Our Call, Our Privilege, Our Life ('I Am a Church Member,' Part 1)

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday morning.]

1 Corinthians 12:12-28

She was the wealthiest person in the small community where I served as pastor. She was also on the rolls of our church, although I’d been there several months already and hadn’t met her: She was in and out of town a lot. 

Then, one day, she met Ann at a local social gathering. She told Ann that she’d like to meet me and asked if I’d be available that afternoon. It turned out that I would be and, at the appointed time, she showed up. 

She quickly told me that she was an artist (an assertion that I came to doubt that...a lot), that she really couldn’t be bothered with the Bible, that she had a bevy of former husbands, each succeeding one more wealthy than the last, and that she intended to live her life as she wished whether God liked it or not. And, she made it clear, she wasn’t sure about the whole God thing anyway.

The purpose of her visit was plain enough. She was there to get a fix on what I was like, whether this worm in a clerical collar who sat before her was going to “play ball” with her view of the church as her own private country club, whether I was willing to compromise on Biblical truth in order to ensure that she wrote big checks for the general fund. Our conversation was pleasant enough. But I’m fairly certain that I disappointed her. Now, I’m not a perfect pastor or a perfect Christian or a perfect person, but one thing was absolutely clear to me: This woman had no idea what it meant to be a member of Christ’s Church, the body of Christ.

Over the next several weeks, with Thom Rainer’s book, I Am a Church Member, as a starting point, we’ll be considering what God, in His Word, the Bible, tells us about what it means to be a church member. I need to underscore that. While we can value Rainer’s book, it’s God’s Word that we most value. The Bible is, as we Lutherans say, the authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice. 

And, in some instances, we Lutherans have different views of what God’s Word teaches than Rainer. But we will surface those issues in coming weeks.

So, where to start in talking about being a Church member? 

The first thing to be said is that while we who make up the Church may organize ourselves in ways that can look like other organizations in the world (we may even use Robert's Rules of Order), the Church is from God, it’s God’s idea and God’s creation. The Church was instituted by Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, and the members who make up the Church are the only creatures or things that will survive the end of this dying old creation. 

The Church is built not on human will, human power, or human wisdom. The Church is built on the confession that Peter made when Jesus asked His apostles Who they said that He was. Peter confessed that Jesus is Lord, the Messiah, God-come-to-earth. Jesus commended Peter’s confession and told him that on the rock of this confession of Jesus’ Lordship, “...I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18) 

The Augsburg Confession, one of the basic confessional statements of Lutheran Christians, picks up on Jesus’ words to say: “The Church is the congregation of saints [that is, believers in Jesus] in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments [Holy Baptism and Holy Communion] are correctly administered...It is not necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies instituted by men, should be the same everywhere…” (The Augsburg Confession, Article VII). 

The Church is made up of people who receive the gospel Word about Jesus and the Sacraments with faith.

But faith is more than intellectual assent. 

To receive the Word of new and everlasting life from the crucified and risen Jesus with faith is to live with Him, however imperfectly, however often we may need to repent and be made new. (For me, this happens at least twenty times a day!) 

Faith means more than to say, “I believe that Jesus died and rose and I occupy a spot on the membership rolls.” 

That’s the second thing to be said about the Church. It’s composed of disciples, people who daily follow Jesus and seek to honor Him.

So, what are disciples? I'm glad that you asked that question! 

Disciples are people saved by grace through faith in Christ. Their life with God in Christ is a free gift. Even their faith is a free gift. These gifts come to us when we receive the Word about Jesus and when, in the words of The Small Catechism, we “hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it” (The Small Catechism: The Third Commandment). 

Disciples are those who turn to Jesus as the only One Who can make them right with God, right with themselves, the only One Who can give them forgiveness and life eternity; like Peter, they say to Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68) 

Disciples are those who, like the man who came to seek help for his child told Jesus after Jesus had told him to believe, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) Anyone who says they're a disciple and that they never wrestle with doubts or challenges to their belief is a liar.

Disciples are those who have heard Jesus’ call, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 16:24). Discipleship is about dying to our old selves so that our new selves, our God-given selves, can rise to live with God now and for all eternity.

Disciples are those so grateful for God’s amazing grace saving them from death and hell through faith in Jesus that they seek to live that lifestyle we talked about last Sunday: they follow Jesus, go to the world into which He sends them, and they “fish” for people, telling others the good news--the gospel--of new life for all who repent and believe in Jesus.

True church members then are disciples of Jesus. I seriously doubt whether people who don’t participate in a local church or who, like the woman who came to see me in my office that day long ago, really are church members. 

The Bible teaches that you and I need the church and not just when we agree with every decision made by the congregation. 

To be a Christian is to be part of Christ’s community of faith, the Church. Why is that so? 

One reason is that we need to be in fellowship with people who rub us the wrong way. We can get off on our own hobby horses and end up far from God if we aren’t part of a Christian congregation where there are people to set us straight. “As iron sharpens iron,” Proverbs 27:17 tells us, “so one person sharpens another.” 

Another reason is that the Church is the only fellowship in the world built around the Word of God. The preacher in Hebrews told the Church: “...let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24-25)

Nobody conveys the necessity of fellowship with the Church more graphically than the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:12-28. These verses undergird Rainer’s first chapter. Church members realize that the Church isn’t about them, their preferences, their fears, their desires; it’s about Jesus and about our neighbors and our fellow members. 

The Church is about: 

• reaching up to God in worship and praise every day,
• reaching in to love, support, and provide accountability to our fellow members, and
• reaching out with the good news of Jesus to a dying world

Church membership then isn’t a spectator sport. Church membership is about giving of ourselves abundantly and serving in Jesus’ name without hesitation.

We don’t have time to look at 1 Corinthians 12:12-28 in depth this morning. Please read it before our Tuesday learning group, which will happen over at Christ the King at 6:30. But I want to hold up what I believe Rainer rightly points to as the four elements of being functional members of Christ’s Church given to us by Paul. 

First: “Membership means we are all necessary parts of the whole.” In describing the Church as Christ’s body, Paul drew an analogy between our physical bodies and the parts that make them up. Each part is essential for the functioning of the whole body. We need our hearts, brains, lungs, and other parts to function properly. As Bishop John and others pointed out last week in Denver, when any member of the church decides to sink down to spectator mode, we are all hurt by it; it’s like trying to function without eyes or ears, fingers or toes. 

Second: “Membership means we are different but we still work together.” Rainer cites 1 Corinthians 12:26: “...if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice.” 

Third: “Membership means that everything we say and do is based on a Biblical foundation of love.” I love what Rainer says here, “We are not to love fellow church members just because they are lovable. We are to love the unlovable as well.” I would add this. Jesus says that we are to love others as He has loved us. To see how He loves us, all we have to do is look at the cross. When I realize that Jesus went to the cross for me despite my sins, it makes it easier for me to love others. Besides, Jesus say, when we do love one another, we make the gospel real to each other and to the world around us. “By this,” Jesus tells us,  “everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35) 

Fourth: “Church membership is functioning membership.” Rainer observes, “The concept of an inactive church member is an oxymoron.” Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:28: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

Folks, according to God’s Word, the Church is indispensable for the salvation of the world. 

Without the Church, billions of people will be separated from God in hell for eternity. 

According to that same Word, the Church is indispensable for our own salvation and lives. Without the Church, the devil, the world, and our sinful selves would certainly take us far away from God. 

The bottom line is this: In the Church, we need each other. 

And unless a congregation has fallen into unrepentant sin or false teaching about God, heresy, our call as church members is clear: 

We’re each to be functioning church members, grateful for the grace that has saved us, devoted to the Lord and open to His Word, devoted to each other, and excited to prompt, encourage, and challenge one another every time we gather to go into the world and make disciples for Jesus Christ. 

That’s our call. 

That's our privilege. 

And that's our life. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

God, Help Me Not to Be the Prostitute

Here's the journal of my quiet time today. It's important for Christian disciples to seek to maintain a regular quiet time with God on as many days a week as they can swing. It's also important that we let God call the tune, set the agenda, and give us our marching orders through quiet time. I try to keep these in minds each day when I meet with God.

To see how I keep quiet time, read here.

Look: “One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits by many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.’” (Revelation 17:1-2) 

In spite of many efforts to complicate Revelation, the message here is simple. The seven bowls of wrath that John has seen in his heavenly vision constitute the full (hence their number, seven) consequences of unrepented sin. Sin known to us that hasn’t been confessed and covered by the grace of God given in Christ to those who believe in Christ will lead to eternal separation from God and the life that only God can give. 

Throughout the Old Testament and in the New Testament, idolatry is portrayed as adultery, unfaithfulness to God. The first commandment tells us, “You shall have no other gods.” To violate any of God’s commandments in the moral law (the Ten Commandments and those commands that elaborate on them) is to commit idolatry because, in violating any of God’s commands, we hold our own judgments or own desires, we hold ourselves, to be more important than God. 

Listen: Here, I think, we see an adulteress whose adultery and adulterous influence over others may be subtle, deceiving people into thinking that what they believe in or lure others into believing in, is actually of God and righteous and reflective of God’s will.
Sly politicians, like every American president from Reagan to Trump, Republican and Democratic, dress their politics, to one extent or another, in godly language, invoking the name of God and the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, for their political agendas. But to adulterate our faith in Christ with earthly political, social, financial, or personal agendas is to worship our agendas and to leave Christ in the dust. To do that will inevitably lead us to death, separation from God, the life-giver. 

Many social and political systems, philosophies of life, and ways of living are built on the notion that those systems and not God Himself are preeminent. And even well-meaning people who think of themselves as Christians fall for this prostitute and betray Christ: They conflate their own opinions, interests, or desires with God. When these systems deliver the goodies of this world--military victories, financial well-being, a sense of supremacy, often at the expense of others--we risk becoming “intoxicated with the wine of [the prostitute’s] adulteries.” 

We risk becoming devotees of the system, the philosophy, the desire, the self. When this happens, wrath will follow...if not in this life, certainly in the life to come. We will condemn ourselves absent repentant belief in Jesus Christ: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (Jesus in John 3:17-18) 

Belief in Jesus is not intellectual assent. Belief in Jesus is the commitment to trust in and follow Him and not the world every day, the commitment to ask Jesus to help us believe in Him (Mark 9:24). Belief in Jesus is surrender to Him.

Respond: Alert me, Lord, to the ways in which I aduterate my faith in You. 

Help me not to play the prostitute for any earthly thing that offers to give me comfort or boost me in the eyes of myself or others, but help me to rely only on You as revealed in the Servant King Jesus. 

Help me not to follow You with any expectation other than that, in doing so, You will make me new each day, alter my desires, and give me eternity with You as an undeserved gift. 

Help me to be focused on doing Your will and giving You glory, not my own, because Your will is always in my eternal best interest. 

Help me to pray for and respect those in authority; but help me to put my trust in Jesus Christ alone. 

Help to work for the salary I’m given; but help me to not prostitute my faith or integrity for my own selfish pleasure or advancement. 

Help me to love my country; but help me to remember that You are eternally more important than my country or any country. 

Help me not to be prostitute, loving You alone as my God and Savior. 

Help me to be angry at injustice. 

Help me to speak up for the weak, the despised, the neglected, the poor, the put-upon. 

Help me to be angry at Satan and the ways in which he imprisons people. 

Help me to be bold and loving in sharing the good news of Jesus with others. In Jesus’ name. 

Today, help me to resist the temptation to desire or take anything more than I absolutely need to live; You are and You provide my daily bread. 

In Jesus’ name, by the power of the Holy Spirit, grant these things, I pray, Father. Amen

[I'm pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

God gave faith to this one-time atheist...He can do the same for you

From Sundries, over on Facebook:



Martin Luther's explanation of the Christian's confession of the third person of God, the Holy Spirit, found in The Small Catechism, is personally important to me. (The other two persons of the three-in-one God, by the way, are the Father and the Son, Jesus.)

The Holy Spirit calls the Church into being so that people can, in fellowship with others, know Christ personally, know that by faith in Him, have life with God now and for eternity, and experience walking with Christ in a relationship through which we mature increasingly in our faith and lives.

The Church is a gift of grace to sinners like me. As part of Christ's Church, my life has been enriched, my foibles challenged, my wrongs forgiven, and my character forged in ways that never would have happened outside of the Church. As time goes on, I am more and more grateful for the Church and for all the people in it.

The true Church, the fellowship of Christ-Followers, is the only thing on earth that will survive in eternity because, no matter how many ways we human beings try to mess it up or force it to agree with our sin-tinged preferences, it's still the creation of the Holy Spirit, still freed and disciplined by God's Word.

The institutional church, the church of human regulations and power plays, will, of course, die with the rest of this universe one day.

But the fellowship of surrendered souls, who trust in the Lordship of the crucified and risen Christ and in the infallibility of God's Word in Scripture, who cherish God's gift of grace in Christ...that Church will move into eternity with God, where every disciple of Jesus will be welcomed with the words we should all crave to hear more than any others: "Well done, good and faithful servant."

And even that "well done" will not be a recognition of our accomplishments, but of the saving work done by Jesus and of the faith-creation of the Holy Spirit within people willing to believe in Christ.

In fact, all we need to be part of the eternal Church is a willingness to believe in Jesus. It's like the man who asked Jesus to heal his child, if Jesus could. Jesus asked the man, basically, "What do you mean, IF? Just believe." The man honestly told Jesus, "I do believe; help my unbelief." With that expression of a willingness to believe, Jesus honored the man's prayer request. Jesus didn't chastise the man's unbelief. He took the desire to believe and, by His grace, turned it into saving faith!

But if you're willing to believe in Jesus, I warn you...watch out!

Back when I was an atheist, I began attending the Lutheran congregation where my wife was a member, just to get her off my back for sleeping in on Sunday mornings. The more time I spent there, the more curious I became about what it is that gave the people in that congregation their hope. I wanted to have more than a superficial understanding of Christian belief. So, I attended a class at the church called 'Life with God.'

Slowly, the Holy Spirit began to pry me open. Over time, the class became less like an anthropology project in which I tried to understand people from a strange culture and more of an introduction to a Person I had never previously known, not really. That person was Jesus Christ.

As I read passages from the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, found in the New Testament portion of the Bible), which tell about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, I found myself increasingly pulled to this man the Christians say is also God, Whose death on the cross paid the price for my sins and Whose resurrection opened up an eternal relationship with God for anyone honest enough to own their sins and turn from them (what the Bible calls repentance) and hungry enough for relationship with God to entrust their whole lives to Jesus (what the Bible calls "believing in Jesus").

Jesus put it all succinctly in the Bible's most famous verse, 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."

Eventually, I began to do something that I'd never before thought to be meaningful; I prayed. I didn't know exactly how to talk with God, but I told Him that, while I found it hard to comprehend, my masculine penchant for self-reliance and my intellectual desire to be in control and have all my questions answered were evaporating and Jesus, selfless, loving, courageous, powerful, humble, was pulling me into His orbit.

I told God that I was willing to believe.

That, I think, is when the Holy Spirit really rolled up His sleeves to pull me out of the death and darkness that every human being endures apart from a saving faith in Jesus.

The Word of God on the pages of Scripture came to life for me as they never had before.

And God arranged for a woman forty years my senior, Martha, a member of the Lutheran Church my wife had "guilted" me into attending, to take me under her wing and teach me what it means to follow Jesus. She taught me how to read God's Word and how to pray. She taught me about the grace that could take a sinner like me and add another descriptor to my life, saint...not meaning perfect, but saved, and, like all the other saints and sinners who make up Christ's Church, saved from sin, death, darkness, and themselves, and grateful for the forgiveness and new life God gives them even though they don't deserve any of it, seeking always to live out the love of God and love for others that God.

Through Christ's Church, the Holy Spirit helped me to believe. Now, when my fellow believers and I confess the Christian faith on Sunday mornings, as we always do, I confess my faith in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit loudly, with zest and true conviction! I'm grateful that through faith in Jesus Christ, God is saving me from sin, death, and darkness!

The Church's faith (my faith) in Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit.

And it's a work He wants to do in every human being.

You don't have to manufacture your faith. Or talk yourself into it. Or check your brain in at the church door. Just be willing to believe in Christ and the Holy Spirit will begin constructing a life of faith within you!

The apostle Paul explains it simply in the New Testament book of 1 Corhinthians: "...no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, 'Jesus be cursed,' and no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the Holy Spirit." (1 Corinthians 12:3)

No matter what your skepticism...or sins you fear are too big for God to forgive...or whatever imperfections you perceive in yourself, if you will connect with a local church where they confess and share Jesus in a loving, honest, Biblical way, the Holy Spirit can meet you and help you to live with the assurance, peace, hope, and BELIEF that belongs to all who, in the Spirit's power, can say, "Jesus is Lord! He's my Lord! I follow Him and Him alone!"

This week, for Christmas Eve and Christmas, why not worship with a church family near you? Christmas is a wonderful time for those who are willing to trust in Jesus to get to know Him and His family, the Church.

God bless!

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Faith...and Obedience

[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, yesterday.]

Luke 17:5-10
Through the years, one of the most common things I’ve heard Christians say--or caught myself thinking--is this: “I wish I had more faith.” Many times, this is the expression of a real Christian desire.

But, other times, let’s be honest, those words are an excuse.

“I would forgive X, if I had more faith.”

“I would do more for the poor, if I had more faith.”

“I would love others as God has loved me, if I had more faith.”

“I would share the good news of new life for all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus, if I had more faith.”

People who otherwise proudly assert their maturity and competence to live grown-up lives, claim that their faith is too small and too immature to do what God calls every believer in Jesus Christ to do, to live as His disciples.

The unspoken conclusion of our “I wish I had more faith” statements is often really, “And since my faith is too small, I’m going to just ignore God’s will for my life.”

One of the biggest reasons that the Church is not fulfilling the only mission Jesus Christ has given to it--to make disciples--is that we in the Church, who are quick to turn to God when we get into scrapes, in our sinful hearts, don’t want to do what our Lord has commanded us.

Like Adam and Eve, we still would rather be God than obey God.

And, we would rather play Church than be the Church.

But, unwilling to own up to these truths about ourselves, we play the humble card whenever confronted by the things that God calls us to do and blame our disobedience to God, not on our willfulness, but on our lack of faith.

The excuse of small faith is nothing new. Just before the section of Luke’s book that makes up today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus gave the twelve disciples a daunting set of instructions. You can see them in Luke 17:1-4. Jesus says: “It is impossible that no offenses should come [In other words, Christians, because we are saints and sinners, will fall into sin. It’s inevitable.], but woe to him through whom they do come! [When a supposedly more mature Christian, who should know better, is the means Satan uses to tempt a less mature Christian into sin, the mature Christian has done a terrible wrong. Jesus goes on.] It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, 'I repent,' you shall forgive him."

In these four short verses, Jesus tells those of us who follow Him that we are to avoid causing others (or ourselves) to be tempted into sin; we are to have the courage to rebuke fellow believers when they have fallen into sin and have refused to repent; and we are to declare God’s forgiveness to repentant fellow believers, even if they commit the same sin repeatedly and repent repeatedly...even when their sin has been against us.

This is tough stuff! No person in their own power can possibly fulfill these commands of Jesus.

That’s why the reaction of the apostles--the twelve disciples who Jesus was preparing to take leadership of the Church in the first years after His death, resurrection, and ascension--is predictable. Look at verse 5 of our Gospel lesson: “And the apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith.’"

“How on earth are we going to manage to do those things?” the disciples seem to be asking Jesus. “We’re going to need a lot bigger faith than what we’ve got right now.” Whether the disciples are giving humble expression to a real desire for greater faith or making an excuse for disobedience to Jesus' hard commands, we don't know.

Whatever the case,  Jesus will have none of their protests. Look at what He says in verse 6. “So the Lord said, ‘If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, “Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,” and it would obey you.’”

The problem with the apostles isn’t that their faith is too small. A mustard seed is notoriously tiny. Yet, Jesus says that even faith the size of a mustard seed has the power to move a circumstance or a problem which, by comparison to the seed, is the size of a mulberry tree.

As I’ve said before, “A little faith in a big God is all we need.”

A little faith in the God Who created the universe, Who took on human flesh, bore our sins on the cross, and rose from the dead, Who promises His presence with us always and promises that all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus, God the Son, will have eternal life with God, is all we need to know our sins are forgiven, to deal with the tough realities of this life, to obey God’s will for our lives, to have the strength to resist temptation, to have the character to confess our sin to God.

Anyone who can say truthfully that they believe Jesus Christ is Lord and that He has conquered sin and death, even if their rational mind may sometimes doubt, has faith.

It may be a small faith, like the faith of the man who implored Jesus to cast demons from his son and confessed to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief.” But it’s faith! And faith does things!

Our faith may be as small as that of Naaman, the Syrian commander whose true story is told in 2 Kings, chapter 5, in the Old Testament. Naaman had been stricken with leprosy. A Hebrew slave girl told him that the prophet Elisha, in Israel, could speak with God and remove Naaman’s leprosy. When Naaman, a man accustomed to commanding armies and having people defer to him, wasn’t even met by Elisha, but by Elisha’s servant, with a message from Elisha that he should dip himself seven times in the insignificant Jordan River to be healed by God, Naaman was skeptical, to say the least. His faith in Israel’s God was tiny. But desperate, armed with only his tiny faith, Naaman obeyed and he was healed. Faith does things!

The problem for the apostles in facing Jesus’ call to keep from causing others to sin, to correct fellow believers when they fell into sin, to forgive the repentant, or any of the other things Jesus was preparing them to do as His followers, wasn’t the size of their faith. It wasn't the magnitude of their trust in the God we know in Jesus Christ that was the disciples' problem. Their problem was their unwillingness to obey the Lord in Whom they claimed to believe.

The problem for us in doing the things our Lord calls us to do--love God completely, love neighbors as we love ourselves, spread the good news about Jesus, feed the hungry, help the poor, work for justice in our world, forgive as we’ve been forgiven, obey the Ten Commandments, live under the Lordship of Jesus and the authority of God’s Word in the Bible--is not the size of our faith, but our inborn, sinful unwillingness to obey the Lord in Whom we claim to believe.

Jesus hammers this point home in verses 7 to 9 of our Gospel lesson. He says: “‘And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, “Come at once and sit down to eat”?  But will he not rather say to him, “Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink”? Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not.’”

Faith, real faith, big or small, comes down to this: a willingness to obey the call of the God Who was willing to give His all, even His life on the cross, for us.

When God’s Spirit convicts of sin, faith obediently repents and prays for the power of the Holy Spirit to help us from committing the same sins again.

When God’s Word commands us to love God, love neighbor, make disciples, we seek God’s help to obey.

Maybe you and I will never have the faith of a Mother Teresa who, despite her doubts, went to extraordinary lengths and made extraordinary sacrifices to obey the command Jesus issues to every disciple to be His ambassadors in this world. But God will never hold us accountable for the faith we lack. God only expects us to exercise the faith we have.

He calls each of us to manifest His grace in our lives by obeying His call to us.

DO NOT MISUNDERSTAND: We are saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. We cannot be saved by our works. But the one who is grateful for God’s eternal salvation in Christ will be ready to obey God’s call. Jesus’ earthly brother, James, writes, “Faith without works is dead.”

In verse 10 of our lesson, Jesus says that, like the servants in a first-century Judean household, “...when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.'"

People of faith, big or small, don’t obey Christ’s commands, to get credit or bragging rights.

The apostle Paul writes in Romans: “Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded...For we hold that one is justified [made right with God] by faith apart from works of the law.”

The one with faith in Christ seeks to obey Christ even if their faith is small. And the one with faith in Christ seeks to obey Christ because it’s only right for a servant of the God Who died and rose to give forgiveness and new life to undeserving sinners, to obey His call.

A few months ago, I publicly thanked a member of this congregation for doing a ministry others might not have so willingly done in service to Christ and His Church. Later, that person approached me and said: “Don’t ever thank me like that again. I don’t need thanked.” This person is a servant who, because of faith in Christ, seeks to obey Christ’s call, not to be noticed, not to get brownie points with God.

The next time you’re confronted with God’s call to do something that may seem beyond your ability to perform or beyond what others might expect of you, don’t ask for more faith. Ask only that God will help you to obey Him and His will. Simple obedience is what the grateful follower of Jesus owes to Him, not as a means of securing a place in His kingdom, but as a means of thanking Him that by His shed blood and self-sacrificed body on the cross, Jesus Christ has already won a place for them in His kingdom.

Here’s what I believe: God gives us precisely the faith we need to do anything He calls us to do. And so, what every Christian needs more than increased faith is increased obedience to God, His will, and His commands. The reason for this is simple: Our faith increases every time we dare to ignore our own desires and impulses or the temptations of the world or of Satan, and instead obey God, surrendering our lives and wills to Jesus Christ alone.

Obedience, not as an obligation, but as a grateful response to God’s amazing grace, is the life to which you and I are called. This side of our own resurrections, we will never obey God perfectly. But it is only the person who seeks to live obediently to the Savior Jesus who lives their faith.

May our prayer always be not just, "Lord, increase our faith." But, "Lord, increase our obedience.” Amen

Hope for the Living

[This was shared during the funeral for Dale, a member of the congregation I serve as pastor, earlier today.]

Psalm 23
Romans 8:31-39
John 11:17-27

Over the past three-and-a-half years, as his pastor, I’ve gotten to know Dale a bit. Because Dale, who was never a talkative man from what I have gleaned, was increasingly silenced by illness in this period, some of what I’ve learned about him has come from others.

One day, for example, while visiting Dee at her house, she showed me a beautiful piece of furniture that Dale made for her dining room. He was a tremendous carpenter!

But his talents weren’t confined to carpentry, of course. Luke used to tell me about how knowledgeable Dale was when it came to anything mechanical or, as Luke would put it, “handy.” (High praise from Luke!)

From everyone—from Dale himself—I also learned how much Dale loved the outdoors. He loved to boat and hike. Were it up to him, I think, Dale really would have kept a “home, home on the range.” (A song he loved to sing.)

In later years, unable to hike or travel, he enjoyed, when the weather allowed, sitting on the deck amid the trees and the chatter of the birds. (I know he appreciated the gift of the “birdie cam” he recently received.)

Dale’s love of nature was also reflected in the home he built on that hill near Lake Logan back in the 1970s. This dwelling did not always meet with Elaine’s approval. As some of you will remember, the first time I visited Dale and Elaine, she commented on their house, “Dale says it’s secluded; I say it’s isolated.”

From that, I learned something else about Dale (and Elaine): whatever differences in their personalities, these two who grew up as classmates in a rural Michigan one-room schoolhouse, were a team. Dale smiled when Elaine said things like that to me. It was the smile of recognition of a “discussion” they had rehearsed countless times before.

Sometimes, Dale’s smiles would turn into laughter that I loved to hear: the breathy, hearty laugh of someone truly tickled.

I came to know Dale also as a man of great intelligence.

And I also experienced Dale as a caring person. When someone was in the hospital, he wanted to know how she or he was doing. He relished telling me how things were going with Sandy’s and Perry’s lives and work and with his grandchildren. He enjoyed it when neighbor Butch brought his own granddaughter Isabelle, a young ball of energy, along for visits. After I had a heart attack last summer, I mentioned that the church council was after me to take it easier; Dale fixed me with a stare and asked bluntly, “Are you doing it?”

On top of all this, Dale was a man of quiet faith. He was always anxious to receive Holy Communion during our visits. Even when it had become a struggle for him to move his hand to his lips, he determinedly ate the bread and drank the wine that are Christ’s body and blood. And no one ever more sincerely thanked me for bringing the Sacrament to him.

Dale was truly grateful for the grace and love of God, whether he saw it in the meticulously engineered beauty of the created world or in the gift of Jesus on a cross, Whose death and resurrection brings eternal life to all who turn from sin and believe in Him.

And it is to this I want to point all of you who grieve Dale’s passing today. At one level, Dale’s death brings a story to a close. With that, there will be, understandably, some sense of relief. Dale had suffered from multiple maladies over an extended period of time. His suffering is ended. But his death is a sad ending for all of you, too: A father, a grandfather, a friend, a strong presence, is gone.

But you can take heart. You can have hope. Dale’s passing is also a beginning. The Gospel lesson from John which I read a few moments ago tells the story of what happened one day when Jesus went to Bethany, the hometown of friends: two sisters and a brother named Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.

The sisters and the whole town are grieving when Jesus arrives. Lazarus was dead. At first, Martha seems to lash out at Jesus. "Lord,” she says, “if You had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.”

But to Martha in her grief and her confusion, Jesus says, “Your brother will rise again” and “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.” He then asks Martha to trust those assertions. Jesus asks her to believe them, to believe in Him.

Jesus asks the same thing of you this morning. You see, if the promise that Jesus makes to share His Easter victory over sin and death isn’t true today, it isn’t true. It is precisely for moments like these that Jesus makes His promise to be the resurrection and the life!

And our faith in Jesus’ resurrection promise isn’t just a hope whispered against the grim realities of life. After telling Martha that all who believe in Him will live with God forever, Jesus gave a sign of His capacity to make good on His promises. He stood at the place where Lazarus' body had been placed some four days before and commanded his friend’s dead bones to come back to life on this side of eternity. The voice of Jesus, God in the flesh, spoke with the same voice as the One Who called the heavens and the earth to life in the first place. In response to the command from that voice, Lazarus stepped out of his tomb, back into the embrace of his family.

Of course, Jesus would, shortly after the events at Bethany, give an even more emphatic sign of His authority over life and death and sin. After bearing the weight of all the sin of human history—including your sin and my sin—on the cross, though Himself sinlessness, Jesus rose to life again. The Bible says of the crucified and risen Jesus: “God raised Him up, having freed Him from death, because it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.”

Fortunately, God recognizes how hard it is for us to believe such good news, especially on days like these. That’s why He sends the Holy Spirit to any of us who want to believe. If we will pray to the God the Father in the Name of Jesus, the Holy Spirit will help us to believe in the same Lord so welcomed by Dale every time he gratefully received the Lord’s Supper and listened to God's Word...the same Lord he so reverenced every time he joined the Saint Matthew family for worship over the radio on Sunday mornings.

In the days and years ahead, you will miss Dale, just as you have missed Elaine. Grief is natural and understandable when the love runs deep and the memories are piled high.

But those who follow the risen Jesus don’t grieve like others do. We have hope. We belong to a Savior Who rose on Easter.

Because of Jesus, Dale will rise too. So will all who believe in Jesus.

May God fill you with this hope and the peace that comes from it in the days ahead…and through all the days of your lives. Amen

In Christ, We Can Always Be Thankful!

[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

2 Timothy 2:8-15
This past week, my wife, Ann learned, that a good friend of hers passed away suddenly. Cindy and Ann were part of a group of five women who worked together at an elementary school in our former community. Even after one friend, Nancy, retired, Cindy moved, and later, Ann moved, the five still got together regularly for dinner, conversation, and lots of laughter.

We went to the funeral visitation on Friday. Ann and another member of the group, Janie, approached Cindy’s family—her mother, her sons and her son's wives, her in-laws, and finally, Cindy’s husband. They all knew about the group of five which was symbolized by a flower arrangement at the funeral home: four red roses and a single white one in the middle. Cindy’s husband, Tom, grabbed hold of Ann and Janie, and they wept together. Tom acknowledged that he’d wished he could have had Cindy with him longer here. But then he said, “She’s with Jesus now and she has no more pain.” Then he asked Janie and Ann individually, “You do know that, don’t you?”

Christians grieve. But they also understand something that the apostle Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14. You can find the passage on page 684 of the pew Bibles. Please read it along with me silently:

But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep [Paul is talking about those Christians who have died], lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.

For the person with faith in Jesus Christ, it’s possible to honestly mourn, yet still be grateful to God for all of God’s blessings, especially for the hope of life beyond death. That’s why Paul says this just a few verses later, in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18:

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

When our trust is in Jesus Christ, we always have reason to be thankful.

With that in mind, please pull out the Celebrate inserts for today and look at our second lesson, 2 Timothy 2:8-14.

As we pointed out last Sunday, the book from which the lesson comes is a letter written by the apostle Paul, who was imprisoned, to a young pastor named Timothy. Paul was imprisoned for confessing that Jesus is the King of kings and the only God of the universe. Paul starts out with these words:

Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel, for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.

We may be chained by many things in life—scorned for trusting in Jesus Christ above all things, tortured by disease, spurned or bullied by classmates, hounded by debt, hurt as a consequence of past decisions we’ve made, subjected to economic reversals, dogged by feelings of inferiority, encumbered by the reality of our own sins.

But no matter what we’re dealing with, God’s Word—the Word that reveals God’s will for human beings and the Word about Jesus, the Word made flesh, Who died and rose so that all who trust in Him will live with God forever—that Word of God has never been chained!

In Isaiah 55, God tells the people of Israel (and us):

…as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth…so shall My Word that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. 

God’s Word is perfect and powerful and cannot be constrained, held down, or limited by anybody or anything.

One of my favorite incidents in the Bible happens when the Israelites, God’s people, are in the wilderness between Egypt and the land God promised them. The people are whining about not having any meat to eat. Moses goes to God and asks for meat. God says that He’ll give this whiny bunch so much meat that they’ll get sick of the stuff. But Moses is skeptical. God angrily asks Moses, “Is the Lord’s power limited? Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.” We can be thankful that God’s Word is unchained, bringing us blessings even when our faith is weak.

Our second lesson continues with a series of sayings that were apparently well known to, maybe even sung by, the early Church. Let’s quickly look at each phrase, starting at verse 11.

“If we have died with him, we will also live with him.” The Word of God calls for all of us to die—that is, to allow the life of sin into which we are born to no longer be in control of us. We let that old life die so that Christ can give us new lives that begin in this world and will be perfected in eternity. This is an ongoing process that begins when we are baptized. Each day, the Christian is called to submit the old self living inside of us to God in daily repentance and renewal, so that each day the new self—the person Jesus died and rose to make us—can rise to a life made ever new by God’s love and power. This is another reason to thank God every day.

The first part of verse 12 says, “If we endure, we will also reign with him…” Jesus has promised that His followers will reign with Him over eternity. But only if we endure: only if we keep trusting when the world has turned away from Christ; only if we keep repenting when we fall into sin; only if we keep trusting that Jesus’ death on the cross was even for us. Eternity belongs to those who keep fighting the good fight of faith, who keep trusting in Jesus. This is another reason to thank God.

The second part of verse 12 says, “If we deny him, he will also deny us.” Since Jesus is God, He could easily force us to trust in Him and follow Him, making us little machines that have no choice in the matter. But as the only of God’s creatures made in God’s image, we are the only beings in creation who have the right to tell God, “No, we would rather be our own gods, thank you very much.” God gives us this freedom because it’s only when we have the freedom to say no to His love that our saying the yes of faith has any meaning. But Jesus has issued a solemn warning, “I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God and whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God.” We can also thank God that, in spite of our sins and imperfections, Jesus gives us access to the blessings God wants to give to everyone, but forces on no one.

In verse 13, Paul says, “If we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.” To me, this is the thing for which you and I can be most thankful. Faith—trust—in the God we cannot see does not come naturally to us. Our old selves don’t die without a fight. Even people who believe in Jesus deeply sometimes find themselves believing in other things more than they believe in Jesus—whether it’s in their common sense, their impulse to go along to get along, their desire for security, the push of their emotions, the pull of their biology, the influence of friends and culture. God understands. God is faithful even when we are faithless. God is faithful even when our doubts are shouts and our faith in Christ is a mere whisper in our hearts.

When faith becomes too hard, some people give up. Behind one of the 6000+ doors on which I knocked back when we were getting my former church started, was a man who had stopped attending worship anywhere, although he had grown up in a church. I asked him why that was. “I love the Lord,” he told me. “But right now, other things are more important to me.” This man was consciously extinguishing his own weakened faith by cutting himself off from the only fellowship created by Jesus Christ to foster and sustain a relationship with Him.

A better model for us is the man who asked Jesus to heal his demon-possessed boy. Jesus told him that all things can be done for the one who believes. “I believe,” the desperate father replied, “help my unbelief.” Jesus answered the man’s prayers because God is faithful even when our faith is running on empty. We can thank God for that, too!

Years ago, I read the story of a missionary couple who had retired. They headed home to the States from Africa on a big passenger liner. Also onboard was a famous military hero. Through the whole trip, the missionary husband felt a little sorry for himself. As they boarded the ship, the military hero received accolades, while the missionary couple was ignored. That continued through the whole trip. Every night, there were banquets and toasts for the military hero; but the missionary couple who had given most of their lives in service to Christ and to the people of a small African village were ignored. The missionary husband consoled himself with the thought that when they arrived home, they would be appreciated for their faithfulness to Christ.

But when they docked in New York Harbor, there were a boisterous welcome and a key to the city for the military hero. No one even met the missionary couple. The man was discouraged. But his wife, knowing what was going on in her husband’s mind, looked at him and reminded him, “It’s okay, sweetheart; we’re not home yet.”

Life can be tough. It can be even tougher for those with faith in Christ. The devil and much of the world target the faithful for temptations, tests, and unkindness. The tragedies of life can seem to put everything we believe about the goodness and power of God under suspicion. But, we’re not home yet; heaven is our real home.

Until we reach that place, we who follow Christ can be thankful for so many things:

• forgiven sin, 
• the promise of eternity, 
• the rewards God gives to enduring faith, 
• the willingness of Christ to claim us in spite of our imperfections, and 
• the character of God Who will always be faithful to us, even when we are faithless. 

We can be thankful that God’s Word which announces and creates these blessings can never be chained. God is good and whether we live or we die, we can always be thankful for that!

"Becoming God's Children"

One of the resources I use for my daily devotions is Faith Alone: A Daily Devotional. It's made up of excerpts from the writing, sermons, and table talk on Martin Luther. The entry for yesterday, September 19, was a gem. Here it is, in its entirety:

He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

John 1:11-12

To everyone who believes in Jesus Christ, God offers the privilege of becoming his children. Yet this greatest of all offers is despised, ridiculed, and laughed at by the blind and condemned people of this world. In addition, God's offer is abused and even regarded as blasphemy. Although those who confess his name and trust his words are children of God, they're executed as though they were children of the devil, blasphemers, and revolutionaries. The religious leaders did the same to Christ, God's only Son. They accused him of stirring up trouble among the people, of keeping the people from paying taxes to the emperor (Luke 23:2), and of claiming to be the Son of God (John 19:7).

Sometimes the devil attacks devout Christians so fiercely with his flaming arrows (Ephesians 6:16) that they forget about the endless glory they have as God's children. They begin thinking the opposite and wonder if God has forgotten about them, abandoned them, and thrown them so far away that he can't see them anymore.

Our faith is still very weak and cold. If our faith were as strong and steady as it should be, we would practically die from sheer joy. But we praise God because we know that even those who have only a little faith are also children of God. That's why Christ said, "Do not be afraid, little flock" (Luke 12:32). So we always need to pray with the apostles, "Increase our faith!" (Luke 17:5), and pray with the man in the book of Mark who cried out, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24).

Needed: Holy Discontent and a Dirty Christian Word

Revival is a term that some, both inside and outside the Church, may see as sort of a Christian "dirty word."

But revival is a Biblical concept that refers to what happens to individuals, communities, churches, or nations when they turn to Jesus Christ for forgiveness and new life.

Revival, new life with God, is something that can happen to people who have long warmed church pews, but have lost sight of Jesus, once their "first love."

Revival also happens to those who have never known or trusted in Christ, who come to worship and trust Him as their only God and Savior.

The word revival literally means, of course, to be made alive again. Revival is what happened to the Prodigal Son in Jesus' famous parable. The younger son in Jesus' story, you'll remember, took the inheritance the father had always planned on giving to him and decided to misuse his freedom as license for sin. Things didn't go well. Mindful that life with his father--representative of God--had given him both the freedom and the power to be his best self, the son set out for home, his only goal to ask for his father's forgiveness and seek employment with him as a hired-hand. He felt worthy of nothing more than this.

But when the father sees his son, he welcomes him happily and throws a party for him. The father's other son--representative for us today of good religious pew-warmers whose relationship with God is lukewarm, at best--becomes angry with his father for forgiving the younger son. He even refuses to join the welcome home party for the younger son. The father begs him to join in, explaining, "...we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found."

Jesus says that "there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents," that is,  one person who turns from sin and to the God made known in Jesus. When that one person repents and trusts in Christ as their God and Savior, that one person is revived--made alive again.

Elsewhere, the New Testament says that "...if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17)

General revival, such as was experienced in the United States during the Great Awakenings in the 18th and 19th centuries, begins with individuals and churches confessing their sins in more than pro forma ways to God--and in some cases, to each other. Confession of this kind authentically owns its need of the power for living free from the sin and the death we can't get free of on our own. Revived people relish the Biblical promise: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus our Lord!" (Romans 8:1).

Humility and honesty before God, a willingness to trust God more than we trust the sins we love to commit, can ignite a contagious general revival in which hundreds and thousands of people turn in faith to Christ and find their lives, their churches' lives, and the lives of those they touch in the community and world with the Good News of new life that comes only through faith in Christ.

This is how revival has always come. In Old Testament times, God told Solomon, king of God's people, Israel, "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14).

Our land--where only 17% of those identifying themselves as Christians bother to worship on any given week--and our whole world, need the healing, the revival, that Christ can bring.

This can happen. Someone once said that if you want to know how revival begins, get down on your knees, draw a circle around where you're kneeling, then confess your sins and ask God to help you trust in Christ alone. God will then begin revival within that circle.

In a real sense, revival begins when we're dissatisfied with the way things are. I call this holy discontent.

When we have holy discontent, we're not pleased by our own lack of love for God and others and we long to live differently. We want to be more like that person we're always trying to prove we are to others. When we have holy discontent, we hunger for--we are desperate for--God. When we have holy discontent, we will be incapable of trusting God, but we want to. We're like the man who said to Jesus, "I believe; help my unbelief." And just as Jesus answered that man's prayers, in spite of his feeble, weak faith, Jesus will answer the prayers of all who are willing to trust in Him, even if their trust is weak or next-to-nonexistent.

God doesn't sit in heaven waiting for us to become good enough before He hears our prayers. "The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love," the Bible tells us repeatedly. God knows the intentions of our hearts and understands how hard it is for us to trust in Him. But His promise, again found in several Biblical passages, is that all who call on His Name will be saved. All of this is why David wrote back in Old Testament times: "As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust." God will never turn a deaf ear to anyone who genuinely wants to want Him, who genuinely wants to trust, wants to turn from sin. Blessedly, if we give God an inch, God will take a mile. That's a great thought to my mind!

Listen: Holy discontent comes from God.

It's caused by the holes in our souls that can only be filled by Jesus Christ.

It's foisted on you by the Holy Spirit calling you to the daily habit of personal repentance and renewal.

When we experience holy discontent, a good thing to do is to go through the Ten Commandments and Martin Luther's explanation of them (or any other great Christian teacher's explanations of the Commandments), to hit our knees, to repent for our violations of each commandment, and to experience the forgiveness that can come to those who pray in Jesus' Name.

In other words, revival begins when we honestly and forthrightly heed Jesus' call to repent and believe in the good news that God so loved the world that all who entrust themselves--including their sins--to Him will not be separated from God for eternity, but have everlasting life.

The joy that comes to people who are reconciled with God through Christ causes them to want to share that revival that comes from God with others. They're like Peter and John, early followers of Jesus who were ordered by religious authorities to stop telling others about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection and the good news of new life given by all who turn to Christ. In the face of the threats, they said, “Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; ²⁰for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20).

Having personally experienced the forgiveness and new life they knew that the crucified and risen Jesus wanted to give to all people, Peter and John felt an overpowering need to share Christ with others. "This Jesus," they told the religious leaders who threatened them, "is 'the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.' There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:11-12).

Once revival starts to happen inside of you, it's bound to show up outside of you, and nothing and no one can stop it...not even you yourself. "If you're happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it..." as the Sunday School song puts it.

But it's this precise insight that ought to rouse our holy discontent...and our concern. As Tom Phillips writes in his 1995 book, Revival Signs: Join the Spiritual Awakening:

People today want to know about Christ more than Christians want to tell them about Him.

This sad state of affairs is even worse today than it was when Phillips wrote those words fifteen years ago.

A Florida pastor gains national prominence not because he and his flock are sharing the good news of Jesus, or because they are repenting and experiencing the revival the Holy Spirit sends to people who humble themselves and repent in Jesus' Name. Their prominence comes from touting a plan to burn the Koran, an act irrelevant to their mission as a church and hardly expressive of the gentleness and reverence with which we Christians are told to share our faith. Meanwhile, the world is desperate for the revival only Jesus can bring!

A denomination, which has shrunk by over a million members and 1000 congregations in the past twenty years, my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), becomes more involved with lobbying the government in Washington and the acceptance of heresies designed to court the favor of the world while ignoring the will of God, than it is with sharing Jesus. (Of course, it can't credibly share Jesus anyway, so long as it remains rebellious against Jesus and against God's revealed will in God's Word.) Meanwhile, the world remains desperate for the revival only Jesus can bring!
 
But we shouldn't give in to hopelessness! There's no good reason to do so. After all, in Christ, we know that God is bigger than all that daunts us or threatens to rob us of the joy Christ came to give to us. We need to pay attention to our discontent and bring it to God.

Discontent among Christians can lead us to repentance and to renewal, which in turn can lead us to share our faith in Christ with others. Jesus' plan all along has been to use people desperate for Him and so desperate in their love for others that they will obey His great commission--to make disciples of all nations, to lovingly woo others into a relationship with Christ.

The person who lets God into their lives through worship and fellowship with Christ's Church, personal confession, regular Bible reading, grateful reception of Holy Communion--Christ's body and blood--each time it's offered, and intercessory prayer for others, can experience revival.

It will happen first in themselves.

And then, through the Holy Spirit, they'll follow Scripture's direction to "always be prepared to make [a defense of their faith in Christ] to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you." And they will be able to do it "with gentleness and reverence" (1 Peter 3:15-16).

In his phenomenal little book, The Church God Blesses, Pastor Jim Cymbala writes:

Every revival in church history has been started by pastors and believers who became deeply dissatisfied with the moral and spiritual climate around them. They knew from Scripture that God has something better for his people. All the great missionary movements have been spawned by men and women who became desperate to see God's kingdom extended to new regions and to those who had not yet heard about Jesus. In fact, every time people really pray, they are believing that God by his divine power can change what is into something better.

Do you feel discontent with yourself, your family, your church, your community, our world?

Turn to God. Trust in the God Who makes this promise to those who want Him:

Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; ⁷let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. ⁸For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. ⁹For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. ¹⁰For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, ¹¹so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:6-10)

• Confess. 
•  Trust. 
•  Pray. 
•  Get to know God better through God's Word, the Bible. 
•  Share the good news of new life through Jesus. 

 Revival can happen. Every Christian should want it to happen.

Are you content with the way things are or do you long for the better--and everlasting life--God wants to bring to all people? God can answer the prayer that many of us sing on Pentecost Sunday, when we ask the life-giving breath of God to make life new, to revive us, through Jesus Christ:

Spirit, Spirit of gentleness
Blow thro' the wilderness
calling and free.
Spirit, Spirit of restlessness
stir me from placidness
Wind, wind on the sea

We dare not be placid! There's a dying world that needs new life. God is looking for people who will daily surrender to Christ and ask God for nothing more than the privilege of sharing the new life that comes from Christ with others.

Revival can start within us and take in all the world. May our prayerful surrender to Jesus Christ be the start of a new great awakening!