Let's try a different direction. I think WE are lost.

[LittleDrummerBoy]

Not at all, what you do on the Sabbath is between you and God not you and j_seph. I did not save your soul, I cannot take it either. Hech I'll hunt on Sunday mornings occasionally myself................before church.

Can you make a Biblical case that Sunday is the preferred day for assembling Christians? Most Messianics I know meet on the original Sabbath, you know, the actual seventh day of the week. When my sons are at home, I'll give them a pass on Sunday church if they have something else to do, as long as they attend church on an alternate day of the week.

Personally, I'll take one or two Sundays off each month, but this is usually only after attending 2-3 meetings of the church the week earlier (and taking due care to watch the sermon video later). This last weekend, I was the leader of the meeting on the actual Sabbath before skipping Sunday for the shooting event.

But in general, our church leadership has no preference regarding which of our main meetings members attend (Wed or Sun). This seems to accord well with Romans 14:5, "One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike." Given this, while we do well to encourage one another "Not to forsake the assembly of the saints" I see no reason to lean on other Christians about Sunday attendance rather than some other day of the week.

In short, if there is a mid-week meeting, can it be "instead of" the Sunday meeting or should it be "in addition to"?

 

[j_seph]

Do not know what you are referring to, my post was not directed toward you going to church on the sabbath. I personally go on Wed and twice on Sunday, unless there is a revival going on then I will be there every night the doors are open if I am able. I love hunting and fishing as much if not more than the next person. Loved it so much that at one time that was my God/Idol. Thanks to the good Lord he added to me the Love of him, the assembling with others, and worshipping a touch bit more than the other things of this world. Guess I also realized without him I could do none of that and he would be just to make it where I could not do any of that. Sometimes things weigh in the balance, Worshipping God on one side and the world on the other side. I can step to the world side of the scale and try to over weigh the other but the other will always win, one way or the other. Do you have to be at church to talk to or more important hear Gods voice, absolutely not. I've experienced it driving down the road, in my Garden, the stand, the creek, the lake, even trimming up an old grapevine at home. If someone had driven by and seen me that day they'd thought I was crazy in my ard on my knees praising him. Yet do not forget the assembling of ourselves and the power that can be felt and seen when gathered in his name. Maybe your just that good that once a week or 3 times a month you can keep the devil off ya, and the things of this world from running your life. I need him more today than I did yesterday myself.

@SemperFiDawg Here is another testimony, I received a fear of the Lord I have never had about 4 years ago.

 

[gordon 2]

yes!

mort·gage
/ˈmôrɡij/
Learn to pronounce
Origin
late Middle English: from Old French, literally ‘dead pledge’, from mort (from Latin mortuus ‘dead’) + gage‘pledge’.

My bad... I should of spelled it correctly... I will edit. ; ) thanks.

 

[gordon 2]

The spirit of the cowboy is not unlike the spirit in a monk. And if it is truly lived the spirit of the monk, the so called ruggedness of individuality, that is in a cowboy then they both cowpoke and hermit glorify God in their prayers. For the hermit everyday is Sunday... and there is no cause that a man on his horse not feel the same.

Yet, monkery in not for everybody. The agitations of silence is too much for many. Now if the spirit of a monk was pushed onto a man needing bread and he was not a cowboy at heart, then the loneliness felt would not be a blessing to that hungry man.

But if a homeless person in a city say... begged for the stars she or he had never seen, as if a call of faith, and for but a fist full of bacon and beans and an old dog as friend...find meaning, then perhaps the salvation army twag would better be hanged in the tunes of scripture and the songs the coyote sings.

Now imagine that a city beggar would yearn to be a farmer of beans, pushed to it by a gift of the calling, to silence and from silence brake, commissioned as it were to the spirit that walks with God under the stars? What a ministry to the homeless his God and the stars could be?

But that silence is not for many. The many were commission to walk in the din of families and in the dust of the trains they carry in the world.


So let us not suppose a monk seeks to be a pope. A real monk seeks God and not to be. So it is I dare ask a monk and a cowboy to pray for me, if he or she is such, for I have willed myself too many times to be somethings and to have somethings and my talks to the good too many times interrupted.

It is therefore that a monk or a cowboy person of faith is a blessing to me. The stars they hold in faithful alliances, they separated from the bindings of difficulty. And I too often tired and beat sleep from the weariness of my world and my playful yodel a mimicry to a prayer filled worship in the heavenly...

Let us testify therefore to hearing what we hear and to see what we see, and to experience what we experience. The membership is many and the gifts all different. God's plan is a gem of strategy. Lets us all fall into the tactics... and talk the good talk, walk the good walk, and ride our own genuine rides knowing that we are all to Him.

The testimony of Jesus is prophecy so the word reads. Let us testify then some as farmers, some as teachers, some as prophets and so on... Fat and lean unite.... and make sweet as a shepherd's breakfast...

 

[Israel]

My bad... I should of spelled it correctly... I will edit. ; ) thanks.

O! no brother! God forbid
That was not a spelling correction...as if someone fancying himself a mathematician walked into Einstein's labs and beheld his computations...and there announced

"Hey, Albie boy, I may not get all that you are figuring, but got enough understanding to know z in that that second sequence has already sent your equation way off into the tall grasses of the plain inequality you think you surmised in your presumption to assign an = sign toward that last series." "Dude, how utterly inelegant, silly, and clumsy. Any fool can see that."

And Einstein, stepping forward asked forgiveness saying "I'm so sorry brother Hieronymous, that is my hurried scribble of a 2, not a z, I will correct it now...thank you" "And how utterly right you are! If that were "z" as I may have led others to believe, the whole of it would result in the creation of a mass extinction event! Thank you, thank you so much, so very much."

Suddenly Hieronymous could not speak. Now the tapestry of figures weaved painted such a plain and simple explanation of things in which his own wearied mind struggled...and could never find resolution...made so plain and full before him now in an unutterably elegant simplicity he, even as novice could understand. He was shamed now, barely able to lift his nodding head that was both nodding yes to what he was now made able to see, but also no (simultaneously!) to his own shameful presumptions also made plain.

"Are you okay brother?" Einstein asks.

"Yes, Sir Albert, I just needed a moment to consider some things"

Are you recovered enough to help me with this newer equation? I seem to have hit a snag, and your coming has been so timely for me. Do you think we might be able to resolve this together? And please, stop with this newly found "sir Albert" stuff, I have always delighted in your plainer and less formal approaches to everything, including me. I'm wearied all the day long with toadies who come taking notes, or seeking interviews. I sometimes see them sneaking scraps off my desk of older and abandoned fruitless scribblings, which, for whatever God known reasons, yet fetch a hefty price on E-Bay.

They then both laughed.

"Yes, yes, it would be most fun for us to work together on this" said...






No Gordon, don't change a thing.

May we both be free of dead pledges. And free to our only owing.

 

[Israel]

A cowboy, a monk, a homeless guy, a banker, an engineer, a doctor, a CEO, an architect, a nurse, a venture capitalist, a catholic, a jew, a rat catcher, a warehouseman, a welder, a hindu, a baptist, an...

walk into a bar


and says "I'll have what he's havin' "



One "yer own life" comin' up...

 

[NE GA Pappy]

It took me several years of wandering in the wilderness to realize that God calls common men to be business men, firemen, police men and farmers just as He calls people to be teachers, pastors, deacons and other positions in the church.

One position has no more merit with God than another, as long as we are working in the environment where God planted us. I may not get up on Sunday and preach to 1000 people like some, or sing a solo on Wednesday night, but that doesn't mean that my work in my office is any less glorifying to God.

I have people who work for me. I can either encourage them, lift them up and help in their daily lives, or I can tear them down. The same with the vendors that come by and talk with me every week. As with customers. Some are here every day, some I might see once every couple of years. My job is to make them feel valued and that someone actually cares how they and their families are doing.

I have had hourly employees breakdown and cry when they had been out of work for more than a week with their spouse in the hospital and on payday I had them a check and tell them that we were paying them just like they worked a full schedule.

I knew that they were worried about their spouse and the operations that had been done. The last thing they needed to worry about was if they were going to be able to pay their bills that week

 

[gordon 2]

It took me several years of wandering in the wilderness to realize that God calls common men to be business men, firemen, police men and farmers just as He calls people to be teachers, pastors, deacons and other positions in the church.

One position has no more merit with God than another, as long as we are working in the environment where God planted us. I may not get up on Sunday and preach to 1000 people like some, or sing a solo on Wednesday night, but that doesn't mean that my work in my office is any less glorifying to God.

I have people who work for me. I can either encourage them, lift them up and help in their daily lives, or I can tear them down. The same with the vendors that come by and talk with me every week. As with customers. Some are here every day, some I might see once every couple of years. My job is to make them feel valued and that someone actually cares how they and their families are doing.

I have had hourly employees breakdown and cry when they had been out of work for more than a week with their spouse in the hospital and on payday I had them a check and tell them that we were paying them just like they worked a full schedule.

I knew that they were worried about their spouse and the operations that had been done. The last thing they needed to worry about was if they were going to be able to pay their bills that week

The thing about the family... gets me. I have noticed that in my six decades plus on this earth that the only people who routinely ask about my family as a greeting are the descendants of the Lebanese in my area. Their greeting to me, ( I'm not of Lebanese ancestors) goes like this, " Hi Gord. Nice to see you. How are you and your family? Your family goes well? " And then I realize that the family is very important to an individual's well being. So, I must confess that the greeting gets to me in a heartfelt way and it's like the person asking and his family are now part of my family.


It is nice to know there are still people like you Pappy.