Lifted Up!

"Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time." (1 Peter 5:6)

God is teaching me that as I submit myself to Him through Christ, He makes it possible for me to cast, not just my anxieties, but also my grief, hopes, sins, desires, pains, and ambitions on Him. He empowers me to live with confidence, peace, and hope.

Through the crucified and risen Jesus, all of this is daily happening to me, a common, garden (of Eden) variety sinner! I find that only one word, unfortunately, over-used these days for far less reason, that can describe all that Jesus is and does for us: AWESOME!

When I place my whole life under Jesus, He lifts me up to be and do more than I could ever ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20-21). That's truly awesome!

[I'm an ordinary guy. I serve as pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

I Just Wanna Know by Steve Taylor (Psalm 139)

The prayer of a reluctant rock star, steeped in David's prayer in Psalm 139. Psalm 139:1-10 is the appointed psalm for this coming Sunday, January 18, at Living Water and most churches. One of Steve Taylor's best.

Do Most Contemporary Christians Think That Christianity Is About Them?

Provocative assertion made by John Schroeder, inspired by Dan Edelen:

Most Christians these days think Christianity is about them. It's their salvation, it's their worship, it's their Jesus. But nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus saves us for His ends, not ours. Somehow our approach to evangelism has got to begin to make this apparent. All the blatant appeals to personal interest that we make DO NOT serve the Kingdom.

I think John's right! And it drives me to my knees in repentance and submission.

In the New Testament, Peter writes that through Christ, believers in Christ have become members of "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people," then says that God has not given us such elevated status for ourselves, but "in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of Him Who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." (1 Peter 2:9)

Often, as I pray, I'm forced to confess to God that I take a selfish and utilitarian view of my faith. My behavior too often betrays the real motivation of my "devotion" to Christ: "What's in it for me?"

In fact, there's a lot that's in it for me (or anyone) in daily surrendering to and trusting in Christ. He sets me free from sin and death, after all, and gives me the undeserved and unearned privilege of living with Him forever.

But salvation that isn't shared with others too easily becomes self-serving, self-worshipful, self-congratulating, self-promoting.

Jesus says, "No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house" (Matthew 5:15). Cover a lamp and two things happen: (1) It doesn't give light; (2) Denied of oxygen, it soon will go out.

From what Peter and others say in the Bible, I take it that the Holy Spirit sets the lamp of faith aflame within us not just for ourselves, but also to let others see how the God known in Christ can change people from enemies of God, to members of that chosen race, royal priesthood, and holy nation.

When we fail to live in service and love for others, we are failing in our essential call as Christians. And we risk snuffing out our own faith.

As Lutheran pastor, Brian Stoffregen, says in a piece I cited on Easter Sunday:

“Can we say that we really believe in the resurrection of the Lord if we aren't willing to tell others about it?” 

And, I might add, if we aren't willing to make others' salvation a higher priority than our own?

I'm not pointing any fingers. I'm looking at the man in my mirror. Lord, have mercy on me.

[Read John's post.]

Go Ahead, Pray Those Non-Specific Prayers!

I don't talk back to my television very often. But I did this past Sunday afternoon.

I had just come home from worship and plopped down on our living room couch to do a few minutes of channel-surfing before having lunch. My clicking brought me to the program of a prominent preacher, usually good for a laugh. He was talking about prayer. I'm paraphrasing, but the basic gist of his message was this: "And you must make your prayers specific. God won't answer vague prayers. You say, 'God, give me more money.' How much? You say, 'Bless the preacher.' In what way." He went on to excoriate the limited faith of people who aren't specific in their directives--I mean, prayers--to God.

This is when I started to talk back to my TV set. You see, in worship this past Sunday, our second Bible lesson came from Romans 8 and included these lines:

...the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints* according to the will of God. (Romans 8:26-27)

The meaning of this passage is simple. Sometimes, we have no idea what to pray for. But as followers of Jesus, Who taught we Christians to pray, "Thy will be done," we don't need to have fine-tuned prayer petitions. We simply submit ourselves to God and trust His good will for us.

Our prayers can be specific, of course. But the real measure of our faith is not the specificity of our prayers, as though visualizing a preferred end is a magical incantation that will force the hand of God. The real measure of our faith is our submissiveness to the God Who sent His Son to die and rise for us and has better plans for us than we can ask or imagine.

*In the Bible, the word "saint" refers to anyone who repents for sin and believes in the God ultimately revealed to all the world in Jesus Christ.

A Tough, But Liberating Word

Today's installment of Our Daily Bread is based on James 4:1-10:

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? ²You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. ³You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. ⁴Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. ⁵Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says,

 “God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? ⁶

But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” ⁷Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. ¹⁰Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.   

"Adulterers," I take to be addressed not only to those engaged in adultery, but in all activities that put the world, the self, and other pursuits or relationships ahead of God. Through the prophets in Old Testament times, God described Himself as husband to Israel, condemning His people's penchant for playing the adulteress by worshiping other gods.

The New Testament describes the Church as the bride of Christ. So, any time we Christians allow other things to take God's place of absolute ruler over our lives, we are engaging in idolatry--idol worship, or as the Old Testament puts it, adultery.

The passage from James ends with a tremendous promise: "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you." This is nothing other than a call to wake up and acknowledge reality:

• God is bigger than you are. 
• Only God can give you life. 
• And unlike all the other things you might submit to in life, God will help you and love you even when you fall or fail. 

In Philippians 2:5-11, the apostle Paul gets at much the same message when he cites what most scholars agree must have been a hymn of the early church that reminds us that in calling us to submit to the will of God the Father, we're not being asked to do anything more than Christ did.

God "opposes the proud," not because God is an egotist, but because God wants us to live. As I mentioned in another post recently, if the only way for a drowning man to get to shore is to hold onto the lifeguard, you would hardly call the lifeguard arrogant for saying so to the thrashing victim. The God we know in Jesus Christ is that lifeguard. Take it from one willful thrasher to another: Submit to the Lifeguard and you will have real life!

Read the Our Daily Bread piece by Anne Cetas.