2 Chronicles 29:1 Hezekiah became king when he was twenty-five years old, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abijah the daughter of Zechariah. 29:2 And he did what was right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his father David had done 29:3 In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the LORD and repaired them.

King Hezekiah was a breath of fresh air to the nation of Judah because his priorities lined up with God’s. His first official act recorded here is to repair the broken Temple doors that had been locked closed. The place of public worship is important to our God not because He needs such a place but because we need it. God desires that His children gather in a public place together to meet with Him. We find this scriptural concept continued in the New Testament. Hebrews 10:25 “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some and much more as you see the day approaching.”  We also find in the life of Jesus in Luke 4 that where He made it His common practice to go weekly to the synagogue to gather together with other believers in public worship of God. It is a command to attend the assembly of believers and there is never seen in the New Testament a believer who doesn’t belong to a local assembly. In the seventh century BC God desired believers to gather together publicly, as He did in the first century, as He does still today. Our heavenly Father knows that we all need that positive spiritual peer pressure that comes from the community of believers to help ‘keep our fire hot.’ Like the story of a pastor who went to visit a man who had been absent from church for some time. When the pastor arrived at the house of his wayward parishioner he found him sitting by a fire of glowing coals. The man fully expected his pastor to rebuke him for his tardy attendance at services. But instead the pastor drew up a chair alongside the fireplace where the man was sitting just peering into the fire.  With the tongs the pastor reached into the fire and took one of the red-hot glowing coals and placed it by itself out on the hearth. Within no time at all the coal began to lose its glow until in a few minutes it was black. The man smiled and looked into the face of his pastor who hadn’t said a word and said, “I’ll see you at church next week.”