In the first of a two-part interview, new Cincinnati Reds manager talks about his philosophy and vision for the team. This guy is incredibly thoughtful and understands that leadership is about relationships. Looking forward to the 2014 baseball season!
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
The Gutsy Prayer Hard to Offer
A friend recently told me that Psalm 139:23-24, were among her favorite passages in the Psalms.
I can get so accustomed to my favorite sins that I don't want God to point them out.
If I let God do show me and confront me regarding my favorite sins, He'll also call me to repent and change my ways.
I've read about people who stopped praying because they knew that if they really came into God's presence--and not just with pro forma, perfunctory prayers--they might have such an uncomfortable confrontation and with God's call and command to change.
My observation is that even changes we want in our lives are hard. But changing when God wants us to and when the change is the last thing we want to make is downright distasteful.
When a sin takes root in us, it's not just hard to give up the sin. It's hard to want to give up on the sin.
So much of getting spiritually right with God is getting to the point, helpless though we are to save ourselves, that we want Christ more than we want our favorite sins, to the point where we want eternity more than we want our favorite sinful thought patterns.
So, I think Psalm 139:23-24 is amazing. I only pray God will graciously give me the gutsy faith needed to pray it and mean it.
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)I love those verses, too. But it takes guts to pray the petitions they contain, lots more than I have most of the time.
I can get so accustomed to my favorite sins that I don't want God to point them out.
If I let God do show me and confront me regarding my favorite sins, He'll also call me to repent and change my ways.
I've read about people who stopped praying because they knew that if they really came into God's presence--and not just with pro forma, perfunctory prayers--they might have such an uncomfortable confrontation and with God's call and command to change.
My observation is that even changes we want in our lives are hard. But changing when God wants us to and when the change is the last thing we want to make is downright distasteful.
When a sin takes root in us, it's not just hard to give up the sin. It's hard to want to give up on the sin.
So much of getting spiritually right with God is getting to the point, helpless though we are to save ourselves, that we want Christ more than we want our favorite sins, to the point where we want eternity more than we want our favorite sinful thought patterns.
So, I think Psalm 139:23-24 is amazing. I only pray God will graciously give me the gutsy faith needed to pray it and mean it.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
What's a Lutheran?
[This was shared during the early worship service of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this morning.]
John 8:31-36
On this Reformation Sunday, I want to talk with you about a simple and important question: What is a Lutheran?
Lutherans have always seen Christian faith, the faith commended to us in the Bible, as having three key truths:
When the thirty-three year old German monk and priest, Martin Luther, accidentally began the Reformation movement back in 1517, after posting ninety-five theses for academic debate on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany, he found himself addressing both a religious elite that no longer cared about the Word of God, choosing to replace it with their own supposed wisdom, and Christian masses whose allegiance to the Church was as an institution and a habit, rather than a fellowship with the living God.
No wonder that the elites hated Luther! No wonder that the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire put Luther under an imperial ban, meaning that any one was authorized to kill Luther on sight!
Luther’s faithful witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to the authority of the Bible as God’s Word undermined those who wanted to replace Jesus with other lords and the authority of the Bible with traditions and customs that brought them comfort, control, or power.
But the experience of Luther and the other church reformers was nothing new. If you take time to read the Old Testament, you see a recurring pattern in the life of God’s chosen people, the Israelites or Jews. God would call them to repent, trust in Him for life, and follow Him, and the people, feeling weak or vulnerable or afraid, would do so. For a time.
Then, once they got a little food in their bellies, a little tract of land to farm, a bit of wealth or power, they would mostly forget God.
Or, they would make God over into an indulgent Santa Claus who didn’t care if they repented, believed, or followed, so long as they had a good time.
Or, they would tinker with their faith, adding their own rules, intermingling the worship of other deities, maybe ensconcing wealth as a sign of God’s favor and love.
It was to God’s people in these latter circumstances that God would send prophets to call people back to God.
We see this rejection of God and of God’s Word in the people Jesus confronts in today’s Gospel lesson from John.
Just before our lesson, Jesus once more foretells His crucifixion and resurrection.
Then Jesus lifts up those three distinctives of Biblical faith, three distinctives that would become the three cornerstone principles of Lutheranism.
"Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him,” our lesson begins, “’If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
Lutherans don't claim to have a corner on the truth market. But the Lutheran Confessions hold up certain truths which, often it seems, the world would rather forget.
Lutheran Christians believe that we are free from sin, death, and futility in our daily lives, first of all, through God’s grace alone. Jesus didn’t come to us and say, “Perform these religious acts and I will set you free from sin, death, and futile living.” Jesus came to us and offered new and everlasting life as a free gift, an act of charity from God.
Open your Bible to Romans 5:6 and 8, please. Paul writes there: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless [meaning, when we were powerless over our sin and so, ticketed for death or eternal separation from God], Christ died for the ungodly.”
Now slip down to verse 8: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The Greek New Testament word that is translated as grace is charitas, from which we get our English word, charity, a gift we cannot earn. We are saved by God’s grace alone.
The apostle John gets at this same reality in his first epistle, where, amazed by God’s grace given through the crucified and risen Jesus, he says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Our relationship with God is not initiated by us. Our relationship with God is initiated by God, a gracious gift we either receive or reject.
The Bible then, teaches that our salvation and hope depend completely on God's grace. Not our works. Nor our feelings. Not our thoughts. Only on God's grace.
A friend of mine has the perfect response for those who ask Lutherans, “When were you saved?” “That’s easy,” my friend says, “on a hill outside Jerusalem two-thousand years ago.”
What is a Lutheran? First of all, someone who believes that their salvation has nothing to do with them, but is a result of God’s grace, given in Christ, alone.
Lutheran Christians also believe we are saved through faith alone. Jesus told His fellow Jews that they would only be free to be the people of God if they persisted in trusting in Him, literally the original Greek says "remain in My Word."
Throughout the Gospel of John, we see Jesus described as the foundational Truth of the universe, God-in-the-flesh Who spoke creation into being. Life outside of a relationship with the God made known in Christ is a lie, disconnected from the only One Who can give us life.
But faith, the gift God gives to those willing to receive it, can overcome what Martin Luther marked as our enemies—the devil, the world, and our sinful selves.
That’s why Jesus says in John 4, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me…”
And it's why He tells Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will live forever.”
What is a Lutheran? It’s someone who believes that God’s grace is taken in hand by those who dare to trust—to have faith in--Jesus Christ alone as their only hope, their only Savior, their only way to a right relationship with God.
Finally, Lutherans believe that we come to know God through the Word alone.
Above all, we know God through “the Word made flesh,” Jesus.
The Bible, the inspired Word of God points us to the life God gives through Jesus.
In Martin Luther’sday, the Church added to or ignored the witness of God about Jesus and the will of God found in the Scriptures.
Luther said that the Church dared not do or say anything contrary to the will of God revealed to us in the Bible.
Belief in the authority of God’s Word in Scripture is at the core of what it means to be a Lutheran. 2 Timothy 3:16, a passage I alluded to last Sunday, teaches us that: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness...”
We may want to know much more, but everything you and I need to know about God, about ourselves, about how to live, and about who can be trusted, is found in the Bible.
Knowing this truth will set us free. That’s why the Lutheran Confessions say, “We believe, teach, and confess that the…writings of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged…”
We live in an era in which the Bible is routinely snubbed, dismissed, or misused. People ignore how unique and different the Bible is from all the other books of other religions.
The Bible isn’t the writing of just one person claiming a hotline to God, as is true of the books of Islam or Mormonism.
The Bible doesn’t claim to give us a means by which we can work or claw our way to heaven or a state of spiritual enlightenment, as is the case with eastern religions.
The Bible is a spiritually consistent revelation given by God to many people inspired by the Holy Spirit.
The Bible is a library of books that tell us how God reaches out to us, God saves us, God loves us, and how God wants to be reconciled to us.
And thousands of years of living with the Bible’s revelations of God, of Christ, and of the will of God have shown repeatedly that the Bible is more than just a collection of sixty-six ancient books. It’s a book whose words from God have the power to change the lives of those who stand under their authority.
The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “...the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
God saves through grace alone, faith alone, and Word alone.
It was true in 33AD, true in 1517, true today, and true for all eternity.
What is a Lutheran?
At the least, Lutherans are people who stake their eternal lives on these three truths.
And when the world rejects or demeans or tries to tell us to reject the Bible's witness to these three essential truths, we must say with Luther, “"Unless I am convinced by the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures or evident reason…I am bound by the Scriptures…and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God…I am neither able nor willing to [reject dependence on Scripture]…God help me.”
And may God help us to be true to our Lutheran heritage, not as a commitment to tradition, but as a commitment to the One Who has committed all for us, through the cross and the resurrection.
May we be true to our good confession as Lutherans and so, stay true to Christ. That’s the best way to remember Reformation Sunday, today and always. Amen
John 8:31-36
On this Reformation Sunday, I want to talk with you about a simple and important question: What is a Lutheran?
Lutherans have always seen Christian faith, the faith commended to us in the Bible, as having three key truths:
- Grace alone;
- Faith alone; and
- Scripture alone (or Word alone).
When the thirty-three year old German monk and priest, Martin Luther, accidentally began the Reformation movement back in 1517, after posting ninety-five theses for academic debate on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany, he found himself addressing both a religious elite that no longer cared about the Word of God, choosing to replace it with their own supposed wisdom, and Christian masses whose allegiance to the Church was as an institution and a habit, rather than a fellowship with the living God.
No wonder that the elites hated Luther! No wonder that the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire put Luther under an imperial ban, meaning that any one was authorized to kill Luther on sight!
Luther’s faithful witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to the authority of the Bible as God’s Word undermined those who wanted to replace Jesus with other lords and the authority of the Bible with traditions and customs that brought them comfort, control, or power.
But the experience of Luther and the other church reformers was nothing new. If you take time to read the Old Testament, you see a recurring pattern in the life of God’s chosen people, the Israelites or Jews. God would call them to repent, trust in Him for life, and follow Him, and the people, feeling weak or vulnerable or afraid, would do so. For a time.
Then, once they got a little food in their bellies, a little tract of land to farm, a bit of wealth or power, they would mostly forget God.
Or, they would make God over into an indulgent Santa Claus who didn’t care if they repented, believed, or followed, so long as they had a good time.
Or, they would tinker with their faith, adding their own rules, intermingling the worship of other deities, maybe ensconcing wealth as a sign of God’s favor and love.
It was to God’s people in these latter circumstances that God would send prophets to call people back to God.
We see this rejection of God and of God’s Word in the people Jesus confronts in today’s Gospel lesson from John.
Just before our lesson, Jesus once more foretells His crucifixion and resurrection.
Then Jesus lifts up those three distinctives of Biblical faith, three distinctives that would become the three cornerstone principles of Lutheranism.
"Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him,” our lesson begins, “’If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
Lutherans don't claim to have a corner on the truth market. But the Lutheran Confessions hold up certain truths which, often it seems, the world would rather forget.
Lutheran Christians believe that we are free from sin, death, and futility in our daily lives, first of all, through God’s grace alone. Jesus didn’t come to us and say, “Perform these religious acts and I will set you free from sin, death, and futile living.” Jesus came to us and offered new and everlasting life as a free gift, an act of charity from God.
Open your Bible to Romans 5:6 and 8, please. Paul writes there: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless [meaning, when we were powerless over our sin and so, ticketed for death or eternal separation from God], Christ died for the ungodly.”
Now slip down to verse 8: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The Greek New Testament word that is translated as grace is charitas, from which we get our English word, charity, a gift we cannot earn. We are saved by God’s grace alone.
The apostle John gets at this same reality in his first epistle, where, amazed by God’s grace given through the crucified and risen Jesus, he says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Our relationship with God is not initiated by us. Our relationship with God is initiated by God, a gracious gift we either receive or reject.
The Bible then, teaches that our salvation and hope depend completely on God's grace. Not our works. Nor our feelings. Not our thoughts. Only on God's grace.
A friend of mine has the perfect response for those who ask Lutherans, “When were you saved?” “That’s easy,” my friend says, “on a hill outside Jerusalem two-thousand years ago.”
What is a Lutheran? First of all, someone who believes that their salvation has nothing to do with them, but is a result of God’s grace, given in Christ, alone.
Lutheran Christians also believe we are saved through faith alone. Jesus told His fellow Jews that they would only be free to be the people of God if they persisted in trusting in Him, literally the original Greek says "remain in My Word."
Throughout the Gospel of John, we see Jesus described as the foundational Truth of the universe, God-in-the-flesh Who spoke creation into being. Life outside of a relationship with the God made known in Christ is a lie, disconnected from the only One Who can give us life.
But faith, the gift God gives to those willing to receive it, can overcome what Martin Luther marked as our enemies—the devil, the world, and our sinful selves.
That’s why Jesus says in John 4, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me…”
And it's why He tells Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will live forever.”
What is a Lutheran? It’s someone who believes that God’s grace is taken in hand by those who dare to trust—to have faith in--Jesus Christ alone as their only hope, their only Savior, their only way to a right relationship with God.
Finally, Lutherans believe that we come to know God through the Word alone.
Above all, we know God through “the Word made flesh,” Jesus.
The Bible, the inspired Word of God points us to the life God gives through Jesus.
In Martin Luther’sday, the Church added to or ignored the witness of God about Jesus and the will of God found in the Scriptures.
Luther said that the Church dared not do or say anything contrary to the will of God revealed to us in the Bible.
Belief in the authority of God’s Word in Scripture is at the core of what it means to be a Lutheran. 2 Timothy 3:16, a passage I alluded to last Sunday, teaches us that: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness...”
We may want to know much more, but everything you and I need to know about God, about ourselves, about how to live, and about who can be trusted, is found in the Bible.
Knowing this truth will set us free. That’s why the Lutheran Confessions say, “We believe, teach, and confess that the…writings of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged…”
We live in an era in which the Bible is routinely snubbed, dismissed, or misused. People ignore how unique and different the Bible is from all the other books of other religions.
The Bible isn’t the writing of just one person claiming a hotline to God, as is true of the books of Islam or Mormonism.
The Bible doesn’t claim to give us a means by which we can work or claw our way to heaven or a state of spiritual enlightenment, as is the case with eastern religions.
The Bible is a spiritually consistent revelation given by God to many people inspired by the Holy Spirit.
The Bible is a library of books that tell us how God reaches out to us, God saves us, God loves us, and how God wants to be reconciled to us.
And thousands of years of living with the Bible’s revelations of God, of Christ, and of the will of God have shown repeatedly that the Bible is more than just a collection of sixty-six ancient books. It’s a book whose words from God have the power to change the lives of those who stand under their authority.
The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “...the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
God saves through grace alone, faith alone, and Word alone.
It was true in 33AD, true in 1517, true today, and true for all eternity.
What is a Lutheran?
At the least, Lutherans are people who stake their eternal lives on these three truths.
And when the world rejects or demeans or tries to tell us to reject the Bible's witness to these three essential truths, we must say with Luther, “"Unless I am convinced by the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures or evident reason…I am bound by the Scriptures…and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God…I am neither able nor willing to [reject dependence on Scripture]…God help me.”
And may God help us to be true to our Lutheran heritage, not as a commitment to tradition, but as a commitment to the One Who has committed all for us, through the cross and the resurrection.
May we be true to our good confession as Lutherans and so, stay true to Christ. That’s the best way to remember Reformation Sunday, today and always. Amen
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