't forward, he wasn't fast on his feet. But he was there prepared to take part and to contribute. I think we can get in a habit.

And I'm condensing the things I have on my mind. Pardon me. Maybe I'm being a little bit too forceful.

But I think we can get in a habit of just coming and going and coming and going and never really recognize. I have a privilege as well as a responsibility to the Lord. Because I owe him everything.

And the more I realize that I owe to the Lord, the more I'm willing to give up my time to prepare. The more I'm willing to come with a desire of heart and exercise of soul to give something. The Lord said to his people in the Old Testament, they had to appear, the veils had to appear three times a year.

And none of them could appear before him empty. My wife and I shortly after we were married, it's going back a lot of years now, about 60 years. Time passes very quickly.

But shortly after we were married, we decided, and I was a student at that time, taking a full load of classes and working 30 hours a week at the hospital. We decided that Tuesday night there was no activities that could be permitted. That was the night to prepare for the Bible reading and the prayer meeting.

Saturday night, the same way, no company, no going out unless it was essential. We had to prepare for the Lord's Day. And I was delighted on, we were in the assembly in Seattle at that time, West Woodland Gospel Hall.

Assembly about 30 in fellowship, 35 perhaps. And I believe that on a Lord's Day morning, almost every brother would take part with worship. Almost every brother.

It's a good environment, great encouragement. I just want to stir our hearts, dear brethren, sisters as well, I'm not ignoring you. But I'm just saying that the spiritual character of an assembly depends on the spiritual character of the believers.

And if you and I want to maintain an assembly as it should be before God, with the realization of how precious and valuable it is in this world to God, the more we're willing to put aside some of the other things that are not that important. The things that don't really matter in the eternal scheme of things. And focus our attention on the things that really are vital and important to God.

I've come to appreciate, I've got to be careful, you know, I'm the oldest preaching brother here, I think. Got to be careful what I, I'm trying to preach like an old man, I'm not an old man yet, but I'm getting older. But I've come to appreciate more and more what an assembly is in God's sight.

I appreciate it from my standpoint, I appreciate it from the testimony of the world. But I think of what it means to God to look down upon a company of believers in this world with all of its confusion and disorder. Religiously and otherwise.

And to see a company of believers saved by the grace of God, recognizing their obligation to the Lord and desiring to honor him with heart and soul. And to do everything possible to maintain the truths and the principles of his precious word. God help us, brethren.

The world is designed, the entire world system is designed to rob you and me of our spiritual exercise and desire. And the devil will do everything possible to occupy your time and your life because he wants to rob Christ of the glory that ought to be his. Dear brethren and sisters, may God help us to go away from this conference today.

If you're leaving today, maybe you're going to stay for tomorrow. Hope you will. May God help us to go away with something that would move our hearts and cause us to have a responsiveness that would carry over in our lives from now on.

Assemblies are dying. I don't like to say that, but in many a great measure, they are as a universal picture. And I can only say that only be maintained as a result of a deep exercise that brings into faith and into focus actual personal involvement and activity.

That's being directed by the word of God and by the spirit of God. I go back to what E.M. Bowne said. It always sticks in my mind.

God doesn't need new methods. He needs new men. He wants to change us and to restore us and bring us into the right condition of heart and life to be what we should be for his glory, for his honor.

I hope that what I've said is not offensive. I don't intend to offend. But it's been speaking to my own soul.

May God help us.