Living like I mean it?

Yesterday, during my quiet time, God gently confronted me on one of my foremost character flaws. I say that He did so "gently," because the admonition was predicated by the fact I am by His child through faith in Jesus Christ. As a baptized believer in Christ, my old self has been drowned and my new self brought into being to live with Christ eternally. But God pointed out to me that I don't always live the faith I confess.

From Colossians 3:1-2, 5;

"You have been raised to life with Christ, so set your hearts on the things that are in heaven, where Christ sits on his throne at the right side of God. ² Keep your minds fixed on things there, not on things here on earth...You must put to death, then, the earthly desires at work in you..." (Good News Translation)

I journaled my response to God's Word:

I spend the greater part of each day heeding my desires, my wants, desires that are earthly: for my pleasure, my comfort, my preferences, my ambitions, etc. [Not many of them are intrinsically sinful, maybe, but are sinful in the ways I pursue them nonetheless, because they're about my will, rather than Your will.] You know this about me, Lord. But I need to acknowledge it to You.

I don't spend nearly the time needed on Your will, Your Word, or You.

My heart gets set on the things I want. I grow resentful when, after relentless praying, you don't give me the things I want, which You know I don't need.

I do this, as You know, after You've made Your will and Your answer of "no" to my prayers clear.

My heart is too divided. God, I need to be Yours completely. Remove my hypocrisy. Help me to be wholly and joyfully turned to You. Help me to focus on Your will and not my own; on Christ's call and not my pleasure. Amen

"The Power of a Whisper"

Pastor Glen VanderKloot of Faith Lutheran Church in Springfield, Illinois, is preaching a series, The Power of a Whisper, in which he shares on how we can get better at hearing God's voice and get better at having the faith and courage to respond. As Glen explains:

There are crazy people out there who will tell you that

God told them to do all sorts of things, often horrible

things.  Every dream, thought, idea is not from God. 

It is essential that we learn to test each whisper we

receive to discern whether it is from God or not.

So far in this season of Lent, Pastor VanderKloot has presented two sermons. As always with his sermons, they're great! Here are links to the first two:
The Whisper-Led Life
Divine Input for the Day to Day

Quote of the Day

"There is no medical way to explain how you survived your heart attack. God's hand must have been on you." 

That was from the cardiac care nurse who oriented me today as I began twelve weeks of cardiac rehabilitation. Her words echoed those of my cardiologist and of the nurses at the McConnell Heart Health Center of Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, where I underwent a heart catheterization and stent implantation last week. 

But the way she expressed herself was stunning to me. 

Whatever You want me to do, Lord, help me to do it. Amen!

Stuck?

We all get stuck in our lives, uncertain about the directions in which we should move. This is especially frustrating for Christians who want to express gratitude through lives honoring God for the free gifts of forgiveness and new life which come from Jesus.

That grace should lighten our anxiety over discerning the right directions for our lives, the directions for which God designed us. We should know that even when we get things wrong, if our motivation is to live loving and useful lives, God will still be pleased with us.

Nonetheless, our unease can be understandable. The Bible witnesses to a personal God Who cares about us personally. He gives all human beings certain abilities and more deeply blesses Christians with spiritual gifts meant for us to use in making the church and the world better. God wants to imbue our lives with purpose and direction.

But sometimes, overwhelmed by the condition of alienation from God that all humans are born with, we get stuck.

My friend and colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot, recently presented a wonderful piece by Crosswalk.com contributing writer Whitney Hopler on how believers in Christ can hear God's voice and find direction for their lives. Hopler's article distills a book called Speak Lord, I'm Listening: How to Hear God's Voice Above the Noise by Larry Kreider.

The first method for hearing God's voice commended by Kreider and Hopler is one with which Lutheran Christians like me are sure to resonate, given our emphasis on the central role of God's Word in the lives of Christians:

The Bible: God may cause a portion of Scripture to jump off the page for you while you’re reading it. He may make you aware of how it applies to your life right then and use it to lead you in a particular way. The Bible is your final authority – the standard by which you should check everything else you think God may be saying to you. Remember that nothing God says in any other way will ever contradict what He says in the Bible. Get to know the Bible well by reading and studying it often. Be sure to keep the context and original intent of Scripture passages in mind. [italics added by me]

The Bible, which we Lutherans confess to be the authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice, should be the filter through which we view all things, including our lives, motives, and places in the world.

I like the rest of the list of ways to hear God's voice as enumerated by Hopler, too.

For some, the idea that God can speak to us will be foreign. We're like the people of eleventh-century BC Israel. Of that time, the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel observes, "The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread" (1 Samuel 3:1). The observation seems to be made with a kind of incredulity. "Can you believe it?" the passage seems to ask. "People were so far away from God that they didn't hear His voice."

I'm convinced that the God Who made the universe and Who became one of us in Jesus Christ is still speaking to us, if we will only listen. I say that as someone who, I admit, crowds God's voice out of my life way too often, doing that through my activities, some of them which, on their face, appear commendable or holy. But whenever we prevent God from speaking to us, we can bet that we're not about anything commendable or holy!

To be clear, in talking about "hearing God's voice," I don't mean an audible-"If you build it, he will come"-in-the-cornfield hearing, although I discount no possibility. God is sovereign. Therefore, God can choose to speak to us in any way God wants to speak to us. God even used an ass to speak once. (Some people say that God does that in the pulpits of many churches every week.)



[Above, Balaam, his ass, and the angel blocking their way. Balaam was so consumed with doing what he wanted to do that he couldn't see the angel God sent to turn him back. The ass could. When the ass refused to go on, God spoke to Balaam through the ass. I'll leave it to you to apply this to your own life. Click on the image to see all of it.]

Go to Hopler's article. If you're feeling stuck, maybe her words of wisdom will help you hear God's voice and get you unstuck.

Keep Following, Even When the Neighbors Aren't Saying, "Hello"

[This is an adaptation of my monthly article for the July, 2008 newsletter of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

Has anything like this happened to you?

Sunday morning worship went well on June 29. I preached on the Gospel lesson, Matthew 10:40-42, and challenged the congregation and myself to see Jesus in the people around us and to extend Christian hospitality to them, including strangers.

To tell you the truth, I was stoked to meet my own challenge by intentionally greeting everyone with whom I came in contact.

After youth group ended that night, my wife Ann and I took a walk. Logan is a friendly place and people are usually generous with their hellos. Often, the walks that Ann, our son Phil, and I take around town get “interrupted,” when casual greetings turn into long conversations with friendly strangers.

But not this night. Instead, in spite of my new inspiration, almost every person to whom I said, “Hi,” or “Good evening,” or “How ya doin’?” met me with a vacant stare and silence.

The guy in front of his house just looked at me when I said hello. So did the teen heading for his car, the kid who passed us on his bike, and the woman walking her dog.

The next morning, as I thought about it, I couldn’t help smiling. Here’s why:

I have found that the very minute you understand God’s will for some aspect of your life and you try to follow God’s will, the devil, the world, and our sinful selves will get in your way.

The devil especially likes discouraging us from living life God’s way. He loves to snuff out the God-pleasing habits we’ve decided to adopt at the very moments we make our decisions.

The habits we’ve decided to take on could be anything from worshiping every Sunday to attending an evening Bible study, from giving more to the local food bank to spending time reading the Bible and praying each day. Or, it could be, as it was in my case, to be more deliberate in extending the hospitality of God to others.

The devil just loves to prevent us from keeping our “holy resolves.” When we Christians get discouraged about the daily business of being Christians, it makes the devil’s work easy.

The Bible isn’t exaggerating when it says, “Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

The Bible states simply, “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil…” (Ephesians 6:12).

The minute you decide to do things God’s way is the minute that the devil will try to keep you from fulfilling your resolve. Take his obstructions as proof that you’re doing the right thing.

Don’t let the devil get his way. Pray simply, “Lord Jesus, Your will be done” and keep following Christ…even when the neighbors aren’t saying, “Hello.”