Sunday: Why I went back to church

Growing up my younger sister and I would always get our clothes ready for church the day before. It was like a ritual and my mum always looked at us in admiration, according to her we were too young to do such at such an age.

Then I grew up and stopped going to church because I was mad at the fact that most evildoers were churchgoers. In college, I saw boys spike girls drink on a Saturday and went to church on Sunday to lead the praise and worship session. Why lift unholy hands and go home to plan evil against your fellow human being? It never made sense to me.

For a while, I hated the idea of going to church and when COVID-19 came I was glad I didn’t have to deal with meeting people and trying to smile at people in the church.

Online service became my MO and at that moment I discovered Apostle Joshua Selman, it was and still is an amazing experience but then nothing can be compared with being in the house of God.

No online service gives me the feels I get when I am in church swaying my body from one side to the other to the sonorous hymns recitals, or nodding my head to the priests as he preaches.

Church in itself isn’t a bad place, I discovered that the church is like the hospital, and just like a hospital we have doctors, nurses, clients, patients, laboratory technicians, everyone is there working in harmony to achieve a common goal.

So just like a hospital, expect to see the sick in the church, the sick in spirit, the sick in mind, the sick in health, etc. If I am being honest I will say I was sick in the spirit because I no longer rejoiced when I heard them say; let’s go into the house of the Lord.

However, the church being a hospital is not limited to healing. I believe the church can be a place filled with love, respect, discipline, joy, and God. But that’s not the case, is it?

For the first time this year, I attended church last week and it was a wholesome experience, I felt at peace probably because I did not see the faces of those that made me leave the church in the first place.

You have your own experience, someone in the church may have done something that made you lose faith in the church but don’t lose faith in God and his commandments.

Staying away from church helped me build a personal relationship with God and discover him myself but imagine the possibility of the extent of my relationship with him if I had surrounded myself with people who had the same goal.

I think the key is being in circles that genuinely want to serve God.

As young children we had this phrase we said during block rosary session, in Igbo, it goes like this;

Speaker: ...onye gbakata hara

Congregation: Nwanne ya enyere ya aka.

English Translation:

Speaker: When one gets tired of running...
Congregation: His brother/sister will help him.

Remember that Bible passage that says; Iron sharpeneth iron? Proverbs 27 vs 17 that’s what the above sentence is based on.

I don’t know what experience you might have had but I know one thing and that is, leaving Church is not the answer. I am saying this from experience, I focused my attention on God and decided that it was only him. It doesn’t matter if I saw that man sitting two sits away from hitting his wife, it is God I came to serve and I won’t let anyone pull me away from him.

I pray you make the decision today to serve God, indeed he is Good.