In the Church we not only learn divine doctrine; we also experience its application. As the body of Christ, the members of the Church minister to one another in the reality of day-to-day life. All of us are imperfect; we may offend and be offended. We often test one another with our personal idiosyncrasies. In the body of Christ, we have to go beyond concepts and exalted words and have a real “hands-on” experience as we learn to 'live together in love.'
Elder D. Todd Christofferson, "Why The Church", General Conference, October 2015
I've been thinking lately about why it is that we go to church in the first place. Why couldn't we just stay home and have our own sacrament and study time? Why do we have to put our Sunday best on and go to another location? I'm guilty of that lack of motivation.
You've heard, I'm sure, of the object lesson where you take a, sheet of paper and try to tear it in half. Well, you can easily do that, right? It's a single sheet. But if you take hundreds of sheets of paper together and try to tear that in half, it just cannot be done easily or at all.
Point is, we go to church to be together. Together we are stronger. We go to church to strengthen our faith, or someone else's, usually both. We go to church to edify and be edified. We have 168 hours in a week and the Lord is merely requiring that 2 of those hours, we get together and strengthen each other.
Frankly, I need more than that to get stronger. 😁
One of my favorite things is to go to church and hear everyone sing the hymns. That is something we ALL do together. It doesn't matter what the singing ability is of each person, that is something we all do together to worship. Together.
Bottom line is we truly get out what we seek to from going to church. If we don't expect anything, that is most likely what we get out of it. But if we go with the mindset of truly listening to what the Lord wants to tell us, through revelation, through somebody else, etc., we will hear Him. Despite the weaknesses in everyone, He will use them to tell us, something. He does talk to us. It is us who need to learn to listen.