If your church were rated on its Sunday service by someone from the outside, someone who was thoroughly familiar with its Christian function and purpose, how do you suppose it would fare?

Since we believe that the church is made up of the body of believers what we are in fact asking is, how would you fare? If someone from the outside rated you and your worship of God on any given Sunday, what would he think? Would he throw up his hands in disbelief and leave part-way through the service?

Now take the idea one step further and consider how you would rate yourself on these four parts of the service. The sermon, the music, the worship service and the friendliness of the congregation. To be very specific, what you must ask yourself now is, do I enjoy the communion of the saints to the best of my God given ability, and to the honor and glory of His name?

How are you generally affected by the hours spent each Lord’s Day in His house?

It is always so easy to place the blame on someone or something else. You can say that the minister’s sermon was just too deep for you to get anything out of it. Or the songs that were sung were just too slow and long, and what’s wrong with hymns anyway. Or the service just lasted too long, or you didn’t get home too early Saturday night, and on and on.

But let’s start by saying that we do not always enjoy the communion of the saints in our worship service simply because of our sin. Sin so dominates our lives that even our worship of God is full of imperfection.

So now we see we do not measure up to a very good rating on any of the four divisions. Satan is always hard at work doing all he can to destroy our worship service. Since the very beginning of history, Satan has been trying to destroy God’s church and the communion of the saints.

But this is not final word on the subject. To admit defeat at the hand of Satan would be to deny the power of God, and through the cross we have the assurance that the final victory will be ours.

For one thing, it is our lack of preparation and for another, our lack of spiritual mindedness that often has to be improved upon. It would be a mistake to assume that you can go about your business as usual on a Sunday, and then somehow, may be through concentration, pull yourself apart from the world and enjoy a worthwhile worship service. You are old enough to realize that it just doesn’t work that way. The entire day, not just as few hours as you can possibly get away with, must be given over to the conscious effort to serve God. The value of the time spent in God’s house will depend greatly on your preparation for it.

The worship service can only ad­minister to your needs if you come with a conscious awareness of just what those needs are. It has always amazed me how the Word of God can be delivered from week to week by a faithful servant of God to a wide range of people, and yet that Word will address each person’s own individual needs.

Whatever your need is, the Word will touch it. And these are the services that are easy to remember. The first time in church after the death of a loved one, the Word will comfort you. If you are faced with a serious temptation, the Word will admonish you. If you have family prob­lems, the Word will aid you in this also.

It seems impossible that in one row of the church, one person’s eyes may be filled with tears as his heart is comforted by God’s Word, while in another row, at the same time, someone is sleeping.

That’s why, first of all, a believer comes before God on Sunday, to worship and sing with the church. But it is also important to remember that proper com­munion with each other is based on proper communion with God. If there is separa­tion from God, then there is no proper communion of the saints. That’s why it is not enough to have just a friendly congregation. If that friendliness is not based on the belief in Christ crucified, there is not communion.

When I asked you to consider that question at the beginning, the one about the outside critic reviewing your in-church enthusiasm, I was of course referring to a situation that does not exist. In that since there is no outside critic.

But quite really the Holy Spirit is always with us, not only in church, but He sees all of our actions. And how do you think He views our worship?

We do confess that our Sunday services are not all they should or could be. So then a real effort must be taken on our part to help make our services all they can be.

Prayer and the study of God’s Word are steps which lead us to proper communion. A good chapter to read in this regard is I Corinthians 12. And remember to pray, for yourself, fellow believers, and above all for your pastor. This too is part of proper communion of the saints and leads to a much richer experience in church.