Church Life When There is No Church Col 3:16

Finding Church in a Spiritually Empty Land

Most Christians realize the importance of church.

They inherently know they need to:

Hear the Word

Worship God

and be encouraged by fellow believers.

We instinctly know that as Christians.

Yet, military life often makes it difficult or even impossible to attend church.

ILLUSTRATION:

Dwight D. Eisenhower faced a similar dillema.

Most of Eisenhower’s life he did not attend church, not because he wasn’t a Christian,

but specifically because it was impossible to attend church while

> making the first military convoy across the US,

> or stationed in Panama,

> or while stationed in the Phillipines.

The pressure and demands of leading the allied invasion during WWII made it nearly impossible to regularly attend church.

And so the great President Eisenhower, faced the same dillema every military service member faces - how do I find a way to worship God and be an active, deployed service member?

CAVEAT:

And I know as I say this - I am looking out at a crowd of people who many regularly attend a Chapel onboard NSA Bahrain.

And praise God for that.

> But I know some of you regularly deploy from Bahrain and are away from the Chapel.

> Many of your next assignments would put you in harms way, and far from the nearest church or chapel.

> And yet even if that is not the case - you per capital know more people who deploy than anyone else in the world … and so you are in the unique posistion to encourage our fellow deploying Christians.

The question I want to ask this morning is this -

How do I stay faithful to God - when I rotate every two years, deploy, pcs overseas, underway, or in that fighting hole?

While Colossians 3:16 technically is a challenge to the church of Collosae, Paul’s challenge is a great guide for being the church when you have no church.

Colossians 3:16 ESV

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

let - this is a choice

word I his word

christ - our savior

dwell - live in you

richly - treasure

in you - emphatically personal

I challenge us to make Christ The central substance of our lives