God's Will

This Sunday morning, our Sunday school class got into a discussion about God's will. It was kind of random, but it was good. On Wednesday, I am actually doing a Bible study on Living God's Will with at least one other guy. When it comes to knowing God's will, our feelings can get complicated. Ideas about knowing how to tell God's will are all over the place. I have always followed Psalm 37:4, Delight yourself also in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." I think that is saying that if we are walking with God and following what the Bible tells us to do, we will be able to do whatever we want to do! It sounds much simpler than it plays out, but God wants us to work on our relationship with Him and the rest will play out. There are so many verses in the Bible that talk about what God's will in our lives is. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. That is enough to keep you busy for a while.
As we work on our relationship with Christ, God will guide us in those major "will of God" decisions that we must go through (like school, career, marriage and if you should just stop rooting for the Detroit Lions all together). God sends godly counselors our way to help us out with those decisions and He promises us wisdom if we ask for it (James 1:5).
God has called all of us to serve Him. I was going to say some part time and some full time, but really, we are all full time. At work we should be constantly serving Him, no matter if you are a Pastor, secretary, construction worker, painter, plumber or whatever. We are all to be a full time Christian. I count myself extremely blessed to serve Him and get paid for it! So if you are faced with a tough decision, be sure to be seeking God through prayer and Bible reading, seek godly counsel and then trust God to lead you to the right decision.

Government and Deacon boards

I was talking about the government the other day and decided to write something about it. I have tried not to get into politics on this blog, but I couldn't resist. It seems lately that the house and senate have been listening to the President and following whatever he says (a general statement, I know there are cases where they haven't). But that is what was going to happen with this bill and Obama expected it to happen. But don't we stop having a government and start with a dictatorship when this happens? If they are just a yes-board, doesn't that ruin the point of having them?
I think this happens in churches sometimes. Instead of a deacon or elder board, you have a yes-board. The Pastor does what he feels the Lord wants him to do, which is great, but I think that there are reasons for having groups make decisions. There is much more wisdom in groups. Elders are there to provide wisdom and feedback and prayer support and so much more. We should have confidence that we can trust every Pastor, but we probably should not let them know that and keep a leadership group together to make the big decisions. We need to show that group decisions are better than individual decisions. It seems to me that power gets into people's heads and makes them think thoughts they have never thought before. I mean, look at what happened to Spider-man.
So let's encourage our government and our churches to use the wisdom of the group when making important decisions about our life.