Last week I started reading the book “Letters to a Young Calvinist”  by James. K.A. Smith because it was on sale for free on Amazon. It’s an interesting book that helps lay a very helpful foundation for someone looking to explore what Calvinism is. He writes each chapter as a letter to someone who used to be a Sunday School student and is beginning to wrestle with the implications of what Scripture says. I’m guessing I’ll finish it this week, but one phrase that stuck out to me was this:

It’s not about purity. (If it were, no church would ever let us in the door.) It’s about faithfulness.

How faithful are you in your pursuit of God? How faithful are you in your involvement in church? A general trend recently seems to be that church is the first thing to be missed on a weekend’s schedule. If there’s a sports tournament or you didn’t sleep well the night before then you might as well spend Sunday recovering. My dad had the rule for me that I was allowed to miss 2 church services for basketball a year – and he’d help me meet that goal by coming to my tournaments and going to a new church with me, and I’m grateful he did.

I’ve dealt with the importance of local church involvement before, but it bears repeating here. Involvement in a church isn’t an option for a Christian. I’ve compared it to Olaf in the movie Frozen who was a snowman dreaming of spending time in summer. We need to commit to a local church in order to encourage others but also so we can be encouraged. This means being faithful to spend time together and share what’s going on in your life.

Far too many people today are focusing on the purity aspect of the church instead of the faithful aspect of the church. I was talking to someone from my church this morning and said that I hope someone with same sex attraction comes to our church – there’s no perfect people in the church. In fact, if you ever hear of a church that says they are perfect and made of perfect people turn the other way and run! They will probably try to get you to drink some kool-aid! The church isn’t a museum to showcase the saints, it’s a hospital to save the broken and dying. And no one is is immune to this sin. We are all in desperate need of regular repentance and reminders of what God has done for us in Jesus.