2020-05-07 Coffee with Chris - We’ve been here before

The speaker acknowledges that the current situation may make us feel alone, but reminds us that the church has faced challenges before. In 1918, churches were closed due to the Spanish influenza, yet they found ways to continue being the church. The early church also faced persecution and had to go underground, but still thrived. The speaker encourages us to pray for those who cannot publicly worship, even without a virus. They remind us that God is with us and close to us, and encourage us to remember our brothers and sisters in countries where public worship is not an option. Good morning and welcome to Coffee with Chris. You know, right now, as we're in the situation that we're in, I think it can be easy to feel like this has never happened to anyone before. And we're in a unique situation that, you know, that no one's ever bounced back from. And, you know, you may think, like, how is the church going to adapt and move forward in the future with such a unique situation that's never happened before? The truth is, this has happened before. In fact, I just came across yesterday a really interesting little snippet from, I believe it was a Christian newspaper of some kind, and this was in 1918. It mentions that in Springfield, the churches were closed due to the scourge of Spanish influenza. So, and they encouraged everyone to devote additional time to prayer for our missionaries and that kind of thing. So they, even in a world with no internet where they couldn't do online services, found a way to still be the church in light of all of that craziness that was going on. As we can feel alone in all of these times, you know, I think it's important to look at some of these history things. You know, we look at the early church having to have gone, like, underground kind of thing. There's still places in the world today where church is underground, whether figuratively or literally. Yeah, and there's a lot of people who don't have the freedom to go to a church service even under normal circumstances and periods in history where that just simply wasn't an option. And yet, the church survived and in a lot of cases, thrived, you know. We see the expansion of the church through the missionary efforts of, you know, Paul and other apostles in a time when Christianity was really not looked upon favorably, you know. Most of the early apostles were, at least tradition supposes that most of them were martyred for their faith. And so, when you put those things in perspective, we're actually in quite a good situation compared to any of that. And in fact, for a lot of people, like I say, around the world right now, who wouldn't be able to meet publicly regardless of coronavirus or not, this is something to let us know the importance to be praying for those people, the importance to be praying for the church in nations where they can't publicly worship. So I would just really encourage you to know that you're not alone in all of this, that these things have happened before and the church has not just survived, but also thrived. But to also know that God is with you in all of this, He is as ever-present as He was before, and He's as close as the mention of His name. And also to remember our brothers and sisters in countries and contexts where that public form of worship is not an option, even without a virus. So yeah, anyways, that's my encouragement and challenge to you today. Have a great day. God bless.