Categories
church

Knowing the Will of God

Everyday I am bombarded with decisions and doubts. What’s worst is that even though I don’t know what I should do, I should be thinking what God wants me to do. In any and all of my decisions I should be looking for God’s Will, but I have a problem. I don’t think that I have ever seen a shaft of celestial light illuminating the correct decision. How do I know the will of God for my life? After all, it is a great concern in Scriptures this ?knowing the will of God?.

When Jesus makes such strong statements as those who do the will of God being the ones who are actually his family (Mk 3:35 ) what are we left to think about those who do not do the will of God? We have an account of a certain prophet who knowing the will of God by direct revelation, ran the opposite direction because he didn’t want to deliver the message. The account of his tale closes with this prophet scowling in the hot sun, the smell of fish permeating his flesh and a cruel enemy unscathed and saved (Jonah 1-4).

We also have Paul telling the Roman believers that they are to offer up their bodies as living sacrifices which is their reasonable service of worship and in thus doing they must separate themselves from the world by a transformation. Concerning this transformation he points out that these believers will be testing and approving the good, acceptable and perfect will of God (Rom 12:1-2 and emphasis mine).

What will of God?

Categories
church worship

Evolution of the Altar 4: Choice

Continuing our discussion on the evolution of the Altar, let us remind ourselves what sparked this train of thought. If you remember, IreneQ quoted someone as underscoring the purpose of the church and the role that worship plays with the following quote:

Categories
church israel

Evolution of the Altar 3: Convenience

Look at the book of First Kings 12:25-33 after the Kingdom has divided. Reheboam, listening to the council of the young men, has raised taxes and increased the burden on the Israelites forcing the predicted split of the kingdom which was promised by God because of Solomon’s sin. Jeroboam, now in charge of the northern kingdom of Israel noticed that the people would inevitably have to go South to worship on the altar at the temple.

Categories
church israel

Evolution of the Altar 2: Commanded Not

Now, we have two priests, Sons of Aaron (Nadab and Abihu), running up to the altar with what the passage calls ?strange fire?. The Lord consumes them immediately and we are left to examine the nature of their sin (Leviticus 10:1-3).

Categories
church israel

Evolution of the Altar 1: Commandment

Now don’t get me wrong?I am not saying that church has nothing to do with relationships. The epistles from the previous posts illustrated the point that the local gathering (when functioning correctly) does in turn affect relationships. It is putting things in their proper order that creates the right results in relationships. Using an Old Testament type, let us look at the Altar to shed light on the following statement:

He also said something like, if the church’s doctrine is sound then the method of worship and other stuff like that is really secondary.