“And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.” Hebrews 10:24 (NLT)

At my place of employment, we had just shelled out $500,000 for the most advanced digital printing press in the industry. Plus another $100,000 in site work so that the machine would be in its perfect operating environment.

The next four months made my life miserable.

They offered us $10,000 to take early delivery and installed it over the weekend. It was later revealed that a typical install takes at least four days.

It was a bad install. The hot/cold water lines were swapped. Some of the sensors were faulty. Many new parts were ordered and installed.

The situation wasn’t resolved until four months later when they sent a high-level engineer out to spend an entire week going over every piece of the machine until it was all working properly and was set up right.

It was then when I realized how important going to church on a regular basis was.

You see, the press takes readings all day long and recalibrates back to a set point which is stored in a file.

There are a few important things it checks with the inks. Their temperature, density, and conductivity.

When any one of these readings comes up differently than it should, it corrects it by adjusting what is needed to get the values back to where they should be.

It recalibrates back to the settings in the file.

When the sensors were failing, the hot/cold lines were swapped, parts weren’t functioning correctly, it had no chance of producing good quality because it was so lost. So far away from where it should be.

Our “file” is the Bible.

If we don’t refer back to the Bible regularly, we tend to stray gradually further and further away.

I know, for me at least, when I get towards the end of the week (the furthest from church) I feel an increase in anxiety, negative thoughts and self-talk, feelings of failure, and fear of the future due to lack of faith.

I love going to church weekly and being around like-minded people who also share with struggles.

But it’s also a place where we can go to recalibrate on a weekly basis.

By referring consistently back to that file, the Bible, we can keep focused on living life the way Jesus taught.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Philippians 4:8 (NIV)