Meeting God in the Fine Silence

[Below you'll find live stream video of both of today's worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, along with the prepared message for the day. But note that when I actually preach, there were a few additions.]





1 Kings 19:9b-21

Our text today is the first lesson, 1 Kings 19:9b-21. In looking at it, we must begin with two fundamental facts.

The first is this: Life is hard. Even God the Son, Jesus, experienced this when He came into this world and we are no more exempt than Him. 

The second fact is this: God is still in charge, still at work to put the world right, and, still present among us, here, in the midst of the challenges, burdens, suffering, contention, and grief. The risen Jesus promises those who trust in Him, “...surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

Most of the world finds this second fact hard to believe. Most people’s expectation is that if God is for real and really working, everything should be easy, we should get what we want. Even those who confess faith in Jesus as God the Son are tempted to think that their faith in Jesus entitles them to a place on Easy Street. The God we know in Jesus doesn’t promise that the pain and death of living in a fallen and condemned world will be erased when we follow Him. He promises to give us strength and peace in the midst of this world and to give us everlasting life with God in a new world at the end of this one. He promises us the forgiveness of sins we don’t want to acknowledge. He gives reconciliation with a God we may not really be sure we want to be around, but would rather keep at arm’s length. We can be like Moses, who wanted to avoid and evade God (Exodus 3:1-4:14). Or like the ancient Israelites who told Moses, “...do not have God speak to us or we will die.” (Exodus 20:19). Or like Simon Peter, who told Jesus, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8)

The human attempt to evade and avoid God or to make Him over in a way more acceptable to us is nothing new. After the reign of ancient Israel’s third king, Solomon, God’s people split themselves into two nations. The southern kingdom was Judah, with its capital and worship life centered in Jerusalem. The northern kingdom, called Israel, had its capital and worship life centered in Samaria. As long as these two kingdoms existed, whatever their economic or military status, they mostly limped along spiritually, sometimes trusting in God but mostly not. They chased after other gods that promised them what they wanted. Sometimes, they tried combining the worship of Yahweh with worshiping various idols. (Exactly what we see happening in the world and in the Church today.)

From 874 to 853 BC, a king named Ahab ruled in Israel. Ahab was married to a Phoenician princess named Jezebel. Jezebel introduced the worship of a fertility god called Baal among God’s people. Ahab built a temple to Baal in Israel. The Baal cult promised fertile soil, high crop yields, success. God, Yahweh, seemed helpless as His people abandoned Him. Finally, God sent the prophet Elijah to Ahab to announce that because of the faithlessness of  king and people, there would be a drought in Israel. God was calling His people to turn back to Him.

The drought lasted three-and-a-half years, until a gathering at a place called Mount Carmel. There, 450 prophets of Baal asked their idol to rain fire down from heaven. Elijah built a stone altar to God, poured gallons of water on and around it, burnt offerings to God, and prayed. God sent fire down that consumed the altar, the offerings, the wood, and the stone, reducing it to dust. The people saw, for a while anyway, that the God they had betrayed was in control of the world, not Baal. They killed the false prophets. And soon, Elijah announced that God would soon send rain.

This was a victory for God. God had used Elijah to bring it. Queen Jezebel now vowed to kill Elijah. Elijah ran away, to a place called Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai, the place where God had given Moses the Ten Commandments. Elijah hid in a cave. Why did Elijah run and hide? Maybe he thought that once God called His people away from Baal worship and back to Himself, his life would get back to “normal.” But after doing the will of God, he was proclaimed an enemy of the state. Whatever his reasoning, Elijah had had enough. He didn’t want to do the will of God or speak God’s Word any longer. He seems to have hidden from not just Jezebel, but also from God.

God finds Elijah though. ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?” God asks (1 Kings 19:9) You can almost hear the self-righteousness and self-pity as Elijah says: “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” (1 Kings 9:10) This last claim isn’t true! Elijah witnessed how many in Israel had just turned back to God. Elijah’s self-righteousness had isolated him not just from others, but from God. That can happen to us too.

But God doesn’t give up on sinners, not even those in Christ’s Church! He doesn’t give up on you. God tells Elijah to step outside the cave and wait for Him to pass by. Here, our lesson says: “Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.” (1 Kings 19:11-13)

When God does miracles in our lives–hears our prayers, brings healing, restores relationships, those are loving acts of a sovereign God that point us to rely on Him for life and salvation. But we can become miracle addicts. “What have you done for me lately, God? What big thing are you going to do next? Why isn’t my life in this world perfect yet?” This appears to have been Elijah’s attitude after the contest at Mount Carmel. Nine hundred years after the events in our first lesson, after Jesus fed 5000 on a few pieces of bread and fish, a crowd chased after Him. “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me,” Jesus told the crowd, “not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.” (John 6:26)

Today, if our faith in God depends on anything other than what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ, we’re in trouble. We’re running away from God. We’re putting our faith in signs rather than in God. Elijah looked for God in gale force winds, an earthquake, in fire. But God came to Him “in a gentle whisper,” literally, “a sound of fine silence” in the original Hebrew. Jesus sometimes performs notable miracles today. We give Him thanks and praise when He does. But we can most reliably find the Lord Who, in His death and resurrection, has finished everything needed to save us from sin, death, and darkness and to give us life with God that never ends not in miraculous signs or in showy religious acts. We find Him most certainly in the fine silence of His Gospel Word, the baptismal font, and the bread and the wine of Holy Communion. By these understated means, we receive greater gifts than healing or ease. After all, every healed person eventually dies and every person allowed to live with ease in this world goes to the grave. Instead, by the means of Word and Sacrament by which the Holy Spirit gives us the gift of faith in Jesus, we receive God’s forgiveness and everlasting life. By these simple means, we are assured that God loves us, that God is with us, and that we belong to Him for all eternity. Quite simply, in the Gospel Word about Jesus and in Baptism and Communion, we receive God. And for those of us so prone by sin to huddle in our caves of self-righteousness and self-justification, to be able to receive God and the everlasting life that God alone can give us through Christ in these quiet ways, is a more stupendous blessing than any victory we may experience in this life! What we learn is what God showed Elijah outside that cave on Mount Horeb, that the God we meet in Jesus Christ is all we really need. Amen

 

Where temptation comes from

These are some recent reflections on my quiet time with God. For details on what's involved in quiet time, see here.

Look: “...each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed” (James 1:14).

Just before this, James says that we shouldn’t blame God when we’re tempted by sin. God isn’t in the tempting business.

I know that there have been times when I’ve blamed God for the sins that tempt me. Or I blame him for the sins to which I’ve caved. Whether I blame God overtly or subliminally, it’s all the same: Somehow, God is at fault for my feeling tempted. At other times, I may doubt God’s sovereignty. But I can be very devout in upholding the notion of God in being in control when temptations come or when I sin. “If God hadn’t allowed such and such to happen…” “If God hadn’t brought so and so into my life…” “If God hadn’t allowed such and such a thought to come into my brain…”

These thoughts echo the words of Adam and Eve after God confronted them with their sin. “The woman you [God] put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it,” Adam says (Genesis 3:12). “The serpent deceived me, and I ate,” Eve says (Genesis 3:13). Somehow, we want to blame God or the circumstances of our lives for our sin. I do, for sure.

But the real reason I find temptation so enticing isn’t with God. Adam was with Eve when they both were being dogged by temptation (Genesis 3:6). And this is what tempted them: “...the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom” (Genesis 3:6).

As James puts it, they were “dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.”

Listen: My temptations, sins, and inclinations to sin don’t come from You, Lord! I can’t blame You for them. You don’t create our temptations (James 1:13). They are entirely inside jobs, the result slowly of those particular aspects of my personality and character that most entice me.

But I’ve recently been memorizing this promise from Your Word:

“No sin has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. But God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out, so that you can endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

We can only be tempted when we allow our desires to be controlled by our sinful impulses. And the devil, the sinful world, and our sinful selves are very good at tempting us to make use of good things or even good people in the wrong ways, at the wrong times, for the wrong reasons. 

Respond: God, Your Word says, “Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). Help me to delight in You and so, desire what You want for me, which is always for my eternal good. When I am tempted, as I will be, since even Jesus was tempted and it’s an inevitable part of human life, help me to turn to You, trusting that You will provide a way out, allowing me to endure for the greater joy of life with You (Matthew 24:13). In Jesus’ name.

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

Christ: The King We Need

Luke 23:27-43
We Americans evidently can’t get enough of royalty. The British royals--the queen, William and Kate and their kids, Harry, Prince Charles and wife Camilla--can be seen on magazine covers whenever you’re checking out at the grocery story, for example. The Crown is the latest Netflix sensation. Recent popular movies include The Queen and The King’s Speech. We seem to love royalty, even though the royals are little more than government-subsidized celebrities, walking photo-ops who, like Kim Kardashian, are only famous for being famous.

We even apply our love for royalty to our politics. Every four years, we elect presidents who, voters hope, will act like imperious kings or queens, waving their magic wands and veto pens to enact everything we want from them. We want kings and queens...as long as they give us exactly what we want and tell us exactly what we want to hear.

And if a king isn’t willing to be that sort of king, choosing instead to provide people with what they need rather than what they want, we human beings can be brutal to kings who disappoint us.

That, friends, is why we killed the King of kings, God in human flesh, Jesus.

In Jesus’ dying, portrayed in today’s Gospel lesson, we see that while Jesus isn’t the the king the human race wants, He is precisely the King we need.

He is our daily bread, our living water, the way, the truth, and the life, all that we need.

Jesus didn’t come into the world to make promises like those of Pedro when he ran for class president in Napoleon Dynamite.




Jesus instead, came to save us from ourselves. He came to give forgiveness and new life and a reason for living to those daring enough to confess their sin and their need of a Savior.

Our Gospel lesson for this Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the Church Year, finds Jesus processing on the first Good Friday to the only throne this world has yet offered Him: the cross. Yet even there on the cross, the eyes of faith see that Christ is our King!

Look at our lesson, Luke 23:27-43, please. “A large number of people followed [Jesus as He bore His cross to the place of crucifixion], including women who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then [quoting prophecy from Hosea 10:8, Jesus said:] ‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!”and to the hills, “Cover us!’”

“Look,” Jesus is saying, “My cross is all part of the plan. I came into the world to go to the cross, to erase the power of sin and death over those who repent and believe in Me, offering Myself as the sinless sacrifice for your sins. I’ve warned you of the fate that awaits those who reject Me. They will stand naked in their sin and be condemned to life without God when judgment day comes. They’ll wish they were never born. They’ll wish they'd never had children as they, following their parents’ lead, also turn from Me and turn from life, and experience eternal destruction.

"Those who endure in following Me live eternally with God, have God’s loving presence in their lives here. So, don’t cry for Me; I’m doing My Father’s will and will be with Him eternally.

"Cry for yourselves and your hardness of heart, your stubborn desire to be like God, your stubborn insistence on having God only be the King you want.

"Cry for yourselves because your rebellion and indifference toward God are the way of death!”

Jesus' words to the grieving, weeping women are remarkably fearless and loving, especially coming from a man marching to His execution to say. As always, Jesus thoughts were not for Himself, but for us. That can’t be said of any other king, president, emperor, or prime minister in the history of the world, no matter how good they may have been by earthly standards.

Verse 32: “Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.”

In Jesus, everything is turned upside down. We honor our earthly kings. We give them parades and honor guards, parades and limousines.  But Jesus is subjected to humiliation in many ways.

In the original Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel, the word translated as criminals is κακοῦργοι, (kakourgoi) literally, evil workers. These two guys are notorious public enemies and Jesus, treated with contempt despite doing no wrong, is crucified between them!

Yet Jesus responds differently than what the world would expect. In those days, it was routine for people about to be executed to invoke curses on their enemies. But Jesus invokes no curse. Instead, He prays that His Father will forgive them--will forgive us--for ignorantly rejecting Him.

I confess, folks, that there are many times during my quiet times that God speaks to me through His Word and I realize a sin that I’ve been perpetrating ignorantly and habitually. Knowing that Jesus prayed this prayer for ignorant sinners like me allows me to offer my repentance in His name with greater confidence in God’s grace than I would otherwise have.

Jesus is no vengeful royal. He never once said, "Off with their heads." Jesus is a servant King Who loves us enough to confront us for our sins and then give us grace when we honestly own our sins and take Him as our King each day.

Luke 23:35: “The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.’ The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar [this was the drink of poor people, not of kings] and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’ There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the Jews. One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’”

“If Jesus were really a king,” the people, the rulers, and one of the criminals were saying, “He would save Himself. He’d have the ego, panache, presence, guts, and power to look out for number one.”

Their taunts echo the temptations the devil put before Jesus in the wilderness at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread,” the devil told Jesus [Luke 4:3]. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from [the pinnacle of temple],” the devil told Jesus [Luke 4:9].

But, listen: Jesus didn’t come into this world to save Himself; He came to save us.

And He had no reason to prove Himself; He knew precisely Who He was: the great I AM, "God in flesh appearing"; He didn’t and doesn’t need to prove Himself to anyone.

And folks, when we belong to this God we meet in Jesus, we have nothing to prove either. When we’re tempted to sin or when we’re tested by life, we can say with confidence, “I belong to the King of kings! No temptation is too great that God won’t bear it for me. No sin is so egregious that God won’t destroy its power over me with His grace. No situation is so horrible, no grief so hard, that Christ, the King Who died on the cross, can’t help me bear and overcome. Bad, inexplicable things may come to us in this life; but the Savior Who bore all of the world’s bad and inexplicable things on the cross has given me victory, life, peace, and hope."

God has already proven the Christian’s eternal value on the cross and at the empty tomb.

And He keeps proving our eternal value at the baptismal font, in His Word, and in the bread and wine--the body and blood--He gives to all repent and believe in Him.

Jesus is a King Who doesn’t care about His standing in the polls; He loves us and does the right thing by us always, whatever we may think. As our African-American Christian sisters and brothers have taught us to say, “God is good. All the time. All the time. God is good.” In Jesus, we belong to that good, loving, relentlessly gracious God!

If on that first Good Friday, the disciples and the whole world had given up on Jesus being King, one man knew by faith that Jesus was and always would be King. Verse 40: “But the other criminal rebuked him. ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said, ‘since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.’”

The second criminal came to be a citizen and subject of Christ’s kingdom in the way all of us must. He acknowledged that He was a sinner in need of saving and by faith in Christ, appealed for forgiveness and new life.

This second criminal saw that Jesus was sinless, wasn’t acting on His own behalf, that He bore the pain and humiliation of this execution, not with bitterness or recrimination, but with love for world that scorned Him.

And so this criminal, enlightened by the good news of God’s love for unworthy humanity and filled with the Holy Spirit, asks Jesus to let him be in His Kingdom.

Jesus doesn’t hesitate in His response. He doesn’t give the man a set of religious rules to accept. He doesn’t lay down conditions. He doesn’t say that eventually the man might be able to earn his way into Christ’s kingdom.

Jesus says, “Today you will be with me.” Today!

And that’s Christ’s promise to us right now as well.

We don’t have to wait to die in order to enjoy the presence and help of Christ the King in our lives.

He can forgive us today.

He can give us new life today.

He can get us through life’s hardest times and be our good shepherd today.

He can make us part of His kingdom today and always.

When we recognize our sin and Christ’s sinlessness...when we see our need and Christ’s ability to be all that we need, Christ is our King.

Jesus won’t make our wildest dreams come true. He will give us new dreams--dreams of forgiven sin, fellowship with God, purposeful living, resurrected life with God and all the saints--and make every one of them come true!

Psalm 37:4 promises: “Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” May our only delight come from worshiping, serving, and living under the rule of the only Royal worthy of praise, glory, honor, applause, worship, or a place on the covers of all those grocery store magazines: Christ the King! Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message shared during both worship services there this morning.]

Teach Us to Pray, Part 3

[This was shared last evening with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, during midweek Lenten worship.]

Isaiah 25:6-8
Psalm 37:4
Matthew 7:7-8
Ecclesiastes 3:11

"Give us this day our daily bread..."

In his book, The Journey of Desire, author John Eldredge addresses the ambivalence Christians feel about what we want, the things we desire. Because the ninth and tenth commandments tell us not to covet our neighbors’ property, spouses, servants, or possessions, some Christians seem to have the mistaken notion that it’s always wrong to want anything. But, Eldredge reminds us that desire isn’t bad in itself. To have desires is part of what it means to be human.

And we have enormous desires. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God “has...set eternity in the human heart…” In other words, we were made by God for wanting a lot more than stuff. Though we may try to fill our lives with the stuff of this world, the fact is that you and I have a craving for what only eternity with God can give to us.

So, what does all of this have to do with the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread”?

Martin Luther is right, I think, to say that, “daily bread includes everything needed for this life…” Luther included things like food, healthy family relationships, work, and so on.

But I also think that if these daily blessings are all God had in mind for us, Jesus would not have been born, wouldn’t have died for us, wouldn't have risen from the dead. Truth be told, we need more, much more, than all these things.

If the earlier petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are to be believed, God believes that we need these blessings now. We need God’s kingdom to come to us now, today. We need God’s will to be done in our lives as it is in heaven, now, today.

He also believes that we should, through the ministry of the Church, have a taste of the rich futures belonging to all who trust in Christ. God thinks that you and I need eternity! In Isaiah 25:6-8, God paints His promises for the eternal future of those who follow Him: He will feed us with the best meats and the finest of aged wines and death will be swallowed up forever and God will dry all our tears!

But there’s a problem. The condition of sin distorts our desires.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to eat food, for example, until sin turns hunger into gluttony.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting the sexual intimacy that God engineered into our beings, unless we seek it outside the bounds of marriage between one man and one woman.

There’s nothing wrong with desiring to better ourselves unless the desire becomes covetousness or a drive to look down our noses on other people.

The human problem, from God’s perspective, isn’t that we want things. Many of the things we desire are good things, things created and given by God. But sin happens when we desire or take good things at the wrong times, in the wrong ways, for the wrong reasons. Food, sex, and success, along with orderly communities, good governments, and positive reputations are all legitimate things for us want, to ask God to grant to us...in the times He ordains, for the reasons He ordains.

This is important for us to remember when we pray because some people refuse to acknowledge their desires to God. A person once revealed to a group of us that she never asked God for anything. “I don’t feel that I can do that,” she told us. “God has already given me so much. I just don't want to bother him for more.” Thankfulness is a virtue, of course. But that individual underestimated God’s love for her.

When Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer as a model for our prayer lives, He didn’t mean for us to eliminate asking Him for the things we desire. He teaches us, in fact, to pray for them.

But He also put this petition--”Give us this day our daily bread”--in a larger context. Often, our praying is sporadic, episodic. We pray when we’re desperate for the needs we see in our own lives or in the lives of others we know and care about and then more or less shut down the prayer hotline. We risk turning God into a cosmic ATM.

In the Lord’s Prayer though, Jesus shows us that God wants to have an ongoing, eternal relationship with us. He teaches us to pray, Our Father, not Dear Sir. In intimate relationships, you don’t feel restrained in asking for things. Everything is on the table. So, Jesus doesn’t tell us to stop asking God for things. In fact, in Matthew 7:7-8, Jesus tells us: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

The way I see it, Jesus doesn’t want us to reduce what we ask for, but to ask for everything with trusting hearts. He wants us to come to God with the same confidence that a child who is loved has when she comes to her mother or father, but also with the same submission, the same surrender. A trusting child will feel free to ask a loving parent for anything, but will, at least on reflection, also want to submit to her parent’s judgment, love, and will, when the answers are no, wait, or maybe.

In the context of a relationship with the Father we know through Jesus Christ, God’s and our perspectives begin to meld. We begin to see things as God sees things. We start wanting what God wants. We desire what God desires. Our laundry lists continue; but as we continue in a relationship with God, that relationship changes our lists.

When I was a young Christian, I struggled with the meaning of a verse in the Psalms. It’s Psalm 37:4: “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I knew that my desires were infinite and not always pure. Did that mean that God would give me anything I wanted, even things that may seem good on the surface, but in the end would lead to my own undoing or to my separation from God?

Then I took a closer look at the verse. God will give us the desires of our hearts when we take delight in Him, when nothing and nobody is more important to us than God Himself…when our relationship with God is central to our lives. That’s why three petitions--“hallowed be Thy Name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”--come before “Give us this day our daily bread.”

The more intimate we allow our relationship with our Father to become, the more similar God’s desires and our desires will become. And the more we realize that in telling us to pray for our daily bread, Jesus isn’t commanding that we ask for or to expect less. He’s commanding us to ask for every good and perfect blessing God has in mind for us every single day we live. Amen

Ash Wednesday: Lenten Disciplines for Life

[This was shared during the Ash Wednesday worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio on February 13. The Bible lesson was Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21.]

The sermon for tonight didn’t start out as a sermon.

It was going to be my presentation for this month’s women’s group. When the women’s group got snowed out, I posted it on my blog. Some of you have read it.

But it says what I want to share with you on this Ash Wednesday, as we begin the often misunderstood and misused season of Lent.

But, even if this is a re-run for you, you may notice things you didn’t catch when you read it on the blog.

Plus, like a DVD of a movie or TV show, there are a few added special features. In any case, I hope you find it helpful.

Many people use Lent to align themselves with Christ. They do this through the adoption of what are called spiritual disciplines. Lenten disciplines can be good, strengthening faith and helping us to love God and love others more faithfully.

But like many good things, we human beings have a way of messing up the whole idea of Lenten disciplines.

"I'm going to give up chocolate," some will announce.

"I'm not drinking beer during Lent," others might say.

"I've decided to give up cussing until Easter," they might say.

But, here's the deal: If something is getting in the way of our being Christians, isn't it also worth asking God to help us get rid of it, not just during Lent, but through our whole lives? Why is something bad during Lent, but not bad the rest of the year?


And, if something we add to our lives as our Lenten discipline helps us grow closer to Christ and to live in a more Christ-like way during Lent, can't it do the same things all year long?

If, this Lenten season, you're giving up chocolate just to lose weight, or giving up beer to please a spouse, or giving up cussing to make yourself more acceptable to some people, your "giving up" is meaningless from God's perspective.

Under such circumstances, you're not undertaking these disciplines to honor God, but as part of a self-improvement kick!

Self improvement is fine. But we shouldn’t claim anything we do just for self-improvement as a spiritual discipline, as something we’re doing for God.

Otherwise, we risk being the kinds of people Jesus condemns in tonight’s Gospel lesson:

• People who practice piety just to be seen as pious, religious people; 
• People who give to charity to be seen by others as generous;
• People who pray so that others will think they’re faithful; 
• People who fast in order to get kudos for others for being heroically self-sacrificing.

But if your intent is to grow closer to Christ and more like Christ through your discipline, it can be a very good thing.

Our Ash Wednesday liturgy mentions four disciplines most closely associated with Lent. These four disciplines might be ones you'll want to consider adopting this year.

But don’t adopt  them with the attitude that, "I'll give them up after Lent." Use Lent as a time to integrate these disciplines into your life, for keeps.

The first Lenten discipline the liturgy mentions is repentance.

Repentance gets a bad rap. It's often seen as a humiliating exercise in which we make ourselves miserable for our sin.

Confession and sorrow for sin are parts of authentic repentance, but the main words used in the Bible for repent tell a fuller story. Simply put, repentance is changing the direction of our lives, changing our minds to think more like God. We refuse to walk away from Christ and instead, turn around to walk toward Him and the way of life He has pioneered for us. [See Hebrews 2:10-13 and Hebrews 12:1-2.]

Knowing that Christ has died to save us from paying the price for our own sins, we ask God for the power to live a life in which the will of God is our highest priority.

Repentance can be a painful thing because it means owning up to our sins, imperfections, and need of God.

But repentance is also a joyful thing because through it, God gives us forgiveness, fresh starts, and the power of the Holy Spirit to help us live the life God has made for all who believe in Jesus.

Christians who choose repentance for their Lenten discipline would do well to adopt the prayer of King David, found in Psalm 139:23-24: “Search me, O God...See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” When we repent, we ask God to show us our errors and change the course our lives are taking, steering us toward Christ and new life!

A second discipline mentioned in our Ash Wednesday liturgy is fasting. Fasting can mean simply doing away with things that get in the way of our following Christ or living life God's way. It may also mean doing without some things that aren’t bad in themselves--things like food, hours on the computer or watching TV, going to sporting events, window shopping at the mall--that keep us from prayer, worship, reading Scripture, attending to our primary relationships, or serving others.

I always suggest replacing the thing from which a person fasts with a positive, God-honoring activity. When we vacate a bad habit, it leaves a hole in our lives and schedules. It’s too tempting to indulge the behavior from which you’re fasting if you don’t have something good to take its place. If you've decided, for example, to give up watching television one night a week, you'll be able to follow through on your discipline and imbue it with some meaning beyond being a forty-day stunt of your will, if you use your usual TV time volunteering at a food bank.

A third discipline mentioned each Ash Wednesday is prayer. Prayer is conversation with God. Of course, believers should, as the Bible teaches, "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17). But focused times of prayer, at set times each day, become our special appointments with God, deepening our faith, giving our lives both peace and direction.

One point about these special prayer times I would make is to be certain that you always begin your prayers by reading a chapter from the Bible or a devotion based on a passage of Scripture. Since prayer is conversation with God, it's good to let God get in the first word. Otherwise, our prayers can devolve into monologues about our wants and our feelings.

Psalm 37:4 gives us the priority our prayers should reflect: “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Put God first. When you do that, your desires will change. God’s priorities will become your priorities. What you pray for will change. God and you will be moving in the same direction. And you’ll find God empowering you to do things outside of your comfort zone.

My buddy Steve Sjogren has a new book out called, Heaven’s Lessons. There, Steve tells about his going to a Best Buy one day, looking for an accessory for his iPhone. He saw a sales clerk who, Steve says, didn’t look different from anybody else there.

But some time before this shopping trip, Steve had been praying that God would help him to do whatever God wanted him to do. Steve assumed that God would help him to do things he was comfortable doing.

As he stood in the Best Buy though, he sensed God telling him, “If you approach that salesman and offer to pray for him, I’ll give you one of my prayers to pray.” That seemed crazy to Steve, walking up to a stranger and offering to pray with him! But then he thought he was probably never going to see this guy again and if things got weird, he could just skip going to Best Buy and shop online for a few months.

Steve walked over to the guy and said, “You obviously don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but sometimes I pray for people, and good things happen. I feel like I’m supposed to pray for you for ten seconds. Would that be all right?”

The guy looked around, evidently to see if the coast was clear, and told Steve, “Yeah, go for it.” Steve closed his eyes and touched the guy’s arm. As he did, he got a clear mental picture of this Best Buy employee sitting in a medical school classroom, wearing a white smock, his initials embroidered on the pocket. Steve prayed, “Lord, on his first day of medical school, show him that he didn’t get there by his own hard work, but by the favor you gave him as his grandmother prayed for him.”

The prayer was over. But when Steve looked up at this guy, “his eyes were wide open. His jaw had dropped. His nose was running, and tears dripped down his cheeks.” “How did you know about me trying to get into medical school?” he asked. “Who are you?” Steve explained, “I’m just a guy who sometimes prays for people.” This young man later became a Christian, a member of Steve’s church, and a doctor.

We aren’t all going to be used by God in the exact same ways God uses Steve when he prays. But when we pray God’s way, delighting in the Lord, putting ourselves at the disposal of God for His purposes and not our own, God will give us the desires of our hearts. And what could anyone desire more than to be a partner with God in fulfilling His plans for the world?

A fourth Lenten discipline is doing works of love. Jesus says that whenever we have cared for those the world regards as "the least of these,” we actually serve Him (Matthew 25:31-46).

There is no place in the world that can’t be made better by the love of God. And there’s no end to what God will empower us to do to pass along the love God gives through Jesus Christ.

One work of love we may undertake is reaching out to a family member who has been ostracized from the family.

Another might be participating in a kindness outreach.

Another, picking up groceries for a homebound neighbor.

It might be doing something many of you often do, sending a card to a shut-in.

Whatever the work of love you do, if it's done in the Name of Jesus Christ, you'll find that what started out as something you thought you were doing to benefit others will, miraculously, benefit you, freeing your from your slavery to yourself, turning you out toward the wider world. You will feel and you will be more alive for it.

Jesus says, "Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for My sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39).

Now, if in what I’ve said (or ever said) I've come across as some "expert" either on Lenten disciplines or on being a Christian, let me close by saying that I am a sinner in daily need of Christ's forgiveness and help to live as the human being I was created by God to be.

I am, like you, a disciple. That word disciple translates the Greek New Testament word, mathetes, and it means student. I’m a student learning what it means to follow Jesus.

And if you’re like me, a sinner learning to follow Jesus, you might consider adopting one of these four Lenten disciplines--repentance, fasting, prayer, works of love--this year.

Your Lenten discipline could do a lot more than reshape your waistline; it could reshape your soul.

It could change your life not just your Lent, but for eternity. Amen

Life from the Vine

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

John 15:1-8
On the night of His arrest, in the room where He and the apostles had their Passover meal, Jesus tells them (and all who believe in Him) at the beginning of our lesson: “I am the true vine...”

What exactly does this mean and why should we spend the next few minutes of our lives trying to understand it?

In the Old Testament, God’s people Israel were pictured as a vine. For example, Psalm 80:8 says: “You have brought a vine out of Egypt. You have cast out the nations and planted it.” The mission of God’s people, Israel, was to be a light to the world, pointing others to the life that only God can give to those who turn from sin and believe in Him.

Israel's mission was later to be placed on the shoulders of one anointed king, a person described at least five centuries before the birth of Jesus in the book of Isaiah as the Servant. God speaks to this Servant in Isaiah 49:6: “I will...give You as a light to the gentiles, that You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth.”

In our gospel lesson, Jesus claims to be that Servant, the true Vine, Who is a light to all nations and Who offers salvation to all the world.

In that first verse, Jesus also says, “My Father is the vinedresser.”

Every vine needs pruning. Otherwise, it grows crazy and sprouts small, unhealthy, useless grapes. A vinedresser makes sure that his investment of time, energy, water, and fertilizer are maximized. He cuts off the branches that are likely to rob life from the other branches and not produce much themselves. Jesus evidently has branches that will be pruned away. We'll learn more about that as we dig further into this passage.

In verse 2, Jesus explains: “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He [God the Father] takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

Now, Jesus, like most Jewish teachers in the ancient world and like the Biblical writers, loved plays on word. They helped make teaching more memorable. The word that Jesus uses for prune in verse 2 is kathairei, a word that is similar to one He uses in verse 3, where He says: “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” The word for clean in verse 3 is, in the original Greek, katharoi (we get the words like catharsis or cathartic, used of cleansing experiences, from it). Jesus is equating cleansing with pruning. “My word,” Jesus is saying, “the word that all who believe in Me will not perish but have everlasting life, has made you clean. I wash away the sins of all who believe in Me and am the way you to eternal life with God.”

Jesus makes those who believe in Him clean. Our sin is pruned away. But, Jesus says, God the Father also rids His vine of unproductive branches and rids even the productive branches of unproductive shoots.

This is important, because in verse 5, Jesus tells us: “I am the vine, you are the branches...”

Jesus says that those who are baptized and believe in Him are connected to Him, sort of like a lamp is connected to electric power through a wall outlet. A lamp that remains unplugged just sets and collects dust. It only serves a function and only "comes to life" when it's connected to its power source. Believers in Jesus draw their life from Jesus alone and as branches on the same Vine, Jesus, they are also connected to each other. You can't be a Christian on your own: You need both Jesus and His Church. 

The apostle Paul says something similar to this in 1 Corinthians, where he writes that those of us who make up Christ’s Church “are the body of Christ and members individually.” So, we are branches who draw life from Jesus, we’re part of His body.

But that raises a problem. Jesus is sinless. The New Testament book of Hebrews says that Jesus “was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Now, if Jesus the Vine is going to thrive and give life to those who truly repent for sin and truly believe in Him, God cannot allow anything impure or sinful to be attached to Jesus. God must prune or cleanse Jesus the Vine of those branches that want to take life and blessings from Jesus without bearing fruit: without repentance for sin or trust in Jesus.

Unless the Father prunes the branches that are wasting God’s grace on the sins they want more than they want God, the whole vine, the entire body of Christ and God’s intention to create a new and everlasting kingdom for those who trust in Christ, is put in jeopardy.

This is why making our relationship with Christ and His Church the highest priority in our lives is so important. Jesus is saying that if we’re not all in with Him and His body, the Church, we’re really locking Him out of our lives. 

This leads to what Jesus says in John 15:4. It’s both an order and a plea from the Savior Who loves us like no other: “Abide in Me...”

Abide means live, stay, or remain. Jesus is saying, “Stick with Me.”

Jesus goes on to say: “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” Then, at the end of verse 5, Jesus says something that sticks in the craw of any self-respecting, self-sufficient human being: “without Me you can do nothing.”

Who has the guts to admit that today: "Without Jesus, I can do nothing?" I learn it more every day! A few months ago, God impressed on me a simple message: “Don’t try to be creative with your sermons. Less of you; more of Me. Preach My Word and let the chips fall where they may.” It’s liberating to know that while I can’t, God always can!

Listen: Some of you may be trying to live a good, wholesome life on the strength of your own effort. If that’s what you’re doing, I’m telling you that you are bound to fail. We can never be as good as we were made to be or as we sometimes imagine ourselves to be. Jesus says we can do nothing without Him.

Others of you may think that you’re living a wholesome, godly life without paying much attention to God. As I’ve mentioned before, my grandmother used to say, “It’s easier to be good when you’re old than when you’re young.” What a stupid thing to say! That statement may be true only when you have one sin in mind.

But, I’ve found that the older I get, the easier it is for me to do just what I want to do. Society allows that as we age. “Age has its privileges,” we're told. Live enough years with that mentality and you start to believe it! You think that you’re entitled.

As the years go by--I’m talking to people in their teens as well as those in their 80s--maybe the best thing we could pray in the morning is, “God, what do you want me to do today that I don’t want to do?” I guarantee that if we will pray like that, we’ll be pushed so far out of our comfort zones we’ll have to remain connected to Christ for support and the sheer ability to get the thing done. We’ll know that we can’t, but God can.

In verse 6, Jesus says that if we refuse to be connected to Him, we will be cast out, thrown into the fire and burned. Lest we misunderstand Jesus' meaning here, He says something similar in Matthew's gospel: "So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the rightweous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 13:49-50). The difference between the good and evil people Jesus describes here is not that one group are sinners and the other is not; it's that one group of sinners places its confidence in its own capacity to be good, while the other group relies for its goodness on Christ, the true vine, alone.

Those who don’t believe in hell need to take the subject up with Jesus; He clearly did believe in hell. In fact, He died and rose to prevent any of us from experiencing it. All that is required of us is that we remain connected to Him, trusting in Him alone.

But verse 6 isn’t the most challenging verse in the lesson. Verse 7 is. Jesus says: “If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.”

A lot of games get played with this verse and others like it. “If you only had enough faith,” some people will say, “you would never get sick and everything you ever wanted would be there for you.” That’s not faith, but magical thinking.

So, let’s not play games and deal honestly with what Jesus says here, with what we can understand and what we can’t. Probably every person in this sanctuary has prayed for the earthly lives of loved ones or friends, the new job or career, good health for ourselves or other things, and not received the answers we desperately sought. I cannot and will not explain away all the pain you’ve gone through as a result. Nor do I know why God seems to say, “No” to the prayers of Christians.

But, just a few thoughts. Please look at Psalm 37:4. It says: “Delight yourself...in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of your heart.”

Notice that the prerequisite for God giving us the desires of our hearts is that we delight in Lord. To delight in the Lord must mean, in part, putting God and God’s priorities first in our lives. We delight in God as we abide in Christ and remain connected to Him. As a result, what we desire changes because we delight in God. God's mind and our minds move more in sync. Some of what we pray for may change when delight in God. God may teach us to truly pray the hardest petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done.” Maybe this is why Jesus makes this promise to give us whatever we desire within the context of His plea and command to abide in Him.

When I first became a Christian, the passage of Scripture that bothered me the most was Genesis 3:24. It comes after Adam and Eve have fallen into sin. It says that God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden and kept the whole human race from getting to the tree of life. “Why did God do that?” I wondered. Doesn’t God want to give us life?

The answer, of course, is that God does want to give us life. But more than that, God wants to give us life with Him. Had the human race gotten access to the tree of life without the change in our relationship with God that comes to those who believe in Jesus Christ, it would have meant an eternity of suffering and separation from God. We would have gotten the desires of our hearts, but the desires of hearts darkened and perverted by sin. We would have been lost to God forever, still in our sins.

God’s ways may not lead us to the answers we seek. But God’s ways, when we persevere in abiding with Christ, always lead to life beyond the confines of this suffering, dying world. God's ways always lead to resurrection victory and eternal life in His kingdom when we stick with Jesus.

The crucified and risen Jesus is the only one with the credibility to ask us to believe that, to trust God even when tragedies we devoutly prayed would not come, come anyway.

That's because Jesus on the cross assures us that God understands our pain and because Jesus risen assures us that there will be a time beyond our earthly sadness when all that seems senseless and barren will be explained, when all the hurts and kills us today will be in the past.

The apostle Paul, who knew all about suffering and about God rebuffing him when he asked that  suffering be removed from his life, could, because of his connection to Jesus, say in Romans 8:18: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us” when Jesus returns to bring His new creation in its fullness!

Until that day when Jesus returns, as we remain connected to Christ and our prayers move in sync with God, God will build up our faith, we will delight in God and desire the things God desires, and God will use us to share His love with and bring His kingdom to others. Like our Savior, we will share in others’ sorrows and joys and, in this way, bring the life of Christ to them. It is just this life--a life of deep connection with Christ and the needs of others--that Jesus calls “bearing fruit,” living the same faith Sunday afternoon through Saturday that we profess on Sunday mornings.

“By this [abiding in Him],” Jesus says in verse 8 of our gospel lesson, “My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit. So [or, in this way] you will be My disciples.”

Stick with Jesus and His body, the Church.

That’s where life is.

That’s where, even in the midst of questions we can’t fully answer in this world, purpose can be found.

Amen

How to Make Your Life a No Bellyaching Zone

I love this piece based on Psalm 37 by David Branon.

The psalm gives an alternative to the favorite indoor sport for Christians in their church fellowship halls: bellyaching about how bad things are in the world.

Sin has been standard operating procedure on Planet Earth since Adam and Eve bit into the fruit of the knowledge of and good and evil. It was that evil that thought to rid humanity of all accountability to God and all notions of love for God or neighbor by killing off Jesus, though He was truly God and a truly sinless human being. So, the fact that there are bad things--often horrific things--in the world may arouse our compassion and our horror, but never our surprise.

Bellyaching and whining about how great things were in the supposed "good old days" only guts us of joy and robs the world of our witness for the truly better life that can belong to all who trust in Jesus Christ, here and in eternity.

In his beautiful post on Psalm 37, Branon surfaces five things the Psalm says that we can do as believers in Christ to stand subversively against all the hatred, cynicism, selfishness, and adulation of self over others that exists in our world. The list:

• Trust in the Lord and do good.
• Feed on God's faithfulness.
• Delight yourself in God. (I would say, "Enjoy God and His goodness!)
• Commit your way to God. (Turn the keys of your life over to God. Learn to pray, "Thy will be done.")
• Rest in the Lord. (Be confident that God, Who brought everything into being, will have the last say, and it will be good!)

I suggest reading the Psalm and Branon's piece on it often, then jotting down these five points on a card that you can keep with you at all times. When the impulse to bellyache about how horrible things are, pull out the card and let it be a reminder.

And remember Jesus' words:

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

When we trust in Jesus as the final Authority over our lives, we have a lot to be thankful for. I know that I need to be reminded of that. I need to remember that all bellyaching is unnecessary! 

(By the way, here is a link to Psalm 37.) 

Don't Let the Nasty Bring You Down!

I love today's installment of Our Daily Bread.

When we "go after" those who hate or hurt us, we're engaging in the very behaviors we find so offensive; it doesn't help anything good happen.

Besides that, by patiently enduring the nastiness others throw our way, we may actually learn how we have been wrong as well as wronged.

If we have attempted reconciliation and understanding to no avail, it's better to simply place the offending party in God's hands and move on with our lives.

I'd advise reading all of Psalm 37. It's a treasure trove of insight and inspiration!

¹Do not fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of wrongdoers,
²for they will soon fade like the grass, and wither like the green herb.
³Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security.
⁴Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
⁵Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.
⁶He will make your vindication shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday.
⁷Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him; do not fret over those who prosper in their way, over those who carry out evil devices.
⁸Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath. Do not fret—it leads only to evil.
⁹For the wicked shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.
¹⁰Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look diligently for their place, they will not be there.
¹¹But the meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity.
¹²The wicked plot against the righteous, and gnash their teeth at them;
¹³but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that their day is coming.
¹⁴The wicked draw the sword and bend their bows to bring down the poor and needy, to kill those who walk uprightly;
¹⁵their sword shall enter their own heart, and their bows shall be broken.
¹⁶Better is a little that the righteous person has than the abundance of many wicked.
¹⁷For the arms of the wicked shall be broken, but the Lord upholds the righteous.
¹⁸The Lord knows the days of the blameless, and their heritage will abide forever;
¹⁹they are not put to shame in evil times, in the days of famine they have abundance.
²⁰But the wicked perish, and the enemies of the Lord are like the glory of the pastures; they vanish—like smoke they vanish away.
²¹The wicked borrow, and do not pay back, but the righteous are generous and keep giving;
²²for those blessed by the Lord shall inherit the land, but those cursed by him shall be cut off.
²³Our steps are made firm by the Lord, when he delights in our way;
²⁴though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand.
²⁵I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.
²⁶They are ever giving liberally and lending, and their children become a blessing.
²⁷Depart from evil, and do good; so you shall abide forever.
²⁸For the Lord loves justice; he will not forsake his faithful ones. The righteous shall be kept safe forever, but the children of the wicked shall be cut off.
²⁹The righteous shall inherit the land, and live in it forever.
³⁰The mouths of the righteous utter wisdom, and their tongues speak justice.
³¹The law of their God is in their hearts; their steps do not slip.
³²The wicked watch for the righteous, and seek to kill them.
³³The Lord will not abandon them to their power, or let them be condemned when they are brought to trial.
³⁴Wait for the Lord, and keep to his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on the destruction of the wicked.
³⁵I have seen the wicked oppressing, and towering like a cedar of Lebanon.
³⁶Again I passed by, and they were no more; though I sought them, they could not be found.
³⁷Mark the blameless, and behold the upright, for there is posterity for the peaceable.
³⁸But transgressors shall be altogether destroyed; the posterity of the wicked shall be cut off.
³⁹The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord; he is their refuge in the time of trouble.
⁴⁰The Lord helps them and rescues them; he rescues them from the wicked, and saves them, because they take refuge in him.

Learning to Pray (Third Midweek Lenten Devotion)

[This was shared during midweek Lenten devotional worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this evening. We're looking at the Lord's Prayer as a model for our prayer lives. Tonight, the focus was on the fourth petition, "Give us this day our daily bread."]

Isaiah 25:6-8
Psalm 37:4
Matthew 7:7-8
Ecclesiastes 3:11
In his book, The Journey of Desire, author John Eldredge addresses the ambivalence Christians feel about what we want, the things we desire. Because the ninth and tenth commandments tell us not to covet our neighbors’ property, spouses, servants, or possessions, some Christians seem to have the mistaken notion that it’s always wrong to want anything. But, Eldredge reminds us that desire isn’t bad in itself. To have desires is part of what it means to be human.

And we have enormous desires. Ecclesiastes 3:11, in the Old Testament, says, “[God[ has…set eternity in [our] hearts…” In other words, we were made by God for wanting a lot more than new cars or the latest video game system: We have eternal appetites. Our desires are built right into our DNA by our Maker.

So, what does all of this have to do with the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer? Be patient with me, for a moment; I'll get to that.

Martin Luther is right, I think, to say that, “Daily bread includes everything needed for this life…” But there is something much more to daily bread than what we need for daily living, I think. God has a much more expansive view of “our daily bread” than we do! God believes that you and I need more than just "food and clothing, home and property, work and income, a devoted family, an orderly community, good government, favorable weather, peace and health, a good name, and true friends and neighbors.” If these daily blessings—important and wonderful as they are—are all God had in mind for us, Jesus would not have been born, He wouldn’t have died for us, He wouldn't have risen from the dead. Truth be told, we need more, much more, than all these things. God thinks that you and I need eternity and all its blessings! And, if the earlier petitions are to be believed, God believes that we need these blessings now.

In an imperfect world where bad things happen, we have an appetite for eternity. We need God’s kingdom to come to us, now, today. We need God’s will to be done in our lives as it is in heaven, now, today.

But there is a problem. The condition of sin distorts our desires. Let me explain.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to eat food, until sin turns hunger into gluttony. (Or, in the sad desire to control one’s body or one’s hungers, a person becomes anorexic.)

There’s nothing wrong with wanting the sexual intimacy that God engineered into our beings, unless we seek it outside the bounds of marriage. (Or, in the desire to claim moral superiority, we deny the power of our sexuality and become insufferable, judgmental prudes.)

There’s nothing wrong with desiring to better ourselves unless the desire becomes covetousness or a drive to look down our noses on other people. (Or, as I’ve seen happen with some people, they’re so anxious to prove that they’re not covetous that they give way more than God’s proscribed tithe of 10% or spend so many hours volunteering in the community that they destroy their families, their marriages, or their own health.)

The human problem, form God’s perspective, isn’t that we want things—that we desire things. Many of the things we desire are good things, things created and given by God, including the whole list Luther gives as examples of "daily bread" in The Small Catechism.

Sin happens when we desire or take good things at the wrong times, in the wrong ways, for the wrong reasons. But food, sex, and success, along with orderly communities, good governments, and positive reputations are all legitimate things for us want, or, as the fourth petition reminds us, to ask God to grant to us! This is important for us to remember when we pray, I think.

This is often difficult for us to remember. A person with whom I was discussing a book revealed our group that she never asked God for anything. “I don’t feel that I can do that,” she told us. “God has already given me so much.”

That individual underestimated God’s love for us, I think. When Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer as a model for our prayer lives, He didn’t mean for us to eliminate the laundry lists that often fill our prayers. He teaches us, in fact, to pray for those things for which we hunger, the things we desire.

But He also put this petition in a larger context. For many of us, much of the time, our praying is sporadic, episodic. We pray when we’re desperate for the needs we see in our own lives or in the lives of others we know and care about. We risk turning God into a cosmic ATM.

In the Lord’s Prayer though, Jesus shows us that God wants to have an ongoing, eternal relationship with us. God wants to be “our Father.”

So, Jesus doesn’t tell us to stop asking God for things. In fact, the Gospel of Matthew records that shortly after teaching the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus went on to urge us to pray. “Ask,” Jesus says, “and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” I don’t see Jesus telling those who believe in Him, “You can only pray for this and nothing more.” So, Jesus seems to tell us in this petition, “Bring Your laundry list of desires to the throne of your Father.”

The way I see it, Jesus doesn’t want us to so much change the content of our praying, but its context. He wants us to come to God with the same confidence that a child who is loved has when she comes to her mother or father, but also with the same submission, the same surrender. A trusting child will feel free to ask a loving parent for anything, but will also want to submit to her parent’s judgment, love, and will.

In the context of a relationship with the Father we know through Jesus Christ, God’s and our perspectives begin to meld. We see things as God sees things. We want God wants. We desire what God desires. Our laundry lists continue; but as we continue in a relationship with God, our lists change. As our trust in God grows, our reactions change when God’s answers to our requests are not just Yes, but also: Maybe, Wait, or No.

The person who truly prays, “Give us this day our daily bread” not only trusts God for the daily needs of life, but also believes that God is going to spend all eternity showering us with blessings beyond what any of us could ask or imagine. We believe that we will enjoy that eternal feast described by Isaiah seven-hundred years before Jesus' birth. Through the daily submission of prayer, our lists change and our goals change. We seek, above all, that God’s Name will be hallowed on earth as it is in heaven, that His kingdom—His reign of grace and love--will come to us and the world around us, and that His will be done, in our lives and everywhere.

When I was a young Christian, I struggled with the meaning of a verse in the Psalms. It’s Psalm 37:4: “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I knew that my desires were infinite and not always pure. Did that mean that God would give me anything I wanted, even things that may seem good on the surface, but in the end would lead to my own undoing or to my separation from God?

Then I took a closer look at the verse. God will give us the desires of our hearts when we take delight in Him, when nothing and nobody is more important to us than God Himself…when the chief object of our lives is to glorify God—hallowing His Name, seeking His kingdom and His will.

The more intimate we allow our relationship with our Father to become, the more similar God’s desires and our desires will become.

This transformation will hardly be noticeable to us or to anyone else. But it will happen in the lives of those who truly pray.

A good analogy to the transformation to God's perspectives might be marriage. When Ann and I married 36 years ago, we came from very different backgrounds. My family is mushy and gossipy. Ann’s family was more stoic, its humor of the towel-snapping variety. But as Ann and I have lived together and committed ourselves to our relationship every day, our outlooks, our ways of doing things, have blended and melded. Most days, there’s little difference between us on what we want or how we’ll live.

Something like that, but infinitely more wonderful, can happen as we lay ourselves before our Father each day in prayer. More and more, we delight in the Lord, we desire the same things, and we grow in the certainty that for all eternity, God intends to give us much more than morsels of bread each day. He wants to give us Himself forever.

And that's only a fraction of what God invites to ask for when He teaches us to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread."

Amen

In Prayer, God ACTS!

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

Ephesians 6:10-20
This morning, I want to call your attention to a few verses in our second lesson, specifically Ephesians 6:18, one of the greatest passages in all of Scripture. Here’s how it reads in The Contemporary English Version:

Never stop praying, especially for others. Always pray by the power of the Spirit. Stay alert and keep praying for God’s people.

“When we work,” someone has said, “we work. But when we pray, God works.” Whatever good you and I want to see happen in our lives or in the lives of our families, communities, school, friends, neighbors, or world will absolutely have to begin in prayer. (And prayer begins with God, prompting believers to come to Him.)

Bill Hybels is the pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in the Chicago area. Some years ago, his father, who had always been physically active, died suddenly and unexpectedly. Hybels writes:

"As I drove to my mother’s house in Michigan, I wondered how I would function without the person who believed in me more than anyone else ever has or will.

"That night in bed, I wrestled with God. 'Why did this happen? How can I put it all together in my mind and in my life? Am I going to recover from losing my father? If you really loved me, how could you do this to me?'

"Suddenly, in the middle of the night, everything changed. It was as if I had turned a corner and was now facing a new direction. God simply said, 'I’m able. I’m enough for you. Right now you doubt this, but trust me.'

"[Hybels goes on to reflect] That experience may sound unreal, but its results were unmistakable. After that tear-filled despairing night, I was never again tortured by doubt–either about God’s care for me or my ability to handle life without Dad. Grief, yes–his death wounded me deeply, and I will always miss him. But it did not set me adrift without anchor or compass. In the middle of the bleakest night I have ever known, one overpoweringly intimate moment with God gave me courage, reassurance and hope."

Life can sometimes overwhelm us.

That’s because, as our lesson from Ephesians tells us, our enemies in this life aren’t the spouse with whom we disagree or the child who rebels or the co-worker who gets on our nerves. Not even the sins that tempt us or the death that comes to us all, which have after all, already been defeated by Jesus Christ, are our real enemies.

Our real enemies, our Bible lesson reminds us, are the spiritual forces of darkness. These are the enemies that pull the human race–and each of us individually–down into despair, depression, apathy, relational discord, and hollow, shallow, pointless living.

We cannot overcome them on our own. We need to call on the only One Who can overcome them. We need to pray to God.

And we need to pray not just for ourselves. We need also to pray for others.

Lutheran pastor Walt Kallestad tells about a friend of his who was annoyed by the clerk at the register for which she was in line. The clerk “was slow, fumbling, and couldn’t seem to do anything right for the people she was supposed to be ‘serving.’” Kallestad goes on to write:

"Irritated, my friend grumbled to God, ‘Why does this always happen to me?’ Then [a]...thought struck her, ‘You’re here because you’re the only one in line who will pray for this clerk and treat her with patience and kindness, which she needs right now, instead of angrily rattling her more.”

God isn’t just interested in our prayers for things like world peace. An old saying tells us that “the devil is in the details.” Satan loves to discourage us in the little, everyday places in which we live, in the details. He knows that if he can trip us up there, there is no way that we’ll ever be free enough to address the bigger issues of life. So, we need to pray for ourselves and we need to pray for others.

But how do we pray exactly? There are lots of ways to approach our prayer relationship with God and, to tell you the truth, I get bored easily with any routine. So, I tend to change my approach to prayer a lot. But this morning, if you’re interested in establishing prayer as a regular part of your life, I’d like to share a simple approach to prayer.

It’s A-C-T-S. I like this acronym because it reminds me that when I pray, God acts.

Following the ACTS formula for praying, the first thing we do when we pray is adoration. We praise God for Who God is, for the characteristics or personality traits of God. More often than I care to admit, my prayers are offered in a hurry when I’m facing a challenge or uncertainty. “God,” I might say, “I don’t know what to say to so-and-so, who is dealing with difficulty.” Or, “God, any ideas for my sermon for Sunday?” Or, “Lord, protect my family.”

There’s nothing wrong with bringing our everyday prayers of desperation to God. Like the loving Father He is, God loves to hear from us. But more than anything, God wants to have a relationship with us.

God can really work in the lives and through the prayers of those who hop off of their own agendas long enough to cultivate a relationship with God. When we begin our prayer time with adoration, praising God for Who He is–a God of infinite power, love, wisdom, grace, mercy, helpfulness, and life–we take the focus off of ourselves and open the channels of communication to our soul. We place ourselves under God.

The C in the ACTS formula for prayer is confession. If adoration opens us up to communicating with God, refusing to confess our sins to God is sure to close off our communication with Him.

But we need to be earnest about this. I know that in my own case, for example, I sometimes find myself saying, “God, forgive me for my sins.” At times though, I may not really be confessing at all, just mouthing religious-sounding words.

A good rule for effective praying of whatever kind is: Get specific.

• “God, forgive me for being such a critical, stick-in-the-mud.”
• “Forgive me for trying always to get my way.”
• “Forgive me for cutting off that red Volvo on 33 the other day.”

Take the risk of inviting God to forgive and help you change in the specific places of your life. “The prayer of an innocent person is powerful and it can help a lot,” the Bible says*. God makes us innocent when we confess our sins in the Name of Jesus. And that gives God's power to our praying.

The T in ACTS stands for thanksgiving. You know the incident when Jesus healed ten lepers, but only one returned to thank Him? One analyst of that passage has said that you can be sure that all ten were grateful for their healing, but only one expressed that gratitude.

Probably most of us here today are grateful for the blessings we have in our lives. But when we take the time to thank God for our blessings–like the blessing of being forgiven, for example–we remind ourselves of where our blessings come from and so, our relationship with God is deepened.

Finally, the S in ACTS is the strangest word of all to our modern ears. It’s supplication, which means humbly asking God for help in our lives. Having adored, thanked, and confessed to God, we bring our laundry lists of needs and wants to God. Repeatedly, the Bible confirms that God wants to hear our requests. “Delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart,” the Old Testament says. “Ask,” Jesus tells us in the New Testament, “and you will receive.”

Among the many personal characteristics that have earned me the title of geek is that I love the study of history. One thing my geeky pastime tells me is that, repeatedly throughout history, lives been changed by the supplications of those who established strong relationships with God through time spent in adoration, confession, and thanksgiving.

• Slavery was brought to an end peacefully in England through a movement that began in prayer.
  
• The Cold War ended, I’m convinced not because of the policies of any government, but because of people who prayed, inviting God’s power into seemingly unchangeable circumstances. For several years before Communism fell in Europe, a prayer gathering happened in a Lutheran Church that bordered the wall the Communists once built to hold captive people in. The prayer gatherings at first attracted only a few. Just before the wall fell, thousands of East Germans would gather inside and outside the church building for these meetings. When the wall finally came down, East Germans who hadn't been schooled in the Christian faith for decades gathered near the church building, where one banner stood out. It said, simply, "Thank you, Church." Even those without faith knew, if only for a moment, what part prayer had played in gaining them political freedom.
• Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the most important movements of the twentieth century, which has brought millions into recovery from a horrible addiction, began with prayer in Jesus’ Name.
• Habitat for Humanity, which is providing homes for millions who would otherwise have no places to live, began when a couple, made desperately unhappy by their financial success, on the verge of a marital crack-up, prayed for guidance.

Every worthwhile, life-changing endeavor at least since God revealed Himself to Abraham four-thousand years ago, has begun with desperate prayer to the God of ancient Israel, the God we know in Jesus Christ!

The world we face is full of challenges too big for any of us to handle in our own strength. We need to remember something: When we work, we work; when we pray, God works...in us, through us, for us.

Let’s pray, then roll up our sleeves to do what God wants us to do, and see how God works!

*James 5:16, Contemporary English Version (CEV)