Personal Devotion and the Power of Gathering

"A thriving faith is built through daily pursuit of God and a consistent life with his people. It's simple, but it's not necessarily easy." — Pastor Anthony Lombardi

Most people would say their faith matters to them. Most people would say they value their relationship with God. But Pastor Anthony Lombardi opened this message with a question that cuts a little deeper than that. He asked the congregation to consider not what they say they value, but what their habits actually reveal.

In closing out The Tree Church's Unstoppable Force series, Pastor Anthony brought the final two components of the series together, arguing that they are two sides of the same coin. Those two things are personal daily devotion to God and consistent participation in the gathered church community. And while they may seem distinct, he made the case that they are deeply connected and that a Christian life without both is a Christian life running on empty.

He framed it this way. The things we are consistent in are the things that actually matter most to us. Not the things we say we enjoy. Not the things we claim to value. But the things we keep showing up for, week after week, day after day. That standard, he suggested, is worth applying honestly to our faith.

Pastor Anthony identified two ways Christians tend to drift from a healthy, integrated faith. The first he called Sunday-centric Christianity. This is where church attendance becomes the whole of someone's faith. They show up on Sunday morning, sit through the service, and then largely disconnect from God for the rest of the week. Their faith never quite makes it into the rhythms of daily life.

The second extreme is isolated individual Christianity. This is the familiar idea that it is just me and Jesus, that faith is a private, personal matter with no need for community or corporate worship. Pastor Anthony was direct about this one. At best, he said, that idea is incomplete. At worst, it is completely unbiblical.

Biblical Christianity, he argued, is neither of these things on its own. It is both. It is a people who seek God personally and daily, and a people who gather regularly as the body of Christ. Removing either of those elements leaves something that looks less like the faith described in scripture and more like a faith shaped by personal convenience.

To address the individualistic extreme, Pastor Anthony pointed to something more foundational than a church attendance policy. He pointed to how human beings are made. God himself, he noted, exists in relationship as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And when God created humanity in his image, he created people who need one another. Even before sin entered the world, God said it was not good for man to be alone.

This reality shows up everywhere. Psychologists describe the need for secure attachment from infancy. Children long to belong. Adults pursue community in friendships, marriage, and shared experiences. There is something electric, Pastor Anthony observed, about being in a room full of people cheering for the same team or laughing together at a live comedy show. That electricity is not accidental. It reflects something God built into us.
The question he posed was a simple one. If community is that powerful in ordinary life, how much more essential must it be in the journey of faith?

He recalled a conversation from his college years with a man who had returned to church after a difficult season. The man admitted he chose a large church specifically because he could sneak in and sneak out without anyone noticing. Pastor Anthony remembered thinking that this man was missing the point entirely. Community is not a backdrop for a Sunday service. It is the very thing God intended the church to be.

To ground this in scripture, Pastor Anthony turned to Hebrews 10:24–25, where the author challenges believers to hold fast to the confession of their hope without wavering and to not neglect meeting together. The instruction to gather is not presented as optional. It is presented as one of the primary ways Christians hold on to their faith when life gets hard.

He also read from Acts 2:42–47, which gives the earliest picture of what Christian community looked like after Jesus ascended. The first believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to breaking bread, and to prayer. They were not casual about it. They were not occasional about it. They were devoted.

Pastor Anthony paused on that word. Devoted. It means intentional. It means consistent. It means they made gathering a priority rather than an afterthought. And the result, he pointed out, was that the Lord added to their number day by day. When the people of God did their part, God moved.

He also reframed fellowship as something more than a social activity. Community, he said, is a spiritual discipline. It is one of the means God uses to shape, encourage, and sanctify his people. Being in close relationship with others has a way of surfacing things in us that might otherwise stay hidden, and that exposure is part of how God does his transforming work.

Having addressed the community side of the equation, Pastor Anthony turned to the other. For those whose faith had become entirely Sunday-centric, he pointed to the personal and private dimension of following Jesus.

He drew from Mark 1:35, where Jesus rose very early in the morning, slipped away from everyone, and went to a desolate place to pray. His disciples eventually tracked him down, confused about why he had disappeared when there were crowds to attend to and needs to meet. Jesus's response was to simply keep going. He had not abandoned his mission. He had gone to the source of everything that made his mission possible.

Pastor Anthony did not let that moment pass without making the application plain. If Jesus Christ, the divine Son of God, made private prayer a consistent priority, how much more do ordinary followers of Jesus need to do the same?

He then moved to Matthew 6:6, where Jesus teaches his disciples about prayer. The language Jesus uses is instructive. He does not say if you pray. He says when you pray. The assumption is already there. A follower of Jesus prays. A follower of Jesus carves out time to seek God privately, to open scripture, to be alone with the Father.

And Jesus does not leave the motivation vague. He says that the Father who sees in secret will reward those who seek him there. Pastor Anthony was careful to clarify what he believed Jesus meant. This is not a transaction. God is not a vending machine. What Jesus is pointing to is something far better. When we seek God, we find God. We grow in our knowledge of him. We begin to experience his presence, his peace, his strength, and his work in our lives.

Pastor Anthony closed the message with honesty and pastoral care. He acknowledged that the Christian life is genuinely difficult. There are personal struggles, spiritual opposition, and a culture that consistently pulls attention away from God. The busyness excuse is real, he admitted, though he also gently challenged it by suggesting that a quick look at daily screen time might reveal more available time than most people think.

But his larger point was not about time management. It was about what God has always designed the flourishing Christian life to look like. It is not complicated. It is daily pursuit of God in private and consistent participation in the gathered community of faith. Simple as that sounds, it is not always easy, because it requires making choices about what actually comes first.

He closed by asking each person to honestly assess where they fall. Are there things crowding out private time with God? Is Sunday morning the ceiling of your faith rather than one component of a fuller life with him? Are you communicating to your children, by what you prioritize, that the gathered church matters? These were not rhetorical questions. They were an invitation to respond.

Pastor Anthony then led the congregation in prayer, asking God to reveal whatever needs to be removed, simplified, or reprioritized so that seeking him can take its rightful place.

If you are looking for a church in Lancaster or Logan, Ohio, The Tree Church would love to have you join us. We gather every Sunday at 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM at both campuses in Lancaster and Logan, Ohio, and we believe the weekly gathering of God's people is not just a tradition but a vital part of a thriving faith.

Lancaster Campus

• Lancaster Campus Address
• Sunday Services: 9:00 AM & 11:00 AM

Logan Campus

• Logan Campus Address
• Sunday Services: 9:00 AM & 11:00 AM

Whether you are new to faith or simply looking for a community to grow with, there is a place for you here. We would love to see you on Sunday.