Importance of Religious Services

You may work with earnestness in the performance of your mechanical duties, and then, without interest or earnestness, go to religious service, showing that you have no heart in such service. How can such professors grow? It is impossible. They ever remain dwarfs in religious things, and when the judgment shall sit and the books be opened, their names come under the head of slothful servants,—weighed in the balance and found wanting.PH149 31.1

The preached Word will be powerless for the conviction and conversion of souls, while a sleepy, lazy, and backslidden church are all that are left to sustain the efforts of the laborer. The efforts of Christ's ambassadors will be successful only when sustained by an earnest, praying, working people. Prayer meetings are neglected, while concerts, singing schools, and various entertainments are faithfully patronized. “It's only a prayer meeting,” is often repeated by church members; I can not call them Christians. Exciting popular lectures will interest the church members and call them out, when the prayer meeting has no attraction for them. This reveals the true spiritual condition of the church. God is not pleased with this state of things. Spiritual and eternal things are not appreciated, while temporal matters are exalted above things of eternal interest.PH149 31.2

A prayer meeting will always tell the true interest of the church members in spiritual and eternal things. The prayer meeting is as the pulse to the body; it denotes the true spiritual condition of the church. A lifeless, backslidden church has no relish for the prayer meetings. Young men and women of no depth of religious experience, who are vain and proud and frivolous, can feel no satisfaction in engaging in religious exercises. They prefer to pass the time in flirtations or reading novels, or in other ways of pleasing and gratifying the feelings of the natural heart.PH149 32.1