Pastor John,
I’ve read that going to a holiness meeting is not serving God. Preacher Clark said it; you said it; and many others, I imagine; the meeting of the saints is not serving God, it is a payday for serving Him all of the rest of the time. But then I thought, “How do you serve God?” It is a simple question that the faithful and obedient in the Lord may never have to consider, but it felt good for me to ask it. I knew it wasn’t a meeting of the saints. And it is not passing out tracts, necessarily …. and I put them out for years. Nor is it going out and telling folk about Jesus, necessarily.
I went through a list of acceptable things, and realized it was none of them, specifically, but that serving God is the act of yielding. Yielding to God, yielding our members unto the Lord, yielding to the Spirit, yielding to the Power. We can’t know God’s thoughts or desires every moment, like a list of chores to act them out and call it service to the Lord, but we can – and perhaps only can – yield to His power at this moment. And we will have served Him for every moment that we were yielding. It made me immediately think that no wonder it is true that “He who hastens with his feet, sins.”
In the light of these thoughts, it seems impossible to me that we would be or could be yielding to God, while ”hastening”, or being in a hurry. And then I thought about slowing down. We can’t serve God acceptably, which is to yield ourselves to Him, if we don’t slow down, slow enough to feel the next living move, as it is happening. And if we aren’t yielding, I’m thinking that we aren’t serving the Living God.
Jerry D