These words, spoken to one who had absented himself from the fellowship of that room, were wonderfully calculated to warm him and draw him back to the little company gathered in Jerusalem. This same spirit ought to animate those seeking to warm the heart of one who has grown cold and is absenting himself or herself from the meetings.
Too often our way of seeking to bring a wandering soul back is to rebuke them for being absent. “Why weren’t you out to meeting?” “Where have you been? You know you should have been with us,” and such like expressions. But if our heart is filled with Christ, if we have been enjoying His blessed presence in a personal way, and we carry the sense of that joy with us as we leave the meeting, then our message, too, will be, “We have seen the Lord.” And thus it will be His blessed person—not our rebukes—that draws the soul back to His presence.
Let us remember that it is the Person of Christ, and He alone, that can accomplish this. Do we carry with glowing, joyful faces such a message to the wanderer as we leave the meetings? Can we say in truth, “We have seen the Lord!” What else in this world can compare with that? What other possible motive for gathering together, if not by faith, first and supremely, to see the Lord? “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:2020For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20)).
E. Wakefield (adapted)