Showing posts with label Christ. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christ. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
Friday, July 19, 2019
Lord, Don't Let Me Cause Others to Stumble!
[These are reflections from my quiet time with God earlier today.]
Look: “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come.’” (Luke 17:1)
Because of our sinful nature, the fallen world, and the incessant meddling of the devil, temptations are inevitable in our lives.
Jesus knew all about this. The great gamble of the Incarnation--God the Son coming into the world as a human being--is that, during His time on earth, Jesus was constantly subjected to the temptation to sin.
Yet, in order to be the effective sacrifice for our sin, Jesus had to be a new human (Paul calls Jesus “the new Adam”), a sinless member of the human race Whose unjustified execution opens salvation to the rest of us by God’s the power of God’s grace to create within us faith in Jesus. Jesus, the Bible says, “has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) “...at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:6) I’m grateful that Jesus resisted temptation and won life with God for all who trust in Him.
In Luke, the conqueror of sin over us, warns His disciples--including modern day disciples, those who confess Jesus as Lord--not to put the eternal lives of others at risk by conduct or words that tempt them to sin. Jesus goes on to day in Luke 17:2-3: “It would be better for [disciples who cause others to stumble into sin] to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. So [disciples,] watch yourselves.”
Listen: There are so many ways we can be the serpent to others, luring people into sin, even when that’s not what we think we’re doing.
In the New Testament, Paul tells Christians not to eat food offered to idols in the presence of those who are weaker in the faith. It wasn’t, he said, that Christians weren’t allowed to eat such food; all food is clean to the Christian. But those weak in the faith, Paul asserted, might derive the wrong impression from seeing mature Christians eating food offered to idols and be tempted into believing that a Christian could also worship false deities. But there’s only one God, the One definitively revealed to us in Christ.
In my own life, there are people with whom I won’t have a glass of wine because I suspect or know that they have issues with alcohol. I refuse to be an instrument of their temptation even though drinking an occasional glass of wine isn’t forbidden by God.
On the other hand, I must confess that I have sometimes caused people to sin. This has happened when I’ve said things I shouldn’t have or when I’ve become obsessed with my own grievances or desires. When we engage in this kind of behavior, we in effect, give permission to those who witness it to cave into temptation and sin too.
I ran across this quote from Martin Luther the other day: “Christ desires nothing more of us than that we speak of Him.” When we, in loving and appropriate ways, commend Christ to others, there’s no opportunity for me to become the instrument of temptation and sin in others’ lives. When we speak of Christ, it’s gratitude for grace, the peace of knowing Christ, and the call to others to experience saving faith in Christ that comes through.
Respond: Father, in the name of Jesus, I ask You to forgive me the obsession with self, the grievances, and the selfish desires that lead me away from Your will and have caused me to unwittingly tempt others to sin.
Give me Holy Spirit-saturated wits, Lord!
Today, speak of Christ to others through me. Make me an instrument of Your grace and the faith to which You call all of us and not an instrument of temptation or sin.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen
Look: “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come.’” (Luke 17:1)
Because of our sinful nature, the fallen world, and the incessant meddling of the devil, temptations are inevitable in our lives.
Jesus knew all about this. The great gamble of the Incarnation--God the Son coming into the world as a human being--is that, during His time on earth, Jesus was constantly subjected to the temptation to sin.
Yet, in order to be the effective sacrifice for our sin, Jesus had to be a new human (Paul calls Jesus “the new Adam”), a sinless member of the human race Whose unjustified execution opens salvation to the rest of us by God’s the power of God’s grace to create within us faith in Jesus. Jesus, the Bible says, “has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) “...at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:6) I’m grateful that Jesus resisted temptation and won life with God for all who trust in Him.
In Luke, the conqueror of sin over us, warns His disciples--including modern day disciples, those who confess Jesus as Lord--not to put the eternal lives of others at risk by conduct or words that tempt them to sin. Jesus goes on to day in Luke 17:2-3: “It would be better for [disciples who cause others to stumble into sin] to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. So [disciples,] watch yourselves.”
Listen: There are so many ways we can be the serpent to others, luring people into sin, even when that’s not what we think we’re doing.
In the New Testament, Paul tells Christians not to eat food offered to idols in the presence of those who are weaker in the faith. It wasn’t, he said, that Christians weren’t allowed to eat such food; all food is clean to the Christian. But those weak in the faith, Paul asserted, might derive the wrong impression from seeing mature Christians eating food offered to idols and be tempted into believing that a Christian could also worship false deities. But there’s only one God, the One definitively revealed to us in Christ.
In my own life, there are people with whom I won’t have a glass of wine because I suspect or know that they have issues with alcohol. I refuse to be an instrument of their temptation even though drinking an occasional glass of wine isn’t forbidden by God.
On the other hand, I must confess that I have sometimes caused people to sin. This has happened when I’ve said things I shouldn’t have or when I’ve become obsessed with my own grievances or desires. When we engage in this kind of behavior, we in effect, give permission to those who witness it to cave into temptation and sin too.
I ran across this quote from Martin Luther the other day: “Christ desires nothing more of us than that we speak of Him.” When we, in loving and appropriate ways, commend Christ to others, there’s no opportunity for me to become the instrument of temptation and sin in others’ lives. When we speak of Christ, it’s gratitude for grace, the peace of knowing Christ, and the call to others to experience saving faith in Christ that comes through.
Respond: Father, in the name of Jesus, I ask You to forgive me the obsession with self, the grievances, and the selfish desires that lead me away from Your will and have caused me to unwittingly tempt others to sin.
Give me Holy Spirit-saturated wits, Lord!
Today, speak of Christ to others through me. Make me an instrument of Your grace and the faith to which You call all of us and not an instrument of temptation or sin.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen
[The illustrated quote from Martin Luther was published this past week by the Institute of Lutheran Theology.]
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church.]
Saturday, October 27, 2018
After Pittsburgh and Pipe Bombs...What?
Racism, xenophobia, antisemitism: convenient lies that people choose to believe in order to “explain” why things aren’t as they “should be” in their lives. They're the sinful cesspool into which people dip their cups to both slake and feed their resentments, fears, and pretensions.
When these hateful, irrational lies get injected into the mainstream of a culture, sick, deluded people use them to justify violence like shooting up schools, churches, concerts, and synagogues. It becomes thinkable for some to send pipe bombs to people they don’t know, they don't like, and toward whom they harbor bitter feelings.
I’m sick and disgusted by it all, aren’t you?
We DO need prayers at this time. But they must include more than just petitions for healing for the injured and comfort for the grieving.
We need to pray that all of our leaders of all political persuasions will not add to the stew of resentments, ineffectual policies, and spinelessness before the power of lobbyists waving campaign contributions that have led us to where we are today.
We need to pray that we will become kinder and gentler in our civil discourse. Free speech is and ought to be guaranteed in our country. But when, because of our lack of self-control, violence enters accepted daily speech, we encourage violence.
We need to pray that people will enter authentic relationships with the Prince of Peace and the Author of love, Jesus the Christ. The cheap political moralism "preached” in many Christian pulpits is not of God and not the gospel. The gospel is the good news described by Jesus in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Every human being is a sinner in need of the freedom from sin and death that only Jesus has won for us through His sinless life, His sacrificial death, and His resurrection.
The gospel tells me that I am no better than my neighbor, that we both are loved and valued passionately by God, that we both need to repent, that we both need to entrust our lives to Jesus for a grace that takes me as I am and leads me to become what God will make of me fully in the resurrection.
And this Gospel incites me, a sinner saved by God’s charitable love (His grace) and not by my "virtue" or "goodness," to love my neighbor as I love myself.
Prayer that we will live in authentic relationship with Jesus and that God will help all disciples of Jesus to share His gospel with others is the most practical thing we can do personally to address the lies that lead to so much violence in America.
I agree with those who are tired of hollow, idle, meaningless expressions of "thoughts and prayers." If you're going to pray, mean it. And if you pray in Jesus' name, don't be surprised when God makes it clear that you need to be part of a solution, not just a trafficker in sanctimonious cliches.
In the end, to overcome the sickness of hatred and violence that seems to be part of our everyday lives, it's our souls that must be transformed. And that transformation can only happen through the faith in Jesus Christ and His gospel.
This is our most desperate need at this hour.
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Monday, October 30, 2017
A Reason to Celebrate
[This is the message shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday, Reformation Sunday.]
John 8:31-36
Reformation Sunday is one of my favorite days on the Church calendar. And this year, of course, brings a special celebration of this day with the 500th. anniversary of Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses on the Wittenberg church door.
But there’s a bit of danger in all this celebrating of our Lutheran heritage. It can too easily become about Luther and our connection to him.
But Reformation Sunday isn’t a time to say, “Yay, us!” It’s a call to thanksgiving that we are only saved from sin and death by the power of God’s grace given to those who trust in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, as their God, Savior, and King.
It’s a truth of which we in the Church and the world we seek to reach in Christ’s names need to always be reminded! That's because, as long as we're on this earth, you and I will need to be open to the reformation of our faith, lives, and characters that God wants to accomplish in us.
The term, Lutheran was first used as a putdown by Luther’s accuser, Johann Eck. “None of you are Christians,” Eck was saying, “You’re Lutherans.”
Martin Luther hated the word, Lutheran. “I ask that my name be left silent and people not call themselves Lutheran, but rather Christians,” Luther said. “Who is Luther?...I have been crucified for no one...How should I, a poor stinking bag of worms, become so that the children of Christ are named with my unholy name? It should not be dear friends. Let us extinguish all factious names and be called Christians…”
While we can be thankful that God used Luther to re-awaken the Christian Church to the true teachings of God in His Word, Reformation Sunday calls us to live in the light of two fundamental truths.
The first truth is that I am a sinner whose sin will earn me eternal condemnation if I am not saved. As Paul puts it in Romans 6:23: “the wages of sin is death.”
The second truth is that Jesus Christ, God enfleshed and sinless, took the punishment of death I deserve for my sin on the cross, then was raised by God the Father, so all who turn from sin and follow Him are freed of sin and death and have eternal life with God.
I need saving and I can’t save myself: I can’t be good enough, sorry enough, or virtuous enough to be saved. Only Jesus Christ can save me.
And I am saved only by turning from sin and surrendering to the God we meet in Christ. Paul puts it all succinctly in Ephesians 2:8: “...it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…”
All of this leads to today’s gospel lesson. It records an encounter between Jesus and fellow Jews who believed in Him. In it, Jesus talks about what it means to be saved, what it means to be His disciple. And, because the New International Version translation of the Bible, which is the version we have in our sanctuary and which I usually use in preaching, is so horrible in translating the first verse of today’s gospel lesson, I’m going to be using the more accurate English Standard Version today. So, up here on the screens, take a look at our gospel lesson, please, John 8:31-36.
Verse 31: “So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”
There may not be two more important verses in all of Scripture than these!
That’s true because, first of all, Jesus here defines what belief or faith is.
When we speak of believing in something, we usually refer to intellectual assent, an opinion we have: “I believe that gravity exists”; “I believe that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy.”
But what Jesus means when He speaks of belief or faith in Him is more than intellectual assent. To believe in Jesus is to “abide in [His] word.”
The word translated as abide is, in John’s Greek, μείνητε, a verb, an action word meaning to remain, stay, stick it out. The people to whom Jesus first addressed these words believed that Jesus was something special; after all, they were part of the crowd of 5000 Jesus had fed with a few fish and pieces of bread. Their opinion was basically, “Jesus is a great dude.” But Jesus says that faith is not a personal opinion. Faith is abiding, standing fast, when the crosses come, the chips are down, the temptations are great.
This verse is also important because Jesus tells us what to abide in. Or more accurately, who we are to abide in.
Jesus says we’re to abide in His Word. Jesus means more than spending time in this book, the Bible, the Word of God. That book, the Bible, is worthy of spending our time in it not just because it contains the Word of God. It's worthy because it tells us about the Word of God.
John 1 tells us: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) And then, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (John 1:14) Faith is making our home on the strong foundation of Jesus, the Word of God, and staying there! Jesus says when we do this, we will be free.
Verse 33: “They [the Jews who believed in Jesus] answered him, ‘We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, “You will become free”?’”
People who are enslaved are often quick to deny their slavery.
Someone tells a friend, “I think you have a drinking problem,” and the friend denies their addiction.
A woman is repeatedly abused by her husband and tells her parents, “He’s not really like that.”
A man embezzles from his company but actually believes it when he says, “I’m not a thief.”
Jesus’ fellow Jews, whose entire history was filled with times of enslavement to other nations, say, “We’ve never been slaves to anyone.”
Today, Jesus calls us to look at ourselves as we appear in the eyes of God. What enslaves us?
Materialism?
A love of comfort?
Selfishness?
Self-loathing?
Indifference to God and the hurting people around us?
These and every other sin stemming from our failure to remain rooted in the God we know in Jesus are what enslaves people, taking them away from God and the life that only God can give.
Christ wants us to see the truth.
And just as the Word is a person, Jesus Himself, so is the truth. Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
When we remain rooted in Christ, we see in the brilliance of God’s truth what enslaves us and we see too, that we can trust in the love and power of our crucified and risen Jesus to set us free to live, now and in eternity.
A woman once came to see me for counseling. “I started an affair with a no-good man, a really no-good man, years ago,” she told me. “He’s married and has no intention of leaving his wife. When I’m with him, he makes me feel loved and alive. But after he goes I wonder what I’m doing. I feel so rotten. So, I’ll tell him I’m not seeing him any more. Then he calls me a few months later and I cave in. I know it’s wrong. But I can’t get free.”
That woman was enslaved to her sin, enslaved to the idea that she needed this man to verify her worthiness as a human being. She understood that it was wrong, that her eternal destiny hung in the balance. But she was helpless to overcome her sin.
And here’s the thing: We are all helpless to resist sin when we try to do our own.
When God helps us to first, see our sins, and then, see the grace He offers in Christ, we are ready to be set free...not by our efforts to be good or religious or strong, but by Jesus Christ, Who died and rose for helpless sinners like you and me.
It is only when we know our helplessness and Who is the only One Who can help us that we will ever be free.
Paul puts it beautifully in 2 Corinthians 12:10: “...when I am weak, then I am strong.”
When I empty myself of all pretense of having it together, of being a good person, of being proud of my humility, it’s then that the God we meet in Jesus can fill us with God’s strength, God’s goodness, God’s love, God’s righteousness.
In other words, it’s only when we stop denying that we are sinners that we are open to the truth embodied in Jesus that we are “saved by grace through faith in Christ” alone!
An old saying puts it this way: When I’m at the end of me and God is all I’ve got, I realize that God is all I need!
I don’t always experience the fullness of God’s grace as God intends to give it to believers. I too often get in the way. But there are times when I do get out of the way.
This past week, I went to the deli again. Driving there, I asked, “Why do I almost always go to this deil? There’s another one closer.” “Just go,” I sensed God say.
When I got there, two different employees, neither one of them waiting on me, approached me about situations in their lives.
In that moment, Christ set me free from myself! Instead of denying our slavery to sin, you and I need to confess it, so that Jesus Christ can set us free. Not just once in a lifetime. Not just once a week. Not just at church. Not just at the deli. Always! We need to remain in Christ so that we’re free to live.
To the denial and cluelessness of the crowd who think that they’re free, Jesus says, starting at verse 34: “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
When Martin Luther, after steeping Himself in Scripture, came to see that God sets free all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ, he understood that sin and death need not be the last words for human beings. Even sinners like Martin Luther, Mark Daniels, you, and every human being, can be set free to live as God intended for us to live: His grateful, grown-up children, filled with the life and power of God, at ease in knowing that God will guide us through every moment in this fallen world, certain that we will live with God forever. Even now, through Christ and our faith in Him, we are free.
And that is what we can celebrate on this Reformation Sunday!
John 8:31-36
Reformation Sunday is one of my favorite days on the Church calendar. And this year, of course, brings a special celebration of this day with the 500th. anniversary of Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses on the Wittenberg church door.
But there’s a bit of danger in all this celebrating of our Lutheran heritage. It can too easily become about Luther and our connection to him.
But Reformation Sunday isn’t a time to say, “Yay, us!” It’s a call to thanksgiving that we are only saved from sin and death by the power of God’s grace given to those who trust in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, as their God, Savior, and King.
It’s a truth of which we in the Church and the world we seek to reach in Christ’s names need to always be reminded! That's because, as long as we're on this earth, you and I will need to be open to the reformation of our faith, lives, and characters that God wants to accomplish in us.
The term, Lutheran was first used as a putdown by Luther’s accuser, Johann Eck. “None of you are Christians,” Eck was saying, “You’re Lutherans.”
Martin Luther hated the word, Lutheran. “I ask that my name be left silent and people not call themselves Lutheran, but rather Christians,” Luther said. “Who is Luther?...I have been crucified for no one...How should I, a poor stinking bag of worms, become so that the children of Christ are named with my unholy name? It should not be dear friends. Let us extinguish all factious names and be called Christians…”
While we can be thankful that God used Luther to re-awaken the Christian Church to the true teachings of God in His Word, Reformation Sunday calls us to live in the light of two fundamental truths.
The first truth is that I am a sinner whose sin will earn me eternal condemnation if I am not saved. As Paul puts it in Romans 6:23: “the wages of sin is death.”
The second truth is that Jesus Christ, God enfleshed and sinless, took the punishment of death I deserve for my sin on the cross, then was raised by God the Father, so all who turn from sin and follow Him are freed of sin and death and have eternal life with God.
I need saving and I can’t save myself: I can’t be good enough, sorry enough, or virtuous enough to be saved. Only Jesus Christ can save me.
And I am saved only by turning from sin and surrendering to the God we meet in Christ. Paul puts it all succinctly in Ephesians 2:8: “...it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…”
All of this leads to today’s gospel lesson. It records an encounter between Jesus and fellow Jews who believed in Him. In it, Jesus talks about what it means to be saved, what it means to be His disciple. And, because the New International Version translation of the Bible, which is the version we have in our sanctuary and which I usually use in preaching, is so horrible in translating the first verse of today’s gospel lesson, I’m going to be using the more accurate English Standard Version today. So, up here on the screens, take a look at our gospel lesson, please, John 8:31-36.
Verse 31: “So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”
There may not be two more important verses in all of Scripture than these!
That’s true because, first of all, Jesus here defines what belief or faith is.
When we speak of believing in something, we usually refer to intellectual assent, an opinion we have: “I believe that gravity exists”; “I believe that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy.”
But what Jesus means when He speaks of belief or faith in Him is more than intellectual assent. To believe in Jesus is to “abide in [His] word.”
The word translated as abide is, in John’s Greek, μείνητε, a verb, an action word meaning to remain, stay, stick it out. The people to whom Jesus first addressed these words believed that Jesus was something special; after all, they were part of the crowd of 5000 Jesus had fed with a few fish and pieces of bread. Their opinion was basically, “Jesus is a great dude.” But Jesus says that faith is not a personal opinion. Faith is abiding, standing fast, when the crosses come, the chips are down, the temptations are great.
This verse is also important because Jesus tells us what to abide in. Or more accurately, who we are to abide in.
Jesus says we’re to abide in His Word. Jesus means more than spending time in this book, the Bible, the Word of God. That book, the Bible, is worthy of spending our time in it not just because it contains the Word of God. It's worthy because it tells us about the Word of God.
John 1 tells us: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) And then, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (John 1:14) Faith is making our home on the strong foundation of Jesus, the Word of God, and staying there! Jesus says when we do this, we will be free.
Verse 33: “They [the Jews who believed in Jesus] answered him, ‘We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, “You will become free”?’”
People who are enslaved are often quick to deny their slavery.
Someone tells a friend, “I think you have a drinking problem,” and the friend denies their addiction.
A woman is repeatedly abused by her husband and tells her parents, “He’s not really like that.”
A man embezzles from his company but actually believes it when he says, “I’m not a thief.”
Jesus’ fellow Jews, whose entire history was filled with times of enslavement to other nations, say, “We’ve never been slaves to anyone.”
Today, Jesus calls us to look at ourselves as we appear in the eyes of God. What enslaves us?
Materialism?
A love of comfort?
Selfishness?
Self-loathing?
Indifference to God and the hurting people around us?
These and every other sin stemming from our failure to remain rooted in the God we know in Jesus are what enslaves people, taking them away from God and the life that only God can give.
Christ wants us to see the truth.
And just as the Word is a person, Jesus Himself, so is the truth. Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
When we remain rooted in Christ, we see in the brilliance of God’s truth what enslaves us and we see too, that we can trust in the love and power of our crucified and risen Jesus to set us free to live, now and in eternity.
A woman once came to see me for counseling. “I started an affair with a no-good man, a really no-good man, years ago,” she told me. “He’s married and has no intention of leaving his wife. When I’m with him, he makes me feel loved and alive. But after he goes I wonder what I’m doing. I feel so rotten. So, I’ll tell him I’m not seeing him any more. Then he calls me a few months later and I cave in. I know it’s wrong. But I can’t get free.”
That woman was enslaved to her sin, enslaved to the idea that she needed this man to verify her worthiness as a human being. She understood that it was wrong, that her eternal destiny hung in the balance. But she was helpless to overcome her sin.
And here’s the thing: We are all helpless to resist sin when we try to do our own.
When God helps us to first, see our sins, and then, see the grace He offers in Christ, we are ready to be set free...not by our efforts to be good or religious or strong, but by Jesus Christ, Who died and rose for helpless sinners like you and me.
It is only when we know our helplessness and Who is the only One Who can help us that we will ever be free.
Paul puts it beautifully in 2 Corinthians 12:10: “...when I am weak, then I am strong.”
When I empty myself of all pretense of having it together, of being a good person, of being proud of my humility, it’s then that the God we meet in Jesus can fill us with God’s strength, God’s goodness, God’s love, God’s righteousness.
In other words, it’s only when we stop denying that we are sinners that we are open to the truth embodied in Jesus that we are “saved by grace through faith in Christ” alone!
An old saying puts it this way: When I’m at the end of me and God is all I’ve got, I realize that God is all I need!
I don’t always experience the fullness of God’s grace as God intends to give it to believers. I too often get in the way. But there are times when I do get out of the way.
This past week, I went to the deli again. Driving there, I asked, “Why do I almost always go to this deil? There’s another one closer.” “Just go,” I sensed God say.
When I got there, two different employees, neither one of them waiting on me, approached me about situations in their lives.
In that moment, Christ set me free from myself! Instead of denying our slavery to sin, you and I need to confess it, so that Jesus Christ can set us free. Not just once in a lifetime. Not just once a week. Not just at church. Not just at the deli. Always! We need to remain in Christ so that we’re free to live.
To the denial and cluelessness of the crowd who think that they’re free, Jesus says, starting at verse 34: “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
When Martin Luther, after steeping Himself in Scripture, came to see that God sets free all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ, he understood that sin and death need not be the last words for human beings. Even sinners like Martin Luther, Mark Daniels, you, and every human being, can be set free to live as God intended for us to live: His grateful, grown-up children, filled with the life and power of God, at ease in knowing that God will guide us through every moment in this fallen world, certain that we will live with God forever. Even now, through Christ and our faith in Him, we are free.
And that is what we can celebrate on this Reformation Sunday!
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Hope in the Midst of Grief (Message at My Mother's Funeral)
Romans 8:31-39
John 11:21-27
[This was shared during my mother's funeral earlier today.]
I was seven-and-a-half years old and it was the Summer of 1961. It was a sunny but breezy morning, a beautiful day, the air clear of humidity, and I was laying in my bed, in that place between sleep and wakefulness.
The night before, we’d gone to my grandparents’ house to see my great-grandmother, who was dying. Mom ushered me to my great-grandmother’s bedside. “Grandma,” mom said, “here’s Mark. Do you remember Mark?” Grandma, her eyes hardly open, put the fingers of her right hand to her forehead and, with obvious frustration at her failure of memory, shook her head, “No.” I knew then that Grandma was not long for this world.
On the glorious summer morning that followed, mom sat on the edge of my bed and woke me. “Mark,” she said, “this morning, Grandma is walking the streets of gold with your great-grandfather.”
My great-grandmother was, it should be said, just like the rest of us, a sinner whose behavior and thinking often, in Saint Paul’s phrase, fell short of the glory of God. But my great-grandmother was also a saint, like all sinners who turn from sin and trust in the crucified and risen Jesus as their God and Savior. She had been saved from sin and death by the grace (or charity) of God that comes to all with faith in Christ. That’s what a saint is!
The image my mom chose to break the news to me that my great-grandmother had died, comes from Revelation 21:21, in the New Testament. It’s part of the vision John, the apostle and evangelist, saw of the heavenly city--part of the new heaven and the new earth that God intends to establish after He draws the curtain on this universe, which is plagued by human sin and death. God will replace it with a city in which all who have been made clean and new by Jesus’ blood, will live with God for eternity. John writes: “The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.”
I found comfort in thinking of my great-grandmother walking those streets in the perfect light of Jesus Christ’s love and rule. It's all the more comforting to me today because it happens to tell the truth about what will happen for all who trust in Christ.
The truth of Jesus’ resurrection and His promise of everlasting life for all who entrust their lives to Him--which is what it means to have faith--can also fill our days with peace, power, and freedom.
Even in the midst of grief.
Once, as you probably know, a friend of Jesus, a man named Lazarus died. Jesus deliberately waited to go to Lazarus’ hometown of Bethany until He knew that Lazarus was dead. Jesus, God in the flesh, intended to demonstrate the power of God over life and death. He would go to Bethany and raise Lazarus from death.
But Lazarus’ two sisters, Martha and Mary, also friends and followers of Jesus, had no idea what Jesus’ plan was. They only knew that they had asked for Jesus to come to Bethany as Lazarus lay on his deathbed, that Jesus hadn’t shown up, and that now Lazarus was dead.
There’s a note of condemnation in Martha’s words when Jesus does come to Bethany. “Lord,” she says, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” But then, demonstrating that she understands that Jesus is much more than a nice man or a great teacher, Martha also says: “...I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
Jesus told Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”
And then Jesus asked the most important question any of us will ever have to answer: “Do you believe this?”
It’s the question I want to lay before you today: Do you believe this?
Here’s why this question is so important: When you know that, through Christ and your faith in Him, you belong to God for all eternity, you know that whatever this world can do for you or do to you, doesn’t matter much.
There is no one freer to live life with abandon, joy, peace, and love than the person who belongs to Jesus Christ.
You know how the game ends.
Believing in Jesus isn’t just about having an insurance policy for the sweet-by-and-by.
Believing in Jesus means that because you know Jesus has given you eternity as a gift of grace, you can live this life without fear!
You can live with God’s help in being everything God made you to be! You can love God and others with abandon. You can fight for justice. All because you know that there's nothing that this world can take away from you that means a thing.
That’s freedom!
When Jesus later called his dead friend Lazarus from the tomb, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for the earthly powers-that-be; they feared that a guy Who could call people back from the dead might swipe their power. Jesus had to be done away with. (Although they didn’t seem to consider how they were going to really to do away with a Man Who had power over life and death.) But you can be sure that for as long as he continued to live on this earth, Lazarus, who like all of us, would someday die, lived with a fierce and joyous abandon.
When you know that one day, you will walk the streets of gold with all who have believed that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, you don’t have a lot to fear or worry about. That’s the life of joyful abandon and peace that God wants for everyone gathered here today.
None of this means that we won’t or shouldn’t grieve. We will grieve. The Bible doesn't say that believers in Christ don't grieve. It says that while we may grieve, we don't grieve as people without hope. So, we will grieve, although I have to say that I did a lot of my grieving for my mom over the past forty-plus years as she seemed, sadly, to turn in on herself more and more.
The abandonment she felt as a child. The depression that dogged her in her adult years. These things made living hard for mom.
And it made things hard for our father, a man I love, appreciate, and respect more than I can say. Dad, like me and like the rest of us, you aren’t perfect. (I mean, for crying out loud, you don’t like garlic!) But you are a great man and a loving man whose care for mom all these years has been an example to us all.
We carry with us the hope that because of Jesus and our faith in Him, neither death, depression, nor anything else this world may bring us will have the last words over my mother’s life.
We can be confident that the person of essential sweetness and vitality we knew in younger years and even sometimes in her later years in the midst of her sad withdrawal, will re-emerge and be brought to perfection in the eternal city:
The woman who used to load up her kids when dad was working nights at the filling station and take us to Marina’s for spaghetti dinner because she was craving spaghetti. (Probably because she was pregnant, because she seemed to be pregnant all the time in those days.)
The woman who would laugh so hard at the jokes of my brother Marty or my cousin Susie that you thought she might burst with joy.
The woman of great creativity who used to enter her creations and take blue ribbons at the State Fair.
The woman who adored just being with her three girls: Betsy, Kathy, and Dianne.
The woman whose face brightened even as she lay dying as she caught sight of her dear son, Martin.
And, if we will trust in Jesus Christ, He will go to work on us in this life (we will become what Martin Luther called, "the Holy Spirit's workshop") and bring to perfection in the life to come, the people we were made to be, unintimidated by disease, death, doubts, hurts, fears, or anything else. It will be, as God said of the perfect world He created before the human race plunged it into sin and death, “Very good.”
If today I could presume to speak a word for my mom, now living in the perfect clarity of eternity, to you today it would be this: If you want to live this life to the full, follow Jesus. And if those streets of gold, laid open to us by the grace and power of God, sound good to you, follow Jesus. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
John 11:21-27
[This was shared during my mother's funeral earlier today.]
I was seven-and-a-half years old and it was the Summer of 1961. It was a sunny but breezy morning, a beautiful day, the air clear of humidity, and I was laying in my bed, in that place between sleep and wakefulness.
The night before, we’d gone to my grandparents’ house to see my great-grandmother, who was dying. Mom ushered me to my great-grandmother’s bedside. “Grandma,” mom said, “here’s Mark. Do you remember Mark?” Grandma, her eyes hardly open, put the fingers of her right hand to her forehead and, with obvious frustration at her failure of memory, shook her head, “No.” I knew then that Grandma was not long for this world.
On the glorious summer morning that followed, mom sat on the edge of my bed and woke me. “Mark,” she said, “this morning, Grandma is walking the streets of gold with your great-grandfather.”
My great-grandmother was, it should be said, just like the rest of us, a sinner whose behavior and thinking often, in Saint Paul’s phrase, fell short of the glory of God. But my great-grandmother was also a saint, like all sinners who turn from sin and trust in the crucified and risen Jesus as their God and Savior. She had been saved from sin and death by the grace (or charity) of God that comes to all with faith in Christ. That’s what a saint is!
The image my mom chose to break the news to me that my great-grandmother had died, comes from Revelation 21:21, in the New Testament. It’s part of the vision John, the apostle and evangelist, saw of the heavenly city--part of the new heaven and the new earth that God intends to establish after He draws the curtain on this universe, which is plagued by human sin and death. God will replace it with a city in which all who have been made clean and new by Jesus’ blood, will live with God for eternity. John writes: “The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.”
I found comfort in thinking of my great-grandmother walking those streets in the perfect light of Jesus Christ’s love and rule. It's all the more comforting to me today because it happens to tell the truth about what will happen for all who trust in Christ.
The truth of Jesus’ resurrection and His promise of everlasting life for all who entrust their lives to Him--which is what it means to have faith--can also fill our days with peace, power, and freedom.
Even in the midst of grief.
Once, as you probably know, a friend of Jesus, a man named Lazarus died. Jesus deliberately waited to go to Lazarus’ hometown of Bethany until He knew that Lazarus was dead. Jesus, God in the flesh, intended to demonstrate the power of God over life and death. He would go to Bethany and raise Lazarus from death.
But Lazarus’ two sisters, Martha and Mary, also friends and followers of Jesus, had no idea what Jesus’ plan was. They only knew that they had asked for Jesus to come to Bethany as Lazarus lay on his deathbed, that Jesus hadn’t shown up, and that now Lazarus was dead.
There’s a note of condemnation in Martha’s words when Jesus does come to Bethany. “Lord,” she says, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” But then, demonstrating that she understands that Jesus is much more than a nice man or a great teacher, Martha also says: “...I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
Jesus told Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”
And then Jesus asked the most important question any of us will ever have to answer: “Do you believe this?”
It’s the question I want to lay before you today: Do you believe this?
Here’s why this question is so important: When you know that, through Christ and your faith in Him, you belong to God for all eternity, you know that whatever this world can do for you or do to you, doesn’t matter much.
There is no one freer to live life with abandon, joy, peace, and love than the person who belongs to Jesus Christ.
You know how the game ends.
Believing in Jesus isn’t just about having an insurance policy for the sweet-by-and-by.
Believing in Jesus means that because you know Jesus has given you eternity as a gift of grace, you can live this life without fear!
You can live with God’s help in being everything God made you to be! You can love God and others with abandon. You can fight for justice. All because you know that there's nothing that this world can take away from you that means a thing.
That’s freedom!
When Jesus later called his dead friend Lazarus from the tomb, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for the earthly powers-that-be; they feared that a guy Who could call people back from the dead might swipe their power. Jesus had to be done away with. (Although they didn’t seem to consider how they were going to really to do away with a Man Who had power over life and death.) But you can be sure that for as long as he continued to live on this earth, Lazarus, who like all of us, would someday die, lived with a fierce and joyous abandon.
When you know that one day, you will walk the streets of gold with all who have believed that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, you don’t have a lot to fear or worry about. That’s the life of joyful abandon and peace that God wants for everyone gathered here today.
None of this means that we won’t or shouldn’t grieve. We will grieve. The Bible doesn't say that believers in Christ don't grieve. It says that while we may grieve, we don't grieve as people without hope. So, we will grieve, although I have to say that I did a lot of my grieving for my mom over the past forty-plus years as she seemed, sadly, to turn in on herself more and more.
The abandonment she felt as a child. The depression that dogged her in her adult years. These things made living hard for mom.
And it made things hard for our father, a man I love, appreciate, and respect more than I can say. Dad, like me and like the rest of us, you aren’t perfect. (I mean, for crying out loud, you don’t like garlic!) But you are a great man and a loving man whose care for mom all these years has been an example to us all.
We carry with us the hope that because of Jesus and our faith in Him, neither death, depression, nor anything else this world may bring us will have the last words over my mother’s life.
We can be confident that the person of essential sweetness and vitality we knew in younger years and even sometimes in her later years in the midst of her sad withdrawal, will re-emerge and be brought to perfection in the eternal city:
The woman who used to load up her kids when dad was working nights at the filling station and take us to Marina’s for spaghetti dinner because she was craving spaghetti. (Probably because she was pregnant, because she seemed to be pregnant all the time in those days.)
The woman who would laugh so hard at the jokes of my brother Marty or my cousin Susie that you thought she might burst with joy.
The woman of great creativity who used to enter her creations and take blue ribbons at the State Fair.
The woman who adored just being with her three girls: Betsy, Kathy, and Dianne.
The woman whose face brightened even as she lay dying as she caught sight of her dear son, Martin.
And, if we will trust in Jesus Christ, He will go to work on us in this life (we will become what Martin Luther called, "the Holy Spirit's workshop") and bring to perfection in the life to come, the people we were made to be, unintimidated by disease, death, doubts, hurts, fears, or anything else. It will be, as God said of the perfect world He created before the human race plunged it into sin and death, “Very good.”
If today I could presume to speak a word for my mom, now living in the perfect clarity of eternity, to you today it would be this: If you want to live this life to the full, follow Jesus. And if those streets of gold, laid open to us by the grace and power of God, sound good to you, follow Jesus. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Renewed violence in Chicago...and the violence of a nihilist culture
This recent sobering report from PBS on gun violence in Chicago, I think, points rightly to several of the phenomenon's culprits: separation from opportunities and long-term hopelessness rooted in racism.
But more is at play, I believe in the increase in Chicago shootings. It's a factor in world culture today evidenced in different ways among affluent whites, young males in different countries, dishonest people on the make, indifferent sexual partners, and others.
It's what I call nihilism, a belief that nothing matters but being more, having more, conquering more.
As the report points out, the gang members killing each other in Chicago aren't motivated, as members were in the past, to protect their turf, a stupid reason to shoot someone anyway. Now, they're just shooting when someone insults them, crosses them, or gets in their way.
When nothing but you and your survival are threatened, life becomes expendable, cheap. Especially other people's lives. The answer to the question posed by the world's first murderer to God--"Am I my brother's keeper?"--should be obvious to everyone. Of course, we are all our brothers' and our sisters' keepers. Our lives are undeserved gifts from God; caring for each other is one way we express our gratitude for the gift.
Nihilism drives terrorism, dirty business dealings, and cavalier attitudes about sex and family, among other things.
Our penchant for it is inborn. But much in today's culture says it's getting the upper hand.
I believe that the solutions to these issues are many and varied--economic, cultural, social.
But I also believe strongly that every effort to subdue nihilism and promote community and justice will fail unless there is also a transformation of people's hearts and minds.
And that, I believe, can only come from the God we know in Christ.
Christ is the essential factor and the linchpin for any good to come out of any evil. He won't make any of us nor any society on this planet perfect if we turn from evil--evils like racism, indifference, and nihilism.
But when we surrender to Him daily, He begins to change the way we look at others and ourselves. He starts to transform us from the inside out.
Let's pray for an end to violence and pray for our neighbors whoever they are.
Let's pray for an end to institutionalized racism.
Let's do our own bit to contribute to justice and mercy in this world.
Let's love God and our neighbors practically every day.
Let's ask God to renew and revive us through the saving work He's done through Jesus.
Let's trust in Christ and ask Him to make us over in His image.
To find out more about this new life Christ can give to us, keep reading this blog. I write about it all the time. I even try to live it.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Thursday, October 13, 2016
3 Books
Recently, I finished reading two books and listening to another.
I'd started reading Nabeel Qureshi's Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Jesus, a while ago, but had set it aside in order to turn my attention to two other books--one that my Navigators coach, Bill Mowry, wanted me to read and another one recommended me to by my son.
The Qureshi book is an important one, especially given the penchant of some in the post-911 US, who erroneously think that all religions are the same and when others, in the name of tolerance, claim that all religions can lead people to God.
Qureshi was raised in a devout Muslim home and was himself an avid believer. But when he went to Old Dominion University, on his way to medical school, he met David, a mate on the school debate team, who was a deeply committed follower of Jesus.
In the context of their friendship, Qureshi became committed to proving the superiority of Islam and the errors of David's Christianity.
To do so, he dug into not just the Qu'ran and Muslim teaching, but also the Bible and Christian teaching. Qureshi chronicles a series of jarring insights that led him, with heart, head, and will to accept that Jesus is the crucified and risen "way,...truth,..and life" (John 14:6) and that Islam isn't a witness of God. As he writes in the book's introduction: "As I studied Islam more carefully, what I learned shook my world: there is no good reason to believe that either Muhammad or the Quran teaches the truth about God."
It hasn't been an easy road for Qureshi since coming to faith in Christ. But he has remained steadfast in following Christ, even now as he fights stomach cancer.
This book is not a rabid polemic against Islam. Qureshi sensitively and lovingly explains Islamic belief with a love for his own family members and for Muslims alike. In the bargain, he helps Christians and others to more clearly and sensitively understand Islam.
I can't recommend Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus highly enough.
My wife and I (and our kids when they were young) have always made a habit of reading books in the car on jaunts of any distance. I'm the reader, since, as I've explained here before, I'm the only family member who can read while traveling without barfing.
But, a few weeks ago, I found the audio version of Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, a book which was made into an unfortunate and less than faithful to the text movie by producer Angelina Jolie. So, instead of my reading, we listened to the late, great Edward Herman read Hillenbrand's riveting telling of the story of Louis Zamperini, Olympic gold medalist and World War II hero and POW.
Much of the book is taken up with Zamperini's wartime experiences, which included a harrowing time on a raft in the Pacific after the bomber on which he was a crew member was shot down and his even more harrowing experiences in Japanese POW camps. He endured almost unimaginable privations, daily beatings, and starvation. His survival is certainly in miracle territory.
After the war, Zamperini met and fell in love with Cynthia Applewhite and they married. But the war hadn't ended for Louis. Like many veterans, he suffered from PTSD, horrible flashbacks, and increasing intervals of sullen hatefulness. He sank into alcoholism.
Eventually, Cynthia filed for divorce and Zamperini's life seemed to spiral ever more out of control. He'd never had much exposure to or interest in religion. In fact, it turned him off completely. And though he'd had what can be described as encounters with God during some of his worst experiences of the war, he never seemed to give God a thought.
Neither really had Cynthia. But not long after she filed for divorce, she attended Billy Graham's famed Los Angeles mission. The year was 1949. Cynthia received Christ by faith for the first time and His presence in her life made an immediate change in her outlook. She announced, to Zamperini's surprise and delight, that she wasn't divorcing him.
But soon his delight was mixed with anger as Cynthia pressed Louis to attend one of Graham's crusade events and meet Christ for himself. He resisted, but finally relented. He attended one night, but left as soon as Graham completed his sermon. Implausibly, he told Cynthia he would attend one more gathering if she would promise to never pester him about it again. It was that night, through Graham's preaching, the God's grace given in Christ, met Zamperini's deepest needs: forgiveness, the ability to let go of his past, freedom from his addiction, a purpose for living, life with God.
He never drank again. He never experienced another horrific dream of the beatings he endured during the war. His desire for vengeance, a desire that had grown so deep that he had been saving money in order to go to Japan in order to kill his primary tormentor.
Eventually, Zamperini became the director of a camp that transformed the lives of troubled kids like he had been and an evangelist who preached around the world about the power Jesus gives to His believers to forgive those who have hurt us so that we can live the life God has in mind for us. He even forgave and called to faith those who had menaced and beaten him when he was a POW.
He died in 2014 at the age of 97. In January, 1998, before the Olympics in Nagano, Japan, he ran a leg of the Olympic torch relay, passing the camp where he had been interned.
Whether you read it or listen to it, Hillenbrand's riveting narrative of this remarkable man's life is moving and inspiring. Like Qureshi, Zamperini found life in Jesus Christ. So can anyone.
The final book I'll mention is pure and delightful brain candy: Agatha Christie's Cards on the Table, a 1937 book that features her famous fictional detective (who she came to detest), Hercule Poirot. I love Christie's books and picked this one up for ten cents at a library book sale in Georgetown, Texas earlier this year. It's a great read.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
I'd started reading Nabeel Qureshi's Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Jesus, a while ago, but had set it aside in order to turn my attention to two other books--one that my Navigators coach, Bill Mowry, wanted me to read and another one recommended me to by my son.
The Qureshi book is an important one, especially given the penchant of some in the post-911 US, who erroneously think that all religions are the same and when others, in the name of tolerance, claim that all religions can lead people to God.
Qureshi was raised in a devout Muslim home and was himself an avid believer. But when he went to Old Dominion University, on his way to medical school, he met David, a mate on the school debate team, who was a deeply committed follower of Jesus.
In the context of their friendship, Qureshi became committed to proving the superiority of Islam and the errors of David's Christianity.
To do so, he dug into not just the Qu'ran and Muslim teaching, but also the Bible and Christian teaching. Qureshi chronicles a series of jarring insights that led him, with heart, head, and will to accept that Jesus is the crucified and risen "way,...truth,..and life" (John 14:6) and that Islam isn't a witness of God. As he writes in the book's introduction: "As I studied Islam more carefully, what I learned shook my world: there is no good reason to believe that either Muhammad or the Quran teaches the truth about God."
It hasn't been an easy road for Qureshi since coming to faith in Christ. But he has remained steadfast in following Christ, even now as he fights stomach cancer.
This book is not a rabid polemic against Islam. Qureshi sensitively and lovingly explains Islamic belief with a love for his own family members and for Muslims alike. In the bargain, he helps Christians and others to more clearly and sensitively understand Islam.
I can't recommend Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus highly enough.
My wife and I (and our kids when they were young) have always made a habit of reading books in the car on jaunts of any distance. I'm the reader, since, as I've explained here before, I'm the only family member who can read while traveling without barfing.
But, a few weeks ago, I found the audio version of Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, a book which was made into an unfortunate and less than faithful to the text movie by producer Angelina Jolie. So, instead of my reading, we listened to the late, great Edward Herman read Hillenbrand's riveting telling of the story of Louis Zamperini, Olympic gold medalist and World War II hero and POW.
Much of the book is taken up with Zamperini's wartime experiences, which included a harrowing time on a raft in the Pacific after the bomber on which he was a crew member was shot down and his even more harrowing experiences in Japanese POW camps. He endured almost unimaginable privations, daily beatings, and starvation. His survival is certainly in miracle territory.
After the war, Zamperini met and fell in love with Cynthia Applewhite and they married. But the war hadn't ended for Louis. Like many veterans, he suffered from PTSD, horrible flashbacks, and increasing intervals of sullen hatefulness. He sank into alcoholism.
Eventually, Cynthia filed for divorce and Zamperini's life seemed to spiral ever more out of control. He'd never had much exposure to or interest in religion. In fact, it turned him off completely. And though he'd had what can be described as encounters with God during some of his worst experiences of the war, he never seemed to give God a thought.
Neither really had Cynthia. But not long after she filed for divorce, she attended Billy Graham's famed Los Angeles mission. The year was 1949. Cynthia received Christ by faith for the first time and His presence in her life made an immediate change in her outlook. She announced, to Zamperini's surprise and delight, that she wasn't divorcing him.
But soon his delight was mixed with anger as Cynthia pressed Louis to attend one of Graham's crusade events and meet Christ for himself. He resisted, but finally relented. He attended one night, but left as soon as Graham completed his sermon. Implausibly, he told Cynthia he would attend one more gathering if she would promise to never pester him about it again. It was that night, through Graham's preaching, the God's grace given in Christ, met Zamperini's deepest needs: forgiveness, the ability to let go of his past, freedom from his addiction, a purpose for living, life with God.
He never drank again. He never experienced another horrific dream of the beatings he endured during the war. His desire for vengeance, a desire that had grown so deep that he had been saving money in order to go to Japan in order to kill his primary tormentor.
Eventually, Zamperini became the director of a camp that transformed the lives of troubled kids like he had been and an evangelist who preached around the world about the power Jesus gives to His believers to forgive those who have hurt us so that we can live the life God has in mind for us. He even forgave and called to faith those who had menaced and beaten him when he was a POW.
He died in 2014 at the age of 97. In January, 1998, before the Olympics in Nagano, Japan, he ran a leg of the Olympic torch relay, passing the camp where he had been interned.
Whether you read it or listen to it, Hillenbrand's riveting narrative of this remarkable man's life is moving and inspiring. Like Qureshi, Zamperini found life in Jesus Christ. So can anyone.
The final book I'll mention is pure and delightful brain candy: Agatha Christie's Cards on the Table, a 1937 book that features her famous fictional detective (who she came to detest), Hercule Poirot. I love Christie's books and picked this one up for ten cents at a library book sale in Georgetown, Texas earlier this year. It's a great read.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Wednesday, October 05, 2016
To say yes to Christ, I must say no to cheap grace
This is an awesome article.
One of the hard lessons I've learned as a Christian is that if I'm serious about following Christ, I can't avoid getting my heart broken. To grasp the freely outstretched hand of Christ necessitates letting go of the desires I most deeply love, desires that would otherwise turn me from life with God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die." It is only in the painful dying to self that we receive Christ's free gifts of forgiveness and life.
But I would rather embrace the costly grace of Christ than the siren calls of my favorite sins.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
One of the hard lessons I've learned as a Christian is that if I'm serious about following Christ, I can't avoid getting my heart broken. To grasp the freely outstretched hand of Christ necessitates letting go of the desires I most deeply love, desires that would otherwise turn me from life with God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die." It is only in the painful dying to self that we receive Christ's free gifts of forgiveness and life.
But I would rather embrace the costly grace of Christ than the siren calls of my favorite sins.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Thursday, September 22, 2016
How losing weight and eating healthfully are going
I've written here and here about my quest to lose weight and eat more healthfully after I tipped my doctor's scales at a gargantuan 189.7-pounds. That weigh-in occurred on June 13. On June 14, I began to cut my daily calorie intake.
In the first linked post, I talked about what I'd learned after about a month of more sensible eating. In the second linked post, I gave a progress report; at that point I weighed in at 176.5 pounds.
Yesterday, I went to the local Little Clinic because of a cough and cold. The examination room had scales in it and since I'd not weighed myself since September 1, I decided to bite the bullet.
I wasn't hopeful. I'd fallen off the calorie wagon several times over the past few weeks. On the other side of the ledger though, I had, a few days before, bought a new pair of jeans with a size 34 waist and felt comfortable in them. But when I put my hands on my belly, I could tell that it wasn't shrinking as dramatically as it did when I first began the process or when I'd been more consistently disciplined. (Many people have commented to me how weight comes off readily initially, but gets tougher as time goes on.)
I climbed on the scales. I couldn't believe it! I had lost more weight. I was now at 173 pounds. Not a dramatic reduction, of course, but I had half expected a gain.
In addition to all the lessons this process is teaching me, which I mentioned here, I guess I would point to another one: Maintaining a daily positive discipline isn't easy. (I know that's obvious. But I think it's worth noting.)
Whether, we're establishing disciplines to lose weight, get fit, be financially responsible, serve others, inform ourselves as voting citizens, or keep a daily quiet time with God, all positive things, there will always be some urgent or more compelling thing that keeps us from being disciplined. The hardest thing in the world to do is the right thing.
I've learned that truth more from my failures--including my failures at eating more healthfully--than I have from my successes.
But even that phrase "my successes" makes me laugh. The reason is simple: The reason that I've lost more than 16-pounds since June 14, a paltry amount if the diet technique commercials are to be believed, is not because of my will power. My will is to eat what I want, do what I want, spend as I want, look out for myself with no regard to others as I want.
But God is in the process of taming this rebel sinner. Each day, often many times a day, I turn to the God I know in Jesus Christ and ask Him, despite my self-will and stubbornness, to bring me under His control, to meet my willing but weak spirit and create and deepen faith in Christ within me, to create and deepen my dependence on Christ. And, I also pray that as Christ does this, He will cultivate in me the habits that will cause me to daily welcome Christ as Lord over my whole being.
The old Mark--sinful, selfish, willful--my default mode is always trying to steer me away from letting Christ have charge of my whole life. My only defense is the disciplines of Christian life, the means by which Christ comes to us and strengthens us to be who we know, through Christ, we can be:
When we follow these ordinary pathways of the world, we take ourselves out of the game in which God enlists us at our Baptism--and in which God wants to enlist all people: to love God, to love our neighbor, to surrender to the life-changing grace of God given only in Jesus, to make disciples.
I want to be in God's game until the moment I draw my last breath on earth. That's why I'm trying to eat healthfully and get to a good weight. Despite all the roadblocks I put in God's way, I keep turning back to Him to help me to make this new life style stick.
He can do the same thing for you.
In the first linked post, I talked about what I'd learned after about a month of more sensible eating. In the second linked post, I gave a progress report; at that point I weighed in at 176.5 pounds.
Yesterday, I went to the local Little Clinic because of a cough and cold. The examination room had scales in it and since I'd not weighed myself since September 1, I decided to bite the bullet.
I wasn't hopeful. I'd fallen off the calorie wagon several times over the past few weeks. On the other side of the ledger though, I had, a few days before, bought a new pair of jeans with a size 34 waist and felt comfortable in them. But when I put my hands on my belly, I could tell that it wasn't shrinking as dramatically as it did when I first began the process or when I'd been more consistently disciplined. (Many people have commented to me how weight comes off readily initially, but gets tougher as time goes on.)
I climbed on the scales. I couldn't believe it! I had lost more weight. I was now at 173 pounds. Not a dramatic reduction, of course, but I had half expected a gain.
In addition to all the lessons this process is teaching me, which I mentioned here, I guess I would point to another one: Maintaining a daily positive discipline isn't easy. (I know that's obvious. But I think it's worth noting.)
Whether, we're establishing disciplines to lose weight, get fit, be financially responsible, serve others, inform ourselves as voting citizens, or keep a daily quiet time with God, all positive things, there will always be some urgent or more compelling thing that keeps us from being disciplined. The hardest thing in the world to do is the right thing.
I've learned that truth more from my failures--including my failures at eating more healthfully--than I have from my successes.
But even that phrase "my successes" makes me laugh. The reason is simple: The reason that I've lost more than 16-pounds since June 14, a paltry amount if the diet technique commercials are to be believed, is not because of my will power. My will is to eat what I want, do what I want, spend as I want, look out for myself with no regard to others as I want.
But God is in the process of taming this rebel sinner. Each day, often many times a day, I turn to the God I know in Jesus Christ and ask Him, despite my self-will and stubbornness, to bring me under His control, to meet my willing but weak spirit and create and deepen faith in Christ within me, to create and deepen my dependence on Christ. And, I also pray that as Christ does this, He will cultivate in me the habits that will cause me to daily welcome Christ as Lord over my whole being.
The old Mark--sinful, selfish, willful--my default mode is always trying to steer me away from letting Christ have charge of my whole life. My only defense is the disciplines of Christian life, the means by which Christ comes to us and strengthens us to be who we know, through Christ, we can be:
- God's Word, the Bible;
- worship with fellow believers;
- the sacrament of Holy Communion, the true body and blood of Jesus;
- prayer;
- the fellowship of other believers;
- serving in Christ's name.
When we follow these ordinary pathways of the world, we take ourselves out of the game in which God enlists us at our Baptism--and in which God wants to enlist all people: to love God, to love our neighbor, to surrender to the life-changing grace of God given only in Jesus, to make disciples.
I want to be in God's game until the moment I draw my last breath on earth. That's why I'm trying to eat healthfully and get to a good weight. Despite all the roadblocks I put in God's way, I keep turning back to Him to help me to make this new life style stick.
He can do the same thing for you.
Monday, August 15, 2016
The strange madness, the only way to be human
From our son, Pastor Philip Daniels:
When we are too busy loving our brothers and sisters, it is hard to find time to demonize them or write-off their sins and problems. When you love someone, you want what is best for that person. When you love someone, they will see your vision for them as being modeled on Christ-centered love rather than pharisaical hypocrisy. To love your enemies doesn't mean you allow them to do whatever they want. It means you love them so much that you are willing to enter into the messiness of their lives and be there for the hard cleaning. When we love our enemies, we are being like Christ. When we hate our enemies, we are nothing more than animals fighting for survival. There is a strange madness to the love of Christ, but the only way to live as a human is to be quite mad.Amen
Friday, July 15, 2016
The only one whose opinion matters
Public opinion is fickle and people will like or dislike you for lots of reasons, most of them unfair.
A few years ago, I wrote a song inspired by the circumstances of several people I'd known through the years who were falsely accused of financial shenanigans, one at a corporation, the other at a public entity.
In each instance, the media reported the allegations while the accused were forced by legal realities to refrain from comment.
Meanwhile, their communities were abuzz with unkind rumors of all manner of illegal, nefarious, and immoral activities of which my acquaintance was supposedly guilty.
In both cases, I felt like I was watching a game of telephone, a tumbling profusion of lies, sparked by, in each instance, one unproven allegation. Every time I tried to correct the false information, I was treated either as naive or complicit with wrongdoing.
You know, it isn't just the American system of jurisprudence that holds a person to be innocent until proven guilty, the God of the universe expects us to treat rumors, even allegations from public officials, as false until proven otherwise. In the eighth commandment, God says, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." In his explanation of this commandment, in The Small Catechism, Martin Luther writes:
We are to fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, or lie about our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain his actions in the kindest way.We need to be told this kind of thing, of course, it's foreign to our nature to give others as much consideration as we expect for ourselves.
But fallible human beings clearly aren't the ones whose opinions about us should matter most in our lives.
My song starts out:
People will say what people will sayI've seen that this is often true. People say uncharitable things about others because, in doing so, they make themselves feel superior. They're looking for affirmation in all the wrong places.
They refuse to be confused by the truth
We make a mistake when we allow the opinions of others about us to rule our choices and behaviors. The only One Whose opinion of us matters is God. He will judge our lives, not other people.
The great news in all of this is that God judges those who turn from sin and turn in faith to Jesus Christ with grace. He will do that even for people who are guilty of the sins that others gossip about. He will even forgive gossipers and would-be judges who repent and trust in Christ alone as their judge, God, and King.
Jesus frees us from the changing whimsies of others' opinions of us, roots us in love and life for eternity, and sends His Word and His Holy Spirit to guide us toward living according to God's will, not others' will, not our own. In this, there's freedom.
None of this means we should ignore the opinions of other people altogether. When loved ones or mature fellow church people speak the truth in love to us about perceived wrongs or bad judgment on our part, we should listen; they may be speaking God's truth to us. Christians, in particular, voluntarily live in a community of mutual accountability with their fellow Christians. Where this mutual accountability exists, we actually have more freedom not less, as God uses Christian community to set us free from sin and relational acrimony.
In any case, our ultimate Judge is God. And His desire is to set us free...if will let Him.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
[I don't know where I got this graphic. I saw it a year ago, liked it, and kept it. Apologies if I have violated any copyright laws.]
Monday, May 30, 2016
Eternal Life is a Relationship with Christ Now
"...the life associated with the kingdom of God [that Jesus died and rose to establish] is not just a benefit when you die. It exists now. The only definition of eternal life that Christ gave is relational, as described in John 17:3: 'Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.' Eternal life involves discipleship here on Earth--knowing Christ and following Him." (Ron Barnett, Intentional Disciplemaking)
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Say I Won't by Lecrae ft. Andy Mineo
Christ sets you free to be different. Because you know when you've got God's OK, your slate made clean by the grace that comes to believers in Jesus, you tend to tune out the people who say you won't. Even talented rappers who turn their backs on the bigger ducats in order to give the bigger glory to Christ, not themselves.
I dare you to listen.
I dare you to listen.
Friday, May 06, 2016
"You make me want to be a better man"
There are people who come into our lives who make us feel this way.
Sometimes, we are so confounding for them, so frustrating and infuriating, that we never get the chance to tell them how they make us want to be better people.
Nor do they see what effect they have on our characters, our actions, our thought processes.
I've had people like this in my life. They've never seen how God has used them to call me to repent and how, as the Holy Spirit sent by Christ uses them, calls my attention to the examples of their character, integrity, and honesty, and how God's Spirit is slowly changing me.
This is dedicated to people who have made me and make me want to be a better man.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Sometimes, we are so confounding for them, so frustrating and infuriating, that we never get the chance to tell them how they make us want to be better people.
Nor do they see what effect they have on our characters, our actions, our thought processes.
I've had people like this in my life. They've never seen how God has used them to call me to repent and how, as the Holy Spirit sent by Christ uses them, calls my attention to the examples of their character, integrity, and honesty, and how God's Spirit is slowly changing me.
This is dedicated to people who have made me and make me want to be a better man.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Saturday, August 08, 2015
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by U2
I remember first hearing this song and being utterly blown away by it.
It seems to speak to me on two different levels. One is about the things that we can rightly look for in this world. Love, for example.
The second level is about the one thing we can never find in this world, that only comes from the God we meet in Jesus Christ, through Whom God's kingdom comes and only comes in its fullness when, like our Lord, we die are raised from death by the One Who becomes our Father through Christ and our faith in Him.
It's sad when the things from the first category prove ephemeral or beyond our reach.
It's sadder, eternally sadder, when the eternal gladness God wants to give to us proves elusive to us beyond the gates of death because we turn our backs on Christ, the Savior Who refuses to turn His back on us.
In this world, we will never find all that we're looking for. We have eternal appetites; this world is finite, time-bound.
But, as we trust in Christ, we can be assured that God will not only give us what we were always looking for, even when we have no idea that He is what we were looking for all the time, but more. Saint Paul writes: "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen" (Ephesians 3:20-21).
I believe that one day, in the words of another musician I love, John Ylvisaker, God "will make sense of our loving and hoping."
The Holy Spirit enables me to trust that the God Who sent His Son to die and rise for me (and for you) will do that for all who dare to trust in Him. Jesus promises that "the one who endures [in faith in Him] will be saved" (Matthew 24:13). I try to remember that every day because I still haven't found what I'm looking for.
Somewhere in time or eternity...
Isn't The Edge the most exquisitely wonderful guitarist ever?
It seems to speak to me on two different levels. One is about the things that we can rightly look for in this world. Love, for example.
The second level is about the one thing we can never find in this world, that only comes from the God we meet in Jesus Christ, through Whom God's kingdom comes and only comes in its fullness when, like our Lord, we die are raised from death by the One Who becomes our Father through Christ and our faith in Him.
It's sad when the things from the first category prove ephemeral or beyond our reach.
It's sadder, eternally sadder, when the eternal gladness God wants to give to us proves elusive to us beyond the gates of death because we turn our backs on Christ, the Savior Who refuses to turn His back on us.
In this world, we will never find all that we're looking for. We have eternal appetites; this world is finite, time-bound.
But, as we trust in Christ, we can be assured that God will not only give us what we were always looking for, even when we have no idea that He is what we were looking for all the time, but more. Saint Paul writes: "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen" (Ephesians 3:20-21).
I believe that one day, in the words of another musician I love, John Ylvisaker, God "will make sense of our loving and hoping."
The Holy Spirit enables me to trust that the God Who sent His Son to die and rise for me (and for you) will do that for all who dare to trust in Him. Jesus promises that "the one who endures [in faith in Him] will be saved" (Matthew 24:13). I try to remember that every day because I still haven't found what I'm looking for.
Somewhere in time or eternity...
Isn't The Edge the most exquisitely wonderful guitarist ever?
Saturday, July 11, 2015
The Blessings of Surrender
This image for The Problem of Pain appeared on the C.S. Lewis page on Facebook yesterday. It's an incredible book, by the way.
That got me to thinking...
That got me to thinking...
Surrender to Christ is the hardest thing imaginable. And the sin in me being so pervasive--born in sin, the truth is, the sin is me, sin is my default mode, this hard thing must happen new each day. Without daily repentance, renewal in Christ cannot happen. It's too easy to follow the rut of my self-centered and seemingly harmless living, wandering from the One Who made us and loves us with infinite passion...wandering from the life only Christ gives.
Without surrender to Christ, I die, separated from God.
With surrender to Christ, I live again, in God's company and in fellowship with the saved.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Today is the Day
Today is that day. But one day the door of mercy will close. To those who received and served Christ, He will say, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you” (Matt. 25:34). But those who don’t know Him will be turned away (v.46).Please don't turn from Christ. Go through the open door to embrace the life that only He can give. Please.
Wednesday, January 07, 2015
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Relax...Christmas is Coming, Whether We're Ready or Not
Good words from David Wendel on this Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Advent, two days before Christmas.
In Advent, we remember that Christ is coming again. Outward preparation will neither hinder or hasten Christ's return. That's in the hands of God alone. So, whether in relation to the coming of Christmas or of Christ Himself, relax. Repent. Be renewed by God's only begotten Son, Jesus the Christ.
In Advent, we remember that Christ is coming again. Outward preparation will neither hinder or hasten Christ's return. That's in the hands of God alone. So, whether in relation to the coming of Christmas or of Christ Himself, relax. Repent. Be renewed by God's only begotten Son, Jesus the Christ.
But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer is heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John...and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” –Luke 1:5-25
As we are now at the day before the day before Christmas, we hear the story of a birth. The birth, however, is that of John, the forerunner of Jesus—as well as his cousin. How could Jesus be born before John? We have to hear of the birth of John to Elizabeth and Zechariah to understand that John was all about preparing the way, making ready for the Lord a people prepared.
And many in John’s day did return to the Lord God, and many hearts were turned through the ministry of John. Many were prepared for the coming of the Lord. And are we prepared? Have our hearts been turned during this season of Advent? Has this time been one of repentance and renewal for you and me?
We have probably each had joys and sorrows during Advent. We have surely had ups and downs. Most of us will have done better and worse at repentance, renewal and preparation. Still, our Lord comes. Christmas comes, whether you and I are ready or not. This is the good news—that the coming of Christ does not depend on us and our preparation and readiness. We can remove hindrances and barriers, but He comes nevertheless.
As a parish pastor, I actually welcomed arriving at the day before the day before Christmas. It meant I’d done all I could do, and Christmas would happen in spite of what I had accomplished or failed to accomplish. I encourage you, today, to let go and be at peace. Give yourself a day, if at all possible, to breath, pause, rest, spend time with friends and loved ones. Consider yourself prepared, regardless!
Come, Lord Jesus, come. Come to we who are prepared and ready, and come to the rest of us as well. Amen.
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