Let us not give up meeting together

“Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” Hebrews 10:25
This is a verse that I believe is often misapplied. People – particularly if they’ve been going to church every week for decades, automatically think it is referring to Sunday church services. I know – I used to be one of those people. I struggled immensely to take someone seriously who said they were a Christian but didn’t go to church. Then, through some pretty sudden circumstances, I found that I was one of those people: a Christian who wasn’t going to church. I knew that my faith was just as strong as ever, but at the time (and indeed, for about 5 years) I did not have a ‘church home’. God taught me a lot through that period about what the Church is, and how the ‘big C’ Church is different to the ‘little c’ church. There are many churches (fellowship groups that gather together to worship and study the Bible), but one Church (the body of Christ, all true believers, all over the world, from Pentecost to the Rapture). And just as there are many people in a church who are not part of the Church, so too there are people in the Church who do not go to a church.
This verse does not say, ‘Let us not give up meeting together on Sundays.’ While I was in that out-of-church period, our family joined a house church network. Other people may have a home group that they go to regularly. So long as you have regular contact with other believers, there’s no problem.
It’s true, it is becoming more and more common for people professing to be Christians to stay at home, isolating themselves from everyone else in the body of Christ. They’ll say, ‘The church hurt me, so I don’t want to have anything to do with it,’ or ‘There aren’t any good churches around here worth going to,’ or ‘I can worship God just fine by myself.’ If you’re in that position today, my question to you is this: Not going to a church on Sunday morning is fine, that’s your choice, but do you have another time during the week where you make the effort to meet with other believers?
Meeting together is important. It’s where the Holy Spirit can move in ways that He can’t when you’re by yourself. You’ll share a Scripture that spoke to you with someone that will stir up their heart; and they might say something that challenges you also to press on in your walk with the Lord. This kind of mutual edification doesn’t happen when you isolate yourself.
Also, we mustn’t forget the last part of the verse: ‘but let us encourage one another’ – the author is referring to this mutual edification – ‘and all the more as you see the Day approaching’. The last days are certainly approaching thick and fast. Now is not the time to isolate yourself, but to seek the company of other believers, to encourage them and to be encouraged yourself, in these dark days we are living in.