I love what happens in our main worship services. There’s something really inspiring about standing shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of others, row after row, eyes all fixed in the same direction and singing and shouting with one voice for the same cause. You feel like you’re part of the army of God!   

Four times in Paul’s letters he refers to believers as soldiers.  The army metaphor is accurate because we really are in a battle—a life and death campaign to defeat the enemy of our souls and take back all he’s stolen.

Most of us are faithful soldiers, fully committed to our Commander in Chief. We’re not going to run away from the front lines no matter how fierce the battle or how great the sacrifice.

But people who are task-oriented to the extreme are notorious for their inability to maintain a healthy family life. And this goes for their spiritual family as well.

If soldiers never go home to their family they’ll soon “shoot themselves in the foot,” (to stay with the army metaphor). If we get over-committed to the mission we’ll leave ourselves with no margins. And when the margins are gone the first thing to suffer is our relationships—with our spouse, our children and also with our brothers and sisters in the household of faith.

We can’t be on duty all the time. Otherwise, we’ll crash and burn. We need to leave ourselves adequate margins to sometimes simply ‘be’ and not feel obligated to ‘do.’

Acts 2:42-47 is the model of an ideal, healthy congregation. In verse 46 we see how those early believers were “continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house….”

As the army of God those first Jerusalem believers often gathered in one place by the hundreds and thousands; but they also gathered as the family of God by the handful—in their homes.

If you’re too busy with your mission to spend one evening a week with your spiritual family, then you’re probably too busy.

Every good soldier needs to come home. This month, do yourself a big favor; join a Community LIFE Group in a neighborhood near you and enjoy the family.

Pastor Wayne Hilsden