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Good choice, P-Marlowe.

Another stark illustration that God permits us free-will choices, yet expects us to willingly obey His laws and precepts.

We often (even prayerfully) seek to know God's will for us, that we may do His will in any given situtation which perplexes us.

Yet God rarely reveals any specific direction or action we are to take, other then general reminders of what He has already written in His word for us to follow. He seldom permits us to know how He would have us choose in specific circumstances of our lives.

He teaches us His laws, His character, and right from wrong and desires that we make our own choices freely and willingly yet in accordance with what He has taught us.

We offer Him the puppeteer's strings and He refuses to take them.

...the desire of the flesh is to be religious in a manner accepted by the world, to conduct its business like the rest of the world does. If our mind is set on the flesh, we want to interject the principle of business acumen into the conduct of the church. We wish to adopt the salesmanship tactics of the world. We no longer rely upon the strategy of the Holy Spirit but we appoint a committee to plan out the program. Then we ask God to come and bless it and make it work. It is our program instead of his.

Call me a spoilsport, but my suspicion is, especially in matters of faith, that the Lord does not bless that which is not His own. I could be wrong about this: Who am I, a mere mortal, to say?

But then again, I could be right. One thing I have noticed is that, whenever the Churches have sought, in their eagerness to accommodate the ways of the world (i.e., of the flesh) into religious practice and teaching, believing this will make them more appealing and popular, and thus will help them to fill their pews, the very reverse has happened, longer-term.

It seems to me that the Churches clearly and unambiguously must be about the business of the salvation of souls, or else they will end up being only "social clubs for like-minded families," as Eric Voegelin puts it. The change in the inner man, answering to the call of the Holy Spirit -- on which alone the transcendence of the human soul depends -- receives no guidance or nurture in such an environment.

Or so it seems to me. FWIW.

Thank you for this wonderful essay, P-Marlowe.