How do you align your will with God’s will? One way we can do this is prayer. Prayer is our avenue to speak with God. When we ask God to guide us in our daily thoughts and actions, we are aligning our will with His. You can see this in the Model Prayer within the Gospel of Matthew (Matt. 6:9-13). Another way to align our will with God’s will is through love and mercy (Luke 6:27-36). To align our will to God’s will, we must be loving and kind to those who do not deserve it. Just consider how loving and kind God is to all mankind, sending His only Son to die a horrible death for all our sins. We did not deserve His kindness, but we all benefit when we obey the Gospel.  Now for the last question. Are you focused on God or the world around you? The world around us is full of false gods, sin, and hatred. We must keep our focus on God and Godly things. When we recognize and respect God’s presence in our daily affairs, we will become more secure in our daily decisions. We must trust in the Word of God to provide the solutions to earthly problems and spiritual matters (John 8:31-36). We must flee from sin and abide in the truth. Even though we live in this world, this does not mean we are to partake of the sin in this world.  We must look to the guidance God …

What does it mean to do the will of God? How do you align your will to God’s will? Are you focused on God or on the world around you? Proverbs 16:3 says, “Commit your works to the Lord, and your thoughts will be established.” This is a promise of success in our activities so long as our activities are consistent with the will of God. I will address the three questions I have mentioned but first, let us dive deeper into the verse itself. The first word of Proverbs 16:3 is commit. Commit can be used to mean “to give charge of or entrust”. We can see it being used this way in Job 5:8. It can also mean “to roll” which is being used this way in Psalms 37:5. Here the word commit is used as a command. Works is the next word we will define. When you commit your works to the Lord, you are giving God “things worked on the object of one’s energy and focus, labor”. The next part of this proverb is a promise. Your thoughts are defined as “the content of reasoning and thinking or the act of thinking or reflecting.” Your thoughts will be established. Established, as it is used here, means “to prove, secure, arranged, sustained, with a focus on the durability and lasting of the situation”. We are commanded to give God the things upon which we are spending energy and time. When we do this, we are promised our thinking …

We as humans have a desire to please. Most often, our desire as men is to please other men. As Christians, however, our desire should be to please God over our fellow man. Paul writes in Galatians 1:10, “For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ” (NASB). Thankfully, God does not leave us guessing about what is required to please Him. God’s desire for us is that we would obey Him. In the Old Testament, God’s desire is told to Israel – “And now Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the LORD and His statutes…” (Deut. 10:12, NKJV). Even in the days of Ezekiel, God’s desire had not changed; He has always wanted man to follow Him that man might “live” (Ezek. 18:23). Although we are now under the New Testament (Col. 2:14; Eph. 2:14-16), God’s desire for us as His creation is still that we obey Him. We are told in 1 Timothy 2:4 that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Peter informs us by inspiration of the Holy Spirit that God …

Picture a world wherein everyone agrees, everyone gets along, and there is no question concerning laws, morality, or ethics. Clearly, this picture is rather different than the world in which we live. Our world looks the way it does because of a failure to hold to one unified standard of truth. Today, moral relativism and subjectivism take center stage as everyone’s truth is true for them even if that truth might be different for us. Unless we can all come to accept and agree upon one unified standard of truth, the moral, ethical, and social problems of our world will continue. Left up to men, the unified standard of truth is sure to be flawed. Thankfully, we do not need a council of our wisest minds to meet to discuss what is or is not morally, ethically, or socially right. We as men have been providentially left with the source of all truth – God’s word! 2 Timothy 3:16-17 tells us that “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (NKJV). The English Standard Version helps us better understand the idea that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God” as it translates this verse to say, “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” In other words, what we have contained in the Scriptures (i.e., the Bible), is in truth the word of God!  Because the Bible is God’s …

A few weeks back, I saw an interesting thought shared by a preacher friend on Facebook. The post he shared had to do with how we can gauge the health of a congregation by two distinct sounds — crying babies and singing men. The idea stood out to me because these two elements are prevalent at every service here in Mt. Vernon. More than that, the reasoning behind these two elements as being a gauge of our congregation’s health help explain why these things are important. Crying babies serve as an indicator of good health because it means there is another generation being brought up in the “old paths” (Jer. 6:16, NKJV). Further, as it was stated by one of our elders last week, crying babies and noisy children mean there are dedicated parents or grandparents trying to do what is best for their children and grandchildren. The sound of these children shows a deep concern by parents and grandparents to teach their children and grandchildren about the salvation that God offers by His grace through Christ Jesus. Where there are children, there is a future.             Alongside the sound of crying babies, the sound of men singing reveals the health of a congregation. Singing to God as He desires makes us vulnerable. Many do not want to be seen or heard singing their hearts out because it might be embarrassing. If our hearts are in the right place, however, none of this will matter. We will do our best to …