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What motivates you to attend church services?

Discussion in 'Religion & Spirituality' started by jonathscliq, Jul 30, 2017.

  1. jonathscliq

    jonathscliq New Member

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    Sometimes I sit back and ask myself why I should attend church service. I also would want to know what it is that motivates folks to attend church services. It's not a coincidence that this question is coming up today being a Sunday here.

    Surely, there are various reasons why one would want to attend church, and I would want to sample that opinion of yours. For me, I see it as a way of obeying God as to keeping the sabbath day holy, but that isn't all....

    I'll reveal my other reasons in the course of this discourse but let me get yours first.
     
  2. breezykip

    breezykip New Member

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    Church services enables me to contribute to the unity of our brotherhood.some of the worshipers who come to church have been rejected by their parents and siblings. Yet Jesus promised to give them a spiritual family to love them and care for them (Mark 10:29,30)By attending church services I fit in the position of a "brother" to them by interacting and encauraging them.Others also well suit the positions of becoming "fathers" and "mothers" to these dear ones!. That motivates me to attend church services.
     
  3. Poselina

    Poselina New Member

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    The Bill Gaither have a song that say, "learning to love you,enjoying the trip getting used to the family of God". It is in the church that you will be rehearsing living with fellow Christian for eternity in heaven.I need to get used to loving these members of God's family.

    When I feel need to hear a message from God addressing my current situation in life then church is the place for me.When I need to be reminded of some bible verses that could encourage me then attending the Sunday church service is my better option.

    I also like it when am singing psalms and hymns and worshipping with other believers.
     
  4. Charles Nyakira

    Charles Nyakira New Member

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    THE FATHER I LOST
    There were days, if I could put the hollow ache that haunted me into words, it would be that I miss my father, so much, that nothing else makes sense. There were days that I would have so many good things happening in my life but I wasn’t emotionally wired to realize it or even enjoy it, just because I felt like the one person I would have wanted to celebrate it with, wasn’t there so it was not worth celebrating.I think the worst kind of grieve is that which is not associated with death. Not that death is better, absolutely not! But at least you understand; people understand, why you grieve, no matter how long you remain at that place. Grief, other than death, brings along with it a myriad of feelings that are so difficult and confusing even for you. You wonder why you’ve been crying, every day, for so long, over someone who is alive and well. You are constantly surprised at how weak and vulnerable you’ve become and at your lack of faith in God. It gets worse when you have to explain to anyone, why things are the way they are or when you spend time around people who talk about how great their dads are or how much like them they would like to be or how they would never get married to anyone who fell short of the standard that their dad has set for them. Oh the lies you tell just to cover up the wars that rage behind closed doors and those that rage within you!For most part of my childhood, I believed family was indestructible. My dad was and still is, a peculiar man. The earliest memory I have of him is him putting sugar into a saucer and placing me on his lap as I indulged until I’d had enough. (Lol, my mum hated this). I must have been four or five. That was my special time with daddy, most evenings. There’s when I’d tell him all about school and how my day was, then make a few cheap demands here and there and before long, I’d be asleep. I remember him walking me to school giving me stories about this ogre that lived in Mwingi (laughs). I must have had a virtual relationship with that thing given how much we talked about it. I remember him doing the twist dance some days and the older I got, it stopped being funny. It was abso-totally embarrassing. He just didn’t know when to and when not to. I mean, my friends would come home and he’d want to show them “the dance”. He looked absolutely ridiculous seeing as he’s just a few inches taller than me (and mind you, I am pretty vertically challenged). He used to fasten his key holder on his belt and he had like 20 useless keys on it so you can imagine the dance came with quite a set of instruments. My friends never told me this but I am pretty sure they thought something was amiss, more often than not. Being an African dad, it was pretty special that he called me sweetheart or honey, that he always kissed me on the forehead whenever we’d meet, even in public, and he told me he loved me every day, as long as I can remember, up until the storm hit our home.I woke up one day and none of that was there anymore. There was no explanation either. It was difficult making the transition from the girl who thought her daddy was her hero, to being just another statistic, a broken girl who loathes her father for walking out on his family. At age 13, I wasn’t about to understand or make excuses for him. How does a man who loved me so much, not love me anymore, or care to be involved in our lives anymore. I mean, seeing all your friends in a school prayer day being laid hands on by their parents just before exams and no one shows up for you because the storm at home is so intense that you were forgotten, that! That scars you. Seeing your mother completely undone and unavailable for you, watching her lose faith in God and His goodness and having to step up and step in for her while gracing and covering her all the way, that takes something from you. Having to lie to your baby brother that dad travels a lot, that’s why he cannot see him, and watching him grow up and see right through your lies is scary. Constantly having to talk him out of the obviously growing resentment, having to play his mom and dad, his big sister, his best friend, seeing him through “the right of passage”, being there on his first day in high school and taking the role of a parent and giving him advice that was never given to me, being the one to have the difficult uncomfortable conversations with him about puberty, sex and all things manhood at his age, because these things need to be addressed while all the while, trying to manage the crisis that is one’s twenties, great bitterness was sown. It’s been years of feeling all sorts of things, some which no words could adequately describe.Dealing with this area of my life has happened in interesting phases. For most part of high school, I was angry. Angry at God, at myself, my parents, and most especially, angry at the lies that I told. I was broken in more ways than I’d like to admit so lying became my way out. I lied to people at school and in church, I lied to my friends, heck I even lied to myself! Then one day I woke up and swore to myself that I wouldn’t spend one more minute thinking or wallowing in frustration over spilt milk. So whenever the tears began welling in my eyes, I’d tell myself “don’t you dare cry, you are not weak, you are strong. This has got nothing on you! Ignore, ignore, ignore. Box all those memories, you’ll be fine”. Then I got to the attention seeking phase. I began sharing bits and pieces to a couple of people. Not because I knew it would bring healing, but because I needed someone to recognize me and my pain. I wanted people to find magic in my person, because in my mind, I had been through oh so much! People needed to marvel at my strength and to be inspired by my courage. Then I would feed on all that praise, to validate myself. See, when you begin looking for validation and affirmation that a parent should have given you, whatever you get out there is just not enough. So I kept wanting and seeking more of it. If people didn’t tell me how strong I was, or how amazing and beautiful I was, I would cave into depression, self-hate and drown in feelings of worthlessness. The friends I had were not enough, I had to be loud and do controversial posts on social media to attract attention to myself, threaten suicide, dress scantily, give my opinion on just about everything and to anyone, just so that people can see me, really, see me! I had to be in a relationship, even though I was still too immature to understand the divinely intended purpose of commitment between man and woman. This man (scratch that, boy) was going to be everything I ever wanted. I would make him into that. He was going to complete my broken sorry self. But because no human being is wired to complete another, I got hurt, by yet another man besides my father, and another and another. All these while, I am still saved, spirit-filled, serving in church but lying and hiding behind the glorification that comes with looking like you have your life all together, at such a young age, just so that I never have to address and deal with the real problem.I cannot quite tell where my journey of healing began, but I know I got better when I stopped playing the victim and accepted that this place of pain was where I was at, that it was my story and that I needed not lie anymore. It was when I realized that having witnessed our family come apart because divorce, wasn’t a sentence to walk around deprived and un-affirmed. It was when I got around to knowing God, not just as a King, a Judge, a Mighty Man of War or any of all those big deal kind of qualities, but as my Father and my lover. I got better when I realized that no one really will ever save me from missing a father, my father, the man that I loved since birth, and still do today. It was when I accepted to forgive him and to cultivate nothing but deep affection for him in my heart, whether I saw him or not. Whether he was present or not. Whether he showed concern or none whatsoever. I purposed that my love for him would remain constant. He was my father, with all his flaws and that would never change. What needed to change is how I handled him and the situations that I found myself in because he left us. It was when I realized that there was true substance in those moments of ache, pain, anger, love and nostalgia all at once. It is in such times that I cleave even harder to my heavenly Father. This here, has become a permanent, but beautiful scar. The Lord taught me, not to look for quick ways to make it all go away, but to be present and to allow Him to produce beauty out of it.It was during a mission two years ago, that I got a glimpse of what God was about to do with my pain. We were ministering in a girl’s boarding school, I had prayed over ten girls and I could have sworn that they had prior information about my life. They were all coming from broken homes. They were broken arrows, trying to find a way out of it but feeling stuck and unloved, unappreciated, unnoticed and forgotten. I had never made such fervent prayers in my life before. I wept with these girls, because I knew exactly how it felt. They didn’t need to use words to express themselves. I only needed to look into their eyes, because in them, I saw myself. I always knew I was marked for ministry, because no matter how much I ran and messed up, the Lord kept coming for me, covering my shame. But this experience stirred me up on the inside to not be quiet anymore but to reach out and talk about the ugly and painful things as well, because lives depend on our courage as Christians to be bold enough to be vulnerable, even while still struggling with whatever it is that we struggle with.These past few years have seen me acquire such a love for both young men and women that are from broken homes and most especially those that feel trapped in the eye of this kind of a storm because the drama never really goes away. It eats into your peace, your idea of what a home should be, it blurs your vision of marriage, it constantly tears you apart emotionally, spiritually, mentally, even physically. I mean its now 9 years down the line but there are days that I have to look myself in the mirror and remind myself that I am not going back down that road again. That I am not broken anymore. That I am whole and redeemed. That I can no longer use my father as an excuse to make questionable life decisions. That “daddy issues” can no longer be an excuse to not value myself as a woman or not to set the highest standards possible in matters purity and modesty. That I cannot make people around me suffer for mistakes that they never made, that I have no right to hate, insult or judge men just because of one man’s mistake. I have loved, and loved fiercely, and I am looking forward to having a family of my own and the fear of failing at it is no longer a concern of mine. Because even though I lost the father that I would have loved to have as I transitioned from teenage to the amazing woman I have become, I met one whose love underwrote everything that I lacked, the man Jesus Christ!If you are out there and you are dealing with pain that was caused or is being caused by your parent, take it from someone that understands that, it is an acute, all-consuming kind of pain. There is hope for you in Christ, there is healing for you in His love and in His presence. It is nothing to be ashamed of. You are sitting on gold!
     

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