Here's Romans 2.12-16 from "The Message" by Eugene Peterson:

If you go against the grain, you get splinters, regardless of which neighborhood you're from, what your parents taught you, what schools you attended.  But if you embrace the way God does things, there are wonderful payoffs, again without regard to where you are from or how you were brought up.  Being a Jew won't give you an automatic stamp of approval.  God pays no attention to what others say (or what you think) about you.  He makes up his own mind.

    If you sin without knowing what you're doing, God takes that into account.  But if you sin knowing full well what you're doing, that's a different story entirely.  Merely hearing God's law is a waste of your time if you don't do what he commands.  Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God.

    When outsiders who have never heard of God's law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience.  They show that God's law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation.  There is something deep within them that echoes God's yes and no, right and wrong.  Their response to God's yes and no will become public knowledge on the day God makes his final decision about every man and woman.  The Message from God that I proclaim through Jesus Christ takes into account all these differences.

I believe the most important gift we give God and our faith family is our presence in worship.  Praising God is the only thing we do (as people of faith) that no one else does.  Other groups gather to learn, to play, to serve, to raise money for worthy causes.  We're the only ones, though, who gather to pray: to glorify God and give thanks, to pour out our hearts to heaven, to listen to the Word from on high.

I'm not visibly transformed every time I worship -- I'm not blinded by enlightenment each time (or almost any time).  But there is always at least one verse from Scripture, one sentence from the sermon, that sheds a ray in my heart.  To me the written and proclaimed Word really is the Word of life.  It may not flood my soul on any given day, but reading it every day waters my soul like nourishing, gentle spring rain.  Insights grow, unseen at first, then appearing as just a shoot, then emerging as plant and flower.

Hearing is the planting of the seed.  Doing is the flowering of the seed.  We can position ourselves to hear, by being part of the worshiping community.  In the last analysis, it is only the Holy Spirit who can bring anything good out of what we hear.  Oh, but the Holy Spirit certainly will, with the least bit of desire from us.... 

Literal seeds don't germinate, grow and flower overnight.  Figurative seeds  don't either.  It's not often that we hear the Word and immediately heed it.  Especially if it demands a change of course in our lives, we often "go slow," first recognizing the uncomfortable change which might be necessary, then resisting it, then imagining it, then unsuccessfully trying to make it, then, Lord-willing, making it actually happen, by the grace of God.

Dear Lord,

Grant us grace to position ourselves where we will hear Your Word.  Then grant us even more grace that we may heed it.  May Your love flower in our hearts and Your will be done in our lives.  We pray in the name of the One who is Your Word made flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen

   Pastor Mary