Sunday evening

I love Sunday evening worship. While the large body that gets together on Sunday morning sounds great in singing and is awesome to just be with, the evening crowd feels more intimate. You can always count on a Sunday evening crowd to be attentive, and "dedicated to the cause".

So how do we know if we're doing God's will? I suppose the simplest answer would be to say that we don't ever really know since we don't have someone here to slap our hands when we do something wrong. The problem with that though is that we are expected to do the Lord's will, while not having that overbearing teacher watching over our shoulders every moment of the day. The old Biblical maxim of "we have this treasure in earthen vessels" comes into play. We have to self-gauge what we are doing, whether we stand up to what the will of the Lord teaches or not, and it is up to us individually to make sure that we stand on the good foundation. You can look at the many teachings that Jesus gave concerning the heart and love and walking with God to show the personal responsibility that we have to "be right" with God.

One of the biggest struggles that we have in this though is to always retain the eyes of God rather than seeing things with our own eyes. Its very hard to do, because everyone around us does right in their own eyes. The Israelites fell into that many times, specifically in the book of Judges, where that phrase is used many times. They would have a good judge sent by God, the judge would die, and after a short period of time, Israel would be overrun by some foreign land because they were doing that which was right in their own eyes, because they had forgotten God. Then they would cry out to him because they would suddenly figure out that God was still around, and God, being the good God that he is, would send them another judge, and the cycle would begin again.

I often wonder why God is so patient with people, and the Israelites are a good example. If it were me, I'd have tossed them out the window after the second or third time. Its easy to give someone a second chance, but when they spit in your face for the fourth time? To the curb they must go! (Or at least that's what the world would teach.) But not so with God. And thank God for that.

So how do I know if what I'm doing is God's will? If I can picture Jesus himself doing it, there's a pretty good chance. If he showed me how to do it, its of a high probability. And I know that I'm going to fall short of his will every once and again, but he's always going to be there, as long as I'm trying to be with him.

And even for the many who don't want to be with him, he's still reaching out.

Thank God.