People who don’t attend church services often claim, “I can worship God by myself [read: privately],” but, in truth, rarely do. They are merely looking for an excuse not to attend.

Many who regularly attend church services seldom worship God privately. They err in their thinking that an hour of group worship a week is sufficient.

Do you see the irony?

In reality, our worship is complete only when we do both. Paul tells us not to give up meeting together (corporate worship) in Hebrews 10:25. Jesus models private worship for us by His times of solitude for prayer (cf. Matthew 14:23).

I heard a man once say that Sunday worship at church was the group version of what he’d done alone everyday during the week. Excellent perspective, I think.

The following is based ever-so-loosely on an illustration given by Dr. Ray Pritchard in a sermon delivered at Mt. Gilboa Baptist Church (Campbellsville, KY) in March of 2011.

A cute young married couple fresh out of the Moody Bible Institute came to see me, their pastor, for an interview before being approved as missionaries.  When I asked them where they wanted to go as missionaries, they responded, "We don't know." I was stunned into silence.  I'd never had prospective missionaries before me who had no clue where they wanted to serve.  I didn't know what to say, so I did what all self-respecting pastors do in situations like that; I said the first thing that popped into my mind. I said, "If you don't know it's because you don't need to know, because if you needed to know, you'd know, but since you don't know that means you don't need to know. If God be God, that must be true."

"A short time later, this same cute couple found me after a worship service and said, 'Pastor Ray, guess what!  We're going to Russia!'  I thought to myself, 'Since they know, they must need to know because if they didn't need to know, they wouldn't know, but since they do know, they must need to know.  If God be God, this must be true.' They spent several wonderful years in that country and did an amazing work for God and his Kingdom."