"Good Mood Helps Boost Brain Power in Older Adults"

Be good to your brain: Cultivate a good mood by loving your neighbor. Research conducted by folks from The Ohio State University, the University of Michigan, Cornell University, and Linköping University (Sweden) seems to point to that conclusion.

No surprises here. We are engineered by God to operate optimally when we love God and love others:

When the Pharisees heard that [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:34-40)

Just Purchased at Half Price

I always thought it was cool when Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit blogger, would simply note, "In the mail..." and then list a book he'd ordered.

So, here's my low tech version of that practice. Here are two books I picked up Half Price today.



I only paid two bucks each!

Barzun died this past October at the age of 104. He published From Dawn to Decadence, a history of the world from 1500 to "the present" (2000), when he was 92. That prompted this comment from Ann Althouse: "Imagine writing something that ambitious when you're in your 90s and still having more than a decade of life left."

By the way, I just noticed that "it was cool" to read Reynolds' blog posts about his latest book orders, even though Reynolds is still blogging and still noting his latest book purchases. I was going to change that phrase to the present tense until I realized there's a good reason for my putting it in the past tense: It's been ages since I read Instapundit. No editorial intended, just funny to note how sometimes your mind tells you the truth without you realizing it.

[UPDATE: In the interest of equal time, I should probably add that I haven't seen Chris Matthews' show since 2007. Our local cable provider, Time Warner, doesn't run MSNBC on basic cable. CSPAN 2 and 3 are also missing, along with ESPN 3 and ESPN U. C'est la vie.]

A Tale of Respectful Dialog and Unexpected Friendship

Here.

"How to Write a Worship Song (in 5 Minutes or Less)"

This cracked me up!


(Thanks to Pastor Paul "Ukulele Man" McCain for linking to this video on his blog.)

For Those Who Want to Dig Deeply Into What Lutherans Believe

This commentary on The Augsburg Confession is a classic and has been a help in my preparations for the sermons I'm doing on what it means to be a Lutheran Christian. I recommend it for those who want a scholarly look at Lutheran Christianity.

A Book for Those Who Feel They've "Bottomed Out"

My friend, Steve Sjogren, has a new book out and it should be great!

Steve and I became friends nearly two decades ago. He had started a congregation, Vineyard Community Church in the tricounty area of metropolitan Cincinnati and had started Friendship Lutheran Church in Clermont County, in Cincinnati's eastern suburbs, a few years later.

Even before we met, I got fired up with the possibilities for real, no-strings-attached evangelistic outreach through acts of kindness which Steve had explained in Conspiracy of Kindness, a book that still exercises a profound effect on my thinking and living as a Christian and on my leadership as a pastor.

You can imagine then, how shocked I was when out of the blue one night, I found an email from Steve, suggesting that we get together over lunch. He wanted to help me and our fledgling congregation. And he did.

I was with Steve during some of the horrors he endured after nearly losing his life on a hospital operating table for what was supposed to be a routine gall bladder surgery. Months and years of recuperation followed, although it should be said that even a substantially debilitated Steve Sjogren found more new ways to serve God and spread the gospel than most pastors without such limitations could ever do.

Some of the horrors went through back then are described in Heaven's Lessons and I'm looking forward to the learning from the lessons my friend learned at that time.

You won't find a finer people of God or ones more committed to Christ than are Steve Sjogren and his wife, Janie. I am proud to call them friends! And I find that I am always learning more about what it means to follow Jesus from them. They are blessings!

Here's a preview of Heaven's Lessons:


 

The World Needs the Church and the Church Needs Lots of Leaders

Management, though a valuable and essential commodity for any organization--from the nation-state all the way up to the local church, is not the same thing as leadership. As John Kotter, professor emeritus of Leadership at Harvard University's Business School, writes:

...management is a set of well-known processes, like planning, budgeting, structuring jobs, staffing jobs, measuring performance and problem-solving, which help an organization to predictably do what it knows how to do well. Management helps you to produce products and services as you have promised, of consistent quality, on budget, day after day, week after week. In organizations of any size and complexity, this is an enormously difficult task. We constantly underestimate how complex this task really is, especially if we are not in senior management jobs. So, management is crucial — but it's not leadership.

Leadership is entirely different. It is associated with taking an organization into the future, finding opportunities that are coming at it faster and faster and successfully exploiting those opportunities. Leadership is about vision, about people buying in, about empowerment and, most of all, about producing useful change. Leadership is not about attributes, it's about behavior. And in an ever-faster-moving world, leadership is increasingly needed from more and more people, no matter where they are in a hierarchy. The notion that a few extraordinary people at the top can provide all the leadership needed today is ridiculous, and it's a recipe for failure.

Organizations need managers. But they die without leaders, lots of leaders who can shepherd ideas from vision to reality.

In my experience, the best leaders are first of all, servants. They're not people who bark out orders or, as the Brits say, "put a bit of stick about." Leaders know that even if they have the power of coercion over the people they've been called to lead, coercion is, at best, management. Leaders persuade, convince, inspire.

They're people who put their hearts on the line, have a passion for moving in a certain direction, and accept the probability of rejection and ridicule. (After all, it's always easier to be a lemming who goes with the flow than a leader who dares to call a halt to most organizations' suicide marches.)

And, in my estimation, anyone who tries to lead in the power of their own personality is crazy. I have come to understand the truth of what Jesus says to His followers "apart from Me you can do nothing" (John 15:8) and of what Saint Paul writes, "I can do all things through [Christ] Who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13). The very best leaders I have ever known, like my internship supervisor, Pastor Jim Petteys, and my colleague and friend, Pastor Steve Sjogren, have also been humble servants of Christ who have relied on Him above all.

I have jettisoned the idea that only certain types of people are meant to be leaders. Jim and Steve, for example, are very different in personality and temperament. But both, in their own ways, showed me what a leader looks like.

Here's the thing: Everyone is called upon to be a leader sometimes.

But most people shirk from leadership and here's why: It's a lot easier to master the techniques of management or, worse yet, to pretend that we have nothing to offer others, than it is to take the grief of leading the charge for a vision, especially if we believe that vision has been planted in our minds and hearts by God.

If you feel God has called you to lead, I share this simple imperative from Paul directed at those God has given the spiritual gift of leadership, given, as all the gifts are, not for the benefit of the recipient of the gift, but for the ministry of the Church and the strengthening of fellow believers. He says if you are a leader, then lead "in diligence" (Romans 12:8).

Everyone has different leadership styles. Few leaders are the flashy charming types who wow people. Some are plodders. But whatever your style, if you have been gifted by God to lead, whether you're a pastor or a layperson, if you have a passion for a ministry that will help the Church do its one and only mission in the world--make disciples--and you feel called by God to spark the ministry in your Church, then lead.

In his phenomenal book, Courageous Leadership, Bill Hybels wrote:

...the church has an utterly unique mission to fulfill on planet Earth, and...the future of our society depends, largely, on whether or not church leaders understand that mission and mobilize their congregation accordingly.

I believe that's true!

4 Disciplines for Lent

Lent is the forty-day season that falls between Ash Wednesday (this year, February 13) and Easter (this year on March 31), minus the seven Sundays that fall within those two days. (Sundays aren't counted in Lent's forty days because Sundays are always celebratory "little Easters" when we remember Christ's resurrection from the dead.)

Lent isn't a mandate from God. It's a completely human creation. With the other seasons and days of the Church Year, Lent is, in essence, a means of teaching Christians and those seeking to understand Christianity what it means to believe in and follow Jesus Christ.

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 people to love God and love others more faithfully. But like many good things, we human beings have had 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," I've heard people proudly announce.

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?

That includes things that aren't intrinsically sinful, but which we realize, keep us from living as followers of Jesus. For example, a learned friend of mine has, since the beginning of the year, been on a "book fast." He isn't buying any books, new or old, unless he needs them for his work. That's because he feels that his love for books, learning, and bragging rights of knowing something can sometimes block out God's priorities for his life. He wants to honor God, not feed his ego.

Are books bad? Of course not. But as Paul writes in Romans 14:12: "...whatever does not proceed from faith is sin." My friend understands that.

If 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 really meaningless from God's perspective. You're not undertaking these disciplines to honor God, but as part of a self-help kick.

And if your "discipline" is about trying to prove your "will power," forget it! A will that isn't bent to the will of God may make you feel like you've got something to brag about. But God isn't impressed!

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

The Ash Wednesday liturgy we use in my tradition mentions four disciplines most closely associated with Lent. There are many more, of course. But if you've never observed a Lenten discipline, these four might be ones you'll want to consider in 2013. But undertake them not 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.

1. Repentance. Repentance gets a bad rap. It's portrayed as a grim obligation in which we make ourselves miserable for our sin.

Sorrow for sin is part of authentic repentance, but the main words used in the Bible for repent tell a fuller story.

• The usual Old Testament word literally means to turn around, to change directions. When we acknowledge our sins, we turn away from our sins, which are thoughts, words, and actions that find us walking away from God, and turn back to God and relationship with Him. 
• The word usually used for repentance in the New Testament means to change one's mind. In repentance, we submit to God in order, in the words of an old Bob Dylan song, "change our way of thinking."

So, repentance entails approaching the God made known to all through Jesus Christ, then

(1) confessing our sins to God
(2) receiving forgiveness and the power for new living that belongs to those who follow Christ. 

Paul had both elements of repentance in mind when he encouraged believers to "let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:4). That means humble submission to the crucifixion of our old selves so that our new selves, recreated in the image of Jesus, can rise to life with God.

Repentance is a painful thing because in it we confess our sins, imperfections, and need of God.

But repentance is a joyful thing because it allows us to receive the reconciliation and new with God which Christ's death and resurrection make possible.

This is why when Martin Luther spoke of repentance, he talked about "repentance and renewal."

2. Fasting. We've already touched on this. Fasting can mean giving up those things that get in the way of our following Christ or living life God's way.

It may also mean doing without some things--food, hours on the computer or watching TV, going to sporting events, window shopping at the mall (a vice of mine which I used to indulge a lot)--that might keep us from prayer, worship, reading Scripture, attending to our primary relationships, or serving others.

This is why I always suggest replacing the thing from which you're fasting with a positive, God-honoring activity. 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 by, for example, scheduling to volunteer at a food bank on your fasting night.

3. Prayer. Prayer is conversation with God (see here). Of course, believers should always "pray without ceasing." But focused times of prayer, at set times each day, become 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 a monologue about our wants and our feelings.

If you're wondering what to say when it's time for you to pray, the so-called ACTS (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication) I first read about in a book by Bill Hybels and which I explain here is a good way to start.

And you can never go wrong with the Lord's Prayer, using its profound and exhaustive petitions as a skeletal framework for your conversation with God. (See here for Martin Luther's explanation of the Lord's Prayer found in The Small Catechism.)

4. Works of love. Jesus says that whenever we have cared for those the world regards as "the least of these...you did it to Me" (Matthew 25:40).

Caring for and serving others in Christ's Name is one way we can fulfill both the great commission of making disciples, because people who experience the love of Christ we share through our deeds of kindness will want to follow Jesus, too AND the great commandment that we love God completely and love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

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

Or, volunteering at a homeless shelter or a food bank.

It could mean participating in a kindness outreach.

Whatever the work of love turns out to be, if it's done in the Name of Jesus, 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 to the wider world. Forgetting ourselves through Christ has the byproduct of filling us with more joy and life than we could possibly derive from spending time worshiping at the altar of me. This miraculous transformation probably shouldn't surprise us because Jesus says, "Those who find their life will lose it, and lose their life for My sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39).

Now, if I've come across as some "expert" in all this, let me close by saying that I am a sinner in daily need of Christ's forgiveness and help to live as the truly human being I was created by God to be. If you share this trait with me, you might consider adopting a Lenten discipline this year. It could change your life.

[This was originally intended to be my presentation for the Saint Matthew Lutheran Church women's group tomorrow. But because the meeting has been canceled and presenting it at the March meeting would find us three months into Lent, here it is.]
 

This is a Tough Message

But it's also life-giving: He is rich who is satisfied with what he has.

Not So Much: Dodge's Use of God's Name to Sell Trucks

Yes, God did make a farmer. The farmer's name was Adam. Someone should have told the late Paul Harvey of that fact when he wrote his essay years ago.

But even overlooking that, I don't think that God's Name was given to the human race to sell Dodge trucks, as it is in the long-form commercial Chrysler unveiled during the Super Bowl, images of farmers accompanied by Harvey reading his essay, God Made a Farmer.

God gave His Name to us so that we can pray to Him, praise Him, and thank Him. Any other use of God's Name is useless and so, disrespectful.

There's a commandment for that: "You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain." (See here, checking out the Second Commandment and its meaning.)

Did Dodge violate that commandment with its Super Bowl ad?

God needs to judge that.

But if I were a Dodge executive and the idea for this ad had been pitched to me, I'm sure that I would have felt at least a little squeamish about it.

For all its invocation of God's Name, it's really about glorifying not the Maker of the farm, but the one entrusted with taking care of the farm...and those men who identify with Harvey's farmer, guys who perceive themselves to be rugged individuals, sometimes conquerors of the world who tough things out.

Like lots of advertising then, the ad appeals to our egos or our fantasies about ourselves. And it continuously invokes God as second fiddle in its paean to tough guys.

All for the purpose of selling us trucks.

Whether the Chrysler folks feel good about that or not, they'll have to answer for themselves.

But as for me, I am definitely not down with it!

The Christian Creed v. the American Creed

Among the reasons that, for all the lip service given to faith in our public life, Christianity isn't entirely at home in the United States is that the value most highly prized by Americans isn't the highest value commended by God.

If you ask the average American what the ultimate value is, the one thing for which they would be likeliest to fight to the death, I think the answer would be freedom.

On the other hand, though the Christian gospel--the good news of forgiveness and new life for all who believe in Jesus Christ--brings the ultimate freedom to people, setting them free to be the people God made them to be and not what sin, their own or others', dictates, freedom is not the ultimate value of Christian faith.

The ultimate value of Christian faith is love.

Christian love is self-giving love. It willingly divests itself of what the world knows as freedom in order to love others.

This is the love that Jesus gives.

The Christian gospel tells us that Jesus divested Himself of the freedom of being God in order to take on humanity and undertake love's greatest deed: God, unblemished by sin, submitting to death without resistance for His beloved, the human race, then rising to take an eternal kingdom, not for Himself, but for the benefit of all who believe in Him.

Christians are then called to live out the same sort of self-giving love. Paul writes in the New Testament book of Philippians:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:4-11)

Jesus has the Name above all names not because He lived and died for freedom, but because He lived and died and rose for love.

And He calls us to give His kind of love the ultimate place in our lives. 1 Corinthians 13:13 says: "And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."

When freedom is your ultimate value, you can become a monster: self-centered, ego-driven, materialistic. Make freedom your ultimate value and you will ultimately be enslaved by the things you chase as an expression of your freedom. You will be separated by a self-constructed wall from God, grace, and other people.

If freedom is your ultimate value, you might love, after a fashion.

But if God's love is your ultimate value, you also will be truly free.

And this brings up another reason Christianity doesn't entirely fit with our American culture. Americans are taught to believe in self-sufficiency, the notion that we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and that, if we decide to be loving, or free, or decisive, or whatever, we can make it happen.

But no Christian is taught to believe that she or he can resolve to be loving or anything else. Christians know that resolutions and good intentions won't change us. Only Christ can do that. That's why the apostle Paul writes in Romans: "I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate" (Romans 7:15). And later, "Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:24-25) Only the love of God, given in Christ, can set us free to be our best selves.

This applies especially to the ultimate value of love. We may learn over time to be loving by letting ourselves be loved by the God we see in Jesus, by submitting ourselves to no master but Jesus.

We open our wills to Jesus and let Him make us over into His image, including taking His love as the ultimate good in this life and the next. We cling to the words of John:

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 1:10)

There have been Christians imprisoned for their faith in Christ who were infinitely more free than the jailers who held them and had the freedom to go wherever they wanted. That's because freedom is, in the end, not about getting to do what you want to do, it's about getting to be the person the God of love sets you free to be through Jesus.

I love my country. But I'll take "faith, hope, and love" over "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." That's because in Christ, happiness has already pursued me. So has love. I don't have to go looking for it. I simply let Jesus Christ in. And that, by the by, brings freedom!

What Lutheran Christians Mean When They Say, "I've Accepted Jesus"

This from D.J. Lura's wonderful, What's a Lutheran, Don'tcha Know:

As a Lutheran Christian, it is OK to say you have “accepted” Jesus, but only in the sense that it is a passive acceptance.  Like being shot, you can “accept the fact” that you have been shot, or being caught in a tornado, you can “accept” it as happening to you; so it is when you are captivated by Christ (your old life is over).  You can accept, or receive, or recognize that God has claimed you.  Notice the difference, though.  God is the one working, deciding, choosing; not you.  God wants so desperately to be your God, and be merciful to you, that he finally won’t leave such an important choice up to you.  Instead, he calls, gathers, enlightens, and chooses by the power of the Holy Spirit when he sends you a preacher [a baptized, believing Christian] who announces “You are forgiven on account of Christ.”

The Ministry of the Church (The Augsburg Confession, Part 5)

We’re continuing our sermon series on what it means to be a Lutheran Christian, using what The Augsburg Confession proclaims about Biblical faith as our guide. Today we’re going to look at the Biblical foundations for Article 5 of the Confession. The topic is The Ministry of the Church.

But before we tackle that, I think that we may need to clear up any possible misunderstandings from last week’s discussion of justification.

The doctrine of justification boils down to this: We deserve condemnation, death, and eternal separation from God for our sin. Despite what we deserve though, God came into our world in the person of Jesus, took the punishment for sin we deserve, and then rose from the dead. Today, God offers forgiveness of sin and eternal life with God to all with faith in Jesus Christ as a free gift that we can do nothing to deserve or earn.

Faith in Jesus is foreign to our sinful natures though. So, even the ability to have faith or trust in Him isn’t something we can decide to have. Faith in Jesus Christ is a gift.

So, if even faith is a gift from God, the question arises, “Does that mean everybody will be saved?” If there’s nothing we can do or must do to be saved from sin, death, and hell and if life with God is a gift, does that mean everybody lives with God for eternity?

The short answer is, according to Jesus Himself, "No. Not everybody is saved.” After all, even when a gift is offered, it isn’t always received. That's why Jesus says in Mark 16:16: "The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned."

In Revelation 3:19-20, the risen and ascended Jesus is speaking to the members of a church of lukewarm believers in Laodicea, a city in Asia Minor, what is now known as Turkey. Jesus is disgusted with them. They’re nice people. But they compartmentalize their lives, keeping God in what they think is “His” place, while keeping Him out of “their” places.

Look at Jesus’ words in Revelation 3:19-20: “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten [In other words, if God loves you and you claim Him as your God, you can expect that He will sometimes discipline you and put your life back on the right track.] Therefore be zealous and repent [Turn away from sin and turn toward God. Now look at what Jesus says next.] Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him, and he with Me.”

Saving faith in God comes to those who acknowledge Jesus when He knocks. But Jesus does all the work. Faith happens when we hear Jesus calling to us and we say, “I’m here, Lord.”

But that leads to another question: How do the doors of people’s lives come to be open to Jesus? How do people come to saving faith in Christ?

Please turn to Romans 10:9. It says:

...if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved...[slip down to verse 12] For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek [or Gentile, meaning non-Jews], for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For ‘whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ [Now, please pay close attention here.] How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?...

The gift of faith in Jesus Christ enters people’s lives through the preaching of God’s Word about Jesus. Preaching about Jesus is how Jesus knocks on our doors so that He can give faith in Him to us.

“Wait a minute,” someone might say, “I learned more about Jesus from my mother or my father or a Sunday School teacher or a friend than I ever did from a pastor in the pulpit.”

If that crossed your mind, notice I didn’t say that the gift of faith in Jesus enters people’s lives through pastors. I said it happened through the preaching of God’s Word about Jesus.

If the only people in Christian congregations preaching God’s Word about Jesus are the pastors, then no Christian congregation is fulfilling the mission Christ has given to it.

The calling of every Christian is mentioned in 1 Peter 2:9. Peter writes: “But you [that’s you, if you’ve received the gift of faith in Jesus] are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, [God’s] own special people, [here comes the purpose statement] that you may proclaim [proclaim: The word in the Greek in which Paul first wrote this passage is kerusso, a word that is also translated as preach] the praises of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”

It is the call and ministry of every person who believes in Jesus Christ to preach the gospel, the good news of freedom from death and hell for all who believe in Jesus Christ.

Every believer in Jesus Christ is called to be a preacher because, whether in a chapel or sanctuary, in the waiting room of a hospital ICU, in a funeral home, at a gas station, grocery store, mall, gym locker room, on the job, or on a Facebook page, everyone we encounter every single day needs to hear about Jesus.

People who don’t know Jesus need to have His Word preached to them so that they can receive the gift of faith.

People who do know Jesus need to have His Word preached to them so that their grasp of the gift of faith in Jesus will be made stronger.

If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you are called to daily ask for the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit on how you can sensitively, lovingly, and persuasively, by both words and deeds, preach the Word about Jesus Christ to all the people you meet.

This is the ministry of the Church.

It is the only ministry of the Church.

As member of Christ’s body, the Church, it’s your ministry too.

We are to preach the Word about Jesus so that others have the chance to open the doors of their lives to Christ and come to faith in Him and so, have eternal life with God.

That’s what Article V of The Augsburg Confession confesses (page 13 of the buff and brown books in the pew racks):

So that we may obtain this faith, the ministry of teaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments [Holy Baptism and Holy Communion] was instituted. Through the Word and Sacraments, as through instruments, the Holy Spirit is given...He [the Holy Spirit] works faith, when and where it pleases God, in those who hear the good news that God justifies those who believe that they are received into grace for Christ’s sake. This happens not through our own merits, but for Christ’s sake...

(Sharing the Sacraments of Baptism and Communion are “preaching the Word of God,” by the way, because in the water, bread, and wine, God’s words of promise make the Word about Jesus visible to us. In these Sacraments, we can “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” More on the sacraments another time.)

God creates faith in Christ in people to whom Christians, including sometimes, even pastors, preach the Word about Jesus.

I was excited, but a little discouraged. I was going door-to-door on a fall afternoon in Cincinnati, telling people who would listen that a new Lutheran congregation was coming to their community and asking if they’d like to know more about Jesus Christ or this new church that hadn’t even had its first worship service.

I kept records. In the first month of doing this, I’d already knocked on hundreds of doors and i actually spoke with 1 person for every 60 doors on which I knocked. (None of this was an efficient way to start a congregation, by the way. But it's what I was ordered to do by the Division for Outreach of the ELCA and I dutifully followed my orders.) As I went from place to place, a lot of people I could tell were at home didn’t come to the door when I knocked or rang their bells. Rejection isn’t fun. But I kept going.

I walked up to one house where I thought I had saw a couple a few moments before, the woman putting up orange and black bunting because the Bengals were playing the next day.

I rang the bell. Nothing. No sound. I waited, counting off the ten seconds I would stand there until I trudged off to the next house. One-one-hundred. Two-one-hundred. I got to nine-one-hundred, when the door swung open. A woman of about 40 stood there.

A little startled, I got off to a slow start introducing myself and explaining why I was there. I handed my brochure to her. She looked at it and looked back up at me with piercing blue eyes. Little did I know that this was an appointment made by God.

Linda and her husband Bob had two teenage sons. They had never been involved in a church. But when Linda’s dad died unexpectedly just a few weeks earlier, the words from the Bible read at the funeral and the words about Jesus preached by the pastor had stirred something in her. So too had the words and cards of comfort from Christian friends who talked about the help they got from Christ when facing tough times in their lives. God’s Word about Jesus was being preached to her. She needed Jesus. She needed faith. God sent the church, including at that moment, me, to speak God’s Word about Jesus to her.

I didn’t read Bible verses to Linda. I just invited her to get on a mailing list through which she could learn more about Jesus and this new congregation.

Sometimes it takes people years of hearing God's Word from many different sources for them to really hear the Word about Jesus. It often has to be spoken in many ways by many different people: friends, family members, co-workers, pastors, before faith takes hold.

Most often, I find, people keep the doorways into their souls closed. They won’t let Jesus in. They're too scared of giving up their freedom, too frightened to yield control over their lives to Christ.

But sometimes, the doors swing open, Jesus walks in, faith happens, and a life is changed forever.

That’s what was starting to happen for Linda on that October Saturday in Cincinnati, Ohio. She didn’t work to have saving faith. The Church just did the ministry to which it was called and faith came to her door. And Jesus did all the work!

Tomorrow, you may have an appointment set by God with someone who needs to hear the Word about Jesus. They may not open their lives to Jesus when you invite them to worship, Bible study, a project of service in Jesus’ Name, or tell them how Jesus helps you in your life.

But, if Christians are heeding Jesus’ command to pray for people to preach His Word to those who need to hear it and if all of us in Christ’s Church will be faithful in preaching Jesus’ word, you won’t be the only person God sends to knock on their doors.

Just speak the Word about Jesus in your own way at the times God shows you and leave the results to God. That’s how people come to believe in Jesus.

That’s also the only ministry of the Church.

That’s your ministry.

May we all do it faithfully because sharing Jesus with others, it turns out, is a big part of what it means to truly be a Lutheran Christian. Amen

[This is the sermon prepared to be shared at both the 8:30 and 10:15 AM worship services this morning with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

You Know You're from Ohio If...

Love this shirt I got a while back. Click on the images to enlarge and be able to read more readily.

I love my Buckeye state!

"Gut Check: A Quick Audit"

Short, provoking blog post here. (Thanks to Marie Wikle for tweeting a link to Tony Myles' post.)

"I'm gonna swandive, baby, right into the irresistible future!"

"It's not about luck,
"It's not about fate,
"He's the Fisher of men,
"I'm gonna take the bait"
(Irresistible Future by Randy Stonehill and Phil Keaggy)

Amen!

4 Books I'm Really Enjoying These Days

9 Thoughts on the Angry Pastor and the Restaurant Server Who Went Viral

My buddy, Steve Sjogren, first alerted me to the image of a receipt on which a pastor refused to leave a tip because she already gave 10% to God. He suggested I might want to blog on the story.

Since then, I've learned more of the details:

A Friday night meal at Applebee’s resulted in more than either the customer or a waitress working that night bargained for after a pastor’s refusal to pay a tip was shared online.

Though the embarrassed patron has apologized for her actions, the old adage of the customer always being right may have some truth to it, as the waitress who posted photo evidence of the tip snub lost her job for doing so.

The trouble began last Friday, when Pastor Alois Bell went to the local chain restaurant with several others following a service at Truth in the World Deliverance Ministries.

When the bill came, she did not include a tip on the signed copy of her receipt. She did, however, include the reason why.

“I give God 10 [percent],” the note on the receipt read. “Why do you get 18?”

The waitress, who has been identified only as Chelsea by The Consumerist, posted a picture of the note on the popular user-powered news site Reddit, along with the caption, “My mistake sir, I’m sure Jesus will pay for my rent and groceries.”

“I originally posted the note as a lighthearted joke,” she told The Consumerist. “I thought the note was insulting, but it was also comical. I posted it to Reddit because I thought other users would find it entertaining.”

Her post instantly got the attention of other users, and eventually the news media. The popular story also got back to its source – Bell – on Wednesday, though she was less amused than others who had seen it before her. She called the Applebee’s where she had eaten to voice her frustration over the sharing of the image, which includes her signature.

Chelsea was fired by managers at the restaurant following the call, despite reportedly being a model employee before this incident...


In an interview with The Smoking Gun, Bell apologized for her actions, which she described as “lapse in [her] character and judgment,” adding that she did leave a $6 cash tip on the table for the waitress who served them that night – who was not Chelsea.

“My heart is really broken,” she was quoted as saying. “I’ve brought embarrassment to my church and ministry.”

Is billing customers 18% for tips a good policy? Probably not and probably not smart either. While many restaurant patrons are no doubt cheap, inconsiderate of the hard work done by servers and other restaurant personnel, a customer alienated because of a set charge for tips is not likely to return, meaning no business and no tips.

Was Applebee's right in firing the server? Probably. Whether it was in the company manual or not, she seems to have willfully violated the privacy of another person for what she characterizes as a lighthearted prank. It hardly seems that.

Was the pastor wrong to refuse to pay the tip and to do so invoking both God and her calling as a pastor? I feel so. I also think that she was right to apologize.

Here's a look at the receipt and Pastor Bell's note.

The entire incident evokes all sorts of thoughts and feelings from me.

1. Let's start with the anger seen in the question, "I give God 10%, why do you get 18" and in the scratches through the levied tip amount.

Anger in itself is not a sin. Jesus, God in the flesh, got angry. (More on that later.) And Ephesians 4:26 tells Christians: "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger."

The takeaway from that passage? If you're angry, don't use it as an excuse to assault another person, verbally or otherwise.

Instead, seek out the person with whom you're angry and, with the idea that you could be wrong, in part or in full, explain your grievance. Seek to get things resolved. (If that sounds like the way Jesus tells Christians to resolve disputes among themselves in Matthew 18:15-20, it should.)

Bell's angry note resolved nothing. In fact, it caused all kinds of problems, for her and for her server.

2. Scripture says that God loves cheerful givers who give "not reluctantly or under compulsion" (2 Corinthians 9:7). Pastor Bell's note made her seem like something other than a cheerful giver! The note comes across as saying that her offerings to God aren't given in grateful response to God for Jesus' death and resurrection, but an obligation she has to keep. "God coerces me to give 10% of my income to Him," she seems to be saying, "You can't coerce an even bigger percentage out of me."

I have to ask myself, "Do I ever unwittingly begrudge God the things I should want to give to Him simply because I know He loves me and I want to love Him back?" I hope not.

3. I feel that Bell mentioned being a pastor in order to give credence to her anger. The message seems to be, "As a pastor, I speak for God. Therefore it isn't just me who's mad at me, it's God too."

That might have carried weight with some people. It clearly didn't with Bell's server.

And here's a news flash for all pastors: Most people in today's society don't respect pastors. They don't regard pastors as authority figures. And most people think that the main thing churches and pastors want from them is money. Your being a pastor does not legitimize your anger! In fact, it should curb it. Not all anger is illegitimate, but its expression by pastors should be rare and thought-through.

If Pastor Bell's server wasn't a Christian, this was the lesson she took away from the pastor's scrawl: We Christians and we pastors are just as self-righteous, angry, and money-grubbing as many people say we are. From Pastor Bell's contrite response to the situation, I doubt that's the impression she wanted to leave with her server.

And I guarantee if you were a spiritually disconnected restaurant server who got dumped on like this by a customer identifying herself as a pastor, you wouldn't be very likely to wake up on Sunday morning and say to yourself, "I want the joy that pastor has. I think I'll go to church today!"

4. I'm not piling onto Pastor Bell here. She has apologized and I believe her apology. But there is a larger lesson here: If Christians or pastors want credibility for the faith we confess, we won't get it by coming across as bullies.

The gospel of Matthew says that the crowds who heard Jesus "were astounded at His teaching, for he taught them as one having authority" (Matthew 6:29). But what Jesus taught wasn't new. Or exotic. And He didn't usually push His "heft" around. Jesus was a servant. He wasn't even too proud to wash the feet of His disciples while telling all who follow Him to be servants, too (John 13:1-16). If God in the flesh served us, even dying on a cross for us, how much more should those of who bear His Name--Christians, we're called--be servants of others.

It's only in being servants, whether we're pastors or plumbers or presidents, that we Christians have any authority.

And, like Jesus, we're to only use our authority (read: the influence we earn through our servanthood) in ways that build people up, even the people we may have to criticize and to whom we may need to speak unwanted truths in love (Ephesians 4:15).

5. Is there ever a time when church leaders should get mad? If Jesus is any example to us, then we must conclude that there are times when anger and setting people straight is warranted. Like when believers who should know better turn their backs on the will of God, or treat each other hatefully, or otherwise sin unrepentantly.

But Jesus never "went off" on prostitutes or extortionist tax collectors. He never blew up on those who were known to have no relationship with God. Jesus always used kindness to lead the spiritually-disconnected to repentance and faith in Him.

On the other hand, Jesus often let some people have it, people like self-righteous Pharisees and temple money-changers who knew God's Word by heart, yet ignored it. His anger then, was aimed at the same purpose as His kindness, to call believers to repentance and faith in Him. For Jesus, anger was a tool expressing God's will and even God's love, not a display of self-indulgence.

Pastors and all Christians are better off to assume that most of the people they meet know nothing about the God revealed in Christ and do all they can to extend to them the same grace, patience, and kindness that Christ shows Christians every single day.


6. Let's assume for just a second that the 18% tip charge came at Pastor Bell out of nowhere. Was it right to just go off on the server?

The better path might have been to ask to speak to the manager about the restaurant's automatic tip policy (and still have left the server with some sort of tip).

Pastor Bell says that she did leave a $6.00 cash tip on the table after writing her note. That amounts to a 17.6% tip, almost the amount that the receipt had charged her in the first place. This tells me that she may have been trying to make a point that she didn't mind leaving tips, only having a particular amount put on her charge account.

I'm glad she left the server a tip. After all, "the laborer deserves to be paid" (1 Timothy 5:18) and most restaurant servers accept lower wages in order to be able to accept patrons' tips. It's not fair to hold a restaurant's policy you find unacceptable against a server who didn't set the policy.

7. In the Internet era, anything we say or do has the potential for going viral. In fact, our deeds can "go viral" even without the Internet, in the swirling cesspool of gossip. This is one more reason I often pray, "God, give me the right words and the right silences. Grant that everything I say, do, and am will bring you glory."

I can't tell you (and won't tell you for fear of it going viral) how often I've gotten in the way of God answering that prayer, not because God couldn't answer it, but because of my words, deeds, and thoughts, I refused to let Him answer it. In the Name of Jesus Christ, I repent for that.

8. Our actions can have unintended consequences for others. Chelsea, the Applebee's server, was, in my judgment, wrong to publish Pastor Bell's signed receipt on the Internet. But her getting fired was in part caused by Bell's ill-advised note. The server still bears responsibility for her action; no one made her send the image of the receipt out onto the Internet. But no note, no appearance on the web, no kerfluffle, no irate call from a violated customer, no firing.

If the server was going to publicize this incident, she would have done better just to post about it on Twitter without Bell's name. I know that the image of the receipt was more powerful than a tweet would have been. But the server would still have her job, while maybe sensitizing some who saw her post on Twitter to be considerate in tipping serving personnel.

9. A final thought: This receipt makes me wonder, "What are the ways in which I indulge my own anger or general sinfulness rather than stopping and asking God to control my thoughts, words, and actions?" How can I be more faithful to Christ while interacting with people in my everyday life?

Those are haunting questions, ones worth praying about.

Long Time Users of Violent Video Games Are More Aggressive

Previous research has shown a link between extended use of violent video games and increased aggression and anger by players. But now a new study conducted at The Ohio State University confirms it:

Brad Bushman is a professor at OSU, who teaches a course in violence in the media, and recently participated in the research project on violent video games.

"Violent video games make people more and more and more aggressive over time. They have a cumulative effect," Bushman said.

In the study, Bushman had students play violent video games over three days, then had them compete against each other.

"The winner gets to blast the loser with loud noises through headphones and the noise is a mixture of noises that most people really hate," Bushman said.

What he found was that the more someone played the violent video games, the more they made their opponent want to suffer in another game.

"These games decrease helping behaviors and they decrease feelings of empathy and compassion. For others, they make people numb," Bushman said.

Read the whole thing.

Video games, Netflix, and cable and satellite TV are all convenient babysitters. But are parents who fail to set limits on their kids' consumption of these things doing them--or society--any favors? Probably not.

Vladimir Putin, Boyz II Men, and How Rumors Gain Traction on the Web

Funny.

Mark Sheldon's Profile of the 2013 Reds Outfield

Very encouraging. And with Billy Hamilton percolating in the minors, the future looks bright in the outfield for the Reds.

Philips and Cozart Are a Great Middle Infield Combination for Reds!

Here.

Talk to Strangers

That's what Geoff Talbot says. I think that he's right.

Viewing the Old Testament from a New Testament Perspective

I'm reading New Testament scholar N.T. Wright's The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture.

I don't agree with everything Wright says. (After all, he says so much and, as a colleague recently quipped, Wright is such a prolific writer that he's at risk of not having a single unpublished thought.)

But The Last Word is definitely worth reading, especially for Wright's explanation of how the first Christians, proclaiming the crucified and risen Jesus, were forced to think through the continuities and discontinuities between the Old Testament and the good news about Jesus Christ that they were proclaiming in their preaching, teaching, and writings. (Those writings--the Gospels, the epistles, and others--became the New Testament, of course.)

The writers of the New Testament saw Jesus as the ultimate expression of Israel's "office" to be "a light to the nations" and the Church as having been grafted onto God's people by God's grace through faith in Christ (Romans 11). This view didn't rely simply on explicit "proof texts," but on the whole witness to God's character and intentions found in the Old Testament.

So, Wright argues that the "new covenant" God makes with the world through Jesus and given to believers today by the power of the Holy Spirit, isn't so much "new" as it is the definitive fulfillment of Israel's story. (This is perhaps the overarching theme of the Gospel of Luke and the other New Testament book written by Luke, Acts, by the way.)

After Jesus' death and resurrection and the giving of the Holy Spirit, some things about the faith practices commended in the Old Testament were no longer necessary.

As Wright would seem to say, this doesn't mean that the parts of the Old Testament we may today find strange or even alarming were "bad." Even those parts of the Old Testament we may think of as being no longer operative were inspired by the Holy Spirit and are part of God's Word.

But if you see the Old and New Testaments as the story of God's efforts to save the human race from ourselves, our sin, and death, you see that the Old Testament presents the beginning of God's efforts: After the fall of Adam and Eve, God set out on the long journey to first, create a people--the Jews--who would bear witness of Him and learn to live with His undeserved grace and often deserved chastening, all with the idea of bringing His efforts to stunning climax on the first Easter, then ushering in the moment when the Church would hit the streets (and the byways) with the news that God so loved the world, He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him will not perish, but have eternal life with God!

Wright uses the analogy of a journey to explain the Bible's continuing story and how, with the unfolding of this story, some aspects, once critical to the journey, were no longer essential:

When travelers sail across a vast ocean and finally arrive on the distant shore, they leave the ship behind and continue over land, not because the ship was no good, or because their voyage had been misguided, but precisely because both ship and voyage had accomplished their purpose. During the new dry-land stage of their journey, the travelers remain--and in this illustration must never forget that they remain--the people who made that voyage in that ship.

An argument that gets made against orthodox Lutherans like me is that we are literalists about the Bible. Setting up this straw man, advocates of revisionism then set out to demolish it with all sorts of references to strange and foreboding laws from the book of Leviticus. "If you don't support everything commanded in Leviticus," they ask, "how can you be so inflexible about upholding the ten commandments as God's irrevocable will for the human race? The commandments are in the Old Testament, too, you know. Aren't you throwing out some of the Bible and keeping the parts you like?"

No, in fact, that's not what I'm doing. Nor is it what any other advocate of confessional, orthodox Lutheran Christianity that I know of, like Carl Braaten, is doing either.

First of all, speaking for myself, I'm not a Biblical literalist. I don't believe, for example, that trees, rocks, birds, or mountains actually praise God. Yet there are passages of Scripture that speak of these sorts of things. There are many different genres of literature: history, poetry, proverbs, and so on.

But I do believe, as Martin Luther put it, in paying attention to the plain sense of Scripture. For example, when the Old Testament writers repeatedly affirm that there is one God, they plainly mean it. And when the New Testament writers say that Jesus was born of a virgin, was sinless God-enfleshed, died on a cross, and rose from the dead, they plainly mean what they confess. To see these kinds of affirmations being made in Scripture is not to be a literalist, but one who takes the Scripture to mean what it means to affirm as factual.

Second, I believe in taking my cues from what the New Testament writers who, as Wright points out, while not thinking that they were composing "the New Testament," did believe that they were producing a definitive account of God's definitive self-disclosure in Jesus. They believed that some of what was in the Old Testament, while still God's Word, weren't to be carried any further in the journey of salvation.

That's why the preacher of Hebrews opens his sermon:

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. (Hebrews 1:1-2)

And John could write:

The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth through Jesus Christ. (John 1:17)

Jesus didn't repudiate the Old Testament. As He said, "For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished" (Matthew 5:18). But Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament, meaning that everything that God had been aiming for in calling together His people, Israel, culminates perfectly in Jesus, true God and true human, a son of Israel, the Lord of Israel, the Lord of heaven and earth.

That means that some parts of the Old Testament journey are no longer relevant. For example, it's no longer necessary to offer sacrifices for sin. Jesus is the definitive sacrifice for sin (Hebrews 9:28, 1 Peter 3:18), the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

This sacrifice is so definitive that the risen Jesus could say of Himself:

The one who believes [in Christ] and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe [in Christ] will be condemned (Mark 16:16).

Unlike Wright, I believe that the New Testament, in conveying the continuities between the Old and New Testaments, between faith in the Old Testament era and faith today, allows us to discern the three types of Old Testament law that Philip Melanchthon describes in his explanation of justification  in The Apology to the Augsburg Confession:

1. sacrificial/ritual law
2. civil law
3. moral law

Since Christ is the once-for-all-time sacrifice for sin, the benefits of which are given to all who trust in Christ and His promises, Old Testament sacrificial law is no longer needed.

Since the kingdom of God isn't confined to a particular place--and, in fact, is eternal--the civil laws God gave for the operation of Israel in its promised land is also no longer needed.

But the moral law, embodied in the ten commandments and related commands sprinkled throughout the Old Testament, are still valid. They serve three purposes to us today:

1. As a hedge on our inborn impulse to self-centered behavior (original sin). God's law, the Bible says, is written on our hearts. Even those with no knowledge or respect for God have some sense of how we are to relate to others. Without the law written on human hearts, the world would be an even more tragically sinful place than it is.
2. As a mirror that allows us to see our true distance from God, a tool God can use to drive us to Christ when we learn that Christ died for sinners and gives new life to those who believe in Him.
3. As a guide for those who, knowing that they are saved from sin and death by Christ, want to express their thanks to God in their daily lives.

As I say, Wright doesn't agree with this Lutheran view of God's Old Testament law. Yet, I think its validity is revealed in how the New Testament deals with those "continuities and discontinuities" that Wright so well explains.

If only for the stimulation he may give a Christian to think about these issues, I highly recommend The Last Word.

That "Presidential Grub" is Resilient Stuff

Ann Althouse makes it plain that she thinks departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was shooting less than straight when she said that isn't presently inclined to run for the presidency in 2016. Althouse asked her readers to "assess the degree of [baloney]" (my translation) in Clinton's statement.

But I don't think one can assess Clinton too much blame for being disingenuous about her White House ambitions.

For one thing, even in this era of "it's campaign time all the time," it's not "nice" to admit wanting to be President when crews are still cleaning up after the most recent Inauguration, even though those who run without craving the office like cocaine are dismissed for lacking "fire in the belly."

On top of that she's got people still fanning the flames of her presidential ambition addiction. It doesn't need much encouragement.

Nor would the ambitions of anyone under the age of 80 who has ever had the presidency clearly in their sights, within reasonable reach. (Sometimes it doesn't even need to have been in "reasonable reach." Remember Harold Stassen?) Lincoln once observed, “No man knows, when that Presidential grub gets to gnawing at him, just how deep in it will get until he has tried it."

I'm guessing, no woman knows either.

Sometimes It's About Being at the Right Place at the Right Time

This observation by NPR political guy Ken Rudin made me chuckle:

Ken Rudin

It took John Kerry 25 years to become Massachusetts' senior senator. It took Elizabeth Warren 3 weeks.

No Excuse for Boredom

As you can imagine, I got a particular charge out of reading this post by my son over on Facebook today. I still believe that there's no excuse for boredom.

My dad always told me that "only the boring are bored." Such thoughts have been confirmed by a lyric from a song by "They Might Be Giants Song" which declares, "Now it's over, I'm dead, and I haven't Done anything that I want / Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do." Then I recently saw this:

When Sin Happens

Sin happens any time we use a gift from God in the wrong way, at the wrong time, for the wrong reason, or with the wrong person.

Sin is like opening a gift meant for someone else (things like their life, their property, sexual intimacy God has reserved for their spouse) and taking its contents for ourselves.

Lose Myself

In the absence of a video for the song, Lose Myself, from TobyMac's LP, Eye on It, here's one created by a fan. Great song!



"[Jesus] called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it." (Mark 8:34-35)

Leadership Lessons from Lincoln

Mark Roberts writes: "I find it fascinating the extent to which Lincoln’s leadership of our nation was directly related to his leadership of himself."

The same was true of Washington and Eisenhower. You will not long lead others if you cannot lead yourself. And, I would add, you're not likely to be able to lead yourself for positive, worthy ends unless you're following Christ.

There Are No Hopeless Cases

God can give new life and fresh starts to anyone.

Why?

The Islamists presumably want to go back to some pristine Islamic past. So why would they set ablaze manuscripts from that past? In the end, I suppose, all radical political -ists have no ideology or religion other than their two deities: nihilism and winning.

Ever Hear of a Country Trying to Hurt Its Image Abroad?

This made me chuckle.

"The Most Important Aspect of Leadership"

What is it? Check out this post by John Schroeder, inspired a piece written by Mark Roberts.

I've been reading the blogs of these two men for a long while now and had the privilege of spending time with them at the first GodBlogCon in 2005.

5 Things God Wants You to Know About Sex, Plus 1 He Wants You to Know About Forgiveness

"You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act--that is, to watch a girl undress onstage," C.S. Lewis, friend of J.R.R. Tolkien and creator of The Chronicles of Narnia, wrote.

"Now suppose," Lewis went on, "you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally [strange]* about the state of the sex instinct among us?"

That question, written for a series of radio talks the English writer gave on the BBC that later became Mere Christianity, speaks with equal power to us today when, if anything, the obsession with things sexual has only increased.

I think it's time to consider what God has to say about sex. So, just to introduce this subject, I'm going to arbitrarily present you with 5 things God wants you to know about sex. (Plus 1 thing God wants you to know about forgiveness.)

Here we go...

1. God invented the sexes. Genesis 1:26-27 tells that the trinitarian God (one God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) had a conversation with Himself in which He said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness...So God created humankind in His image...male and female He created them."

2. God invented sexual intimacy for marriage between a wife and her husband.

Sexual intimacy is the way these two different but complementary bearers of Gods image seal the oneness of their marriage.

In Genesis 2:24, we're told: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh."

Many centuries later, when God came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ, He underscored God's intent that sexual intimacy was to be an act between a man and a woman who are married. He said, "Have you not read [in Genesis] that the one who made them at the beginning [God] 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?" (Matthew 19:4-5)

3. God invented sexual intimacy as a means by which husbands and wives physically affirm their oneness, give each other pleasure, and, sometimes, produce children.

In the Old Testament, a woman named Sarah, long after she'd gone through menopause, hears God tell her husband Abraham that she will give birth to a son, who will become the ancestor of many nations. Sarah laughs and asks, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?" (Genesis 18:12)

I once asked a Hebrew scholar of the Old Testament, a Lutheran who received his doctorate from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and he confirmed that, in the original Hebrew in which Sarah's words are rendered in the Old Testament, the pleasure to which Sarah referred included the pleasure of intimacy with her husband and the physical pleasure to which such intimacy can lead, as well as the pleasure of bearing a child.

By the way, Sarah did again enjoy pleasure with her husband, both in their sexual intimacy and in the birth of their son, Isaac.

4. People who engage in sexual intimacy outside of marriage are stealing a blessing from God that He intended only for a husband and a wife who, before witnesses, declare in the presence of God, to build their lives on Him.

God views every act of sexual intimacy apart from the marriage bed of a husband and wife as theft, in much the same way that He regards murder as stealing a life that He has given or every use of His Name for anything other than prayer, praise, or thanksgiving to Him as a theft of His good name. The New Testament calls sex outside of marriage fornication and sees it as a violation of the Sixth Commandment, "You shall not commit adultery."

Like all the sins enumerated in the Ten Commandments, God's moral law, the punishment for violation of this command as a sin, is eternal separation from God.

Sexual intimacy is like fireworks: Great when set off at the right times; worthless and even dangerous when used under other conditions.

5. Living together is not an option for those who want to follow the God we know in Jesus Christ into forgiveness for sin and everlasting life with God.

"I see so much divorce or I've been hurt before," people planning on moving in with someone tell me. "Moving in together helps us to learn if we're compatible."

That's about the dumbest thing I have to hear people tell me as a pastor!

Living together will give you no idea about how compatible your prospective marriage will be or how long it will last. In fact, data I've run across from time to time reveals that married couples who started out living together have higher divorce rates than those who wait to take up residence together after they've said, "I do."***

There's a simple reason for that: When you're shacking up, there's always a net.

Until you commit yourself publicly, under God, with a dedication to building your marriage on God, you can always bug out.

Getting married is a bit like what my friends and I would do when we were kids. We'd find a good place to play ball and some scaredy-cat would say, "I don't think we can play there." That's when one of us would take all the balls, bats, and ball gloves we had and fling them far over the fence. Now, we were either going to see things out by climbing over the fence and playing ball on the lot or just leave everything behind.

Of course, couples should spend time getting to know one another before saying, "I do." But sexual intimacy is a gift God wants to be reserved for the married.

It's only after you've committed yourself in marriage to the other person that you are all-in. No amount of "playing house" will simulate marriage.

And why would you want to accept anything less than marriage anyway? When God wants to give you a Porsche, why would you settle for a Gremlin?

6. BONUS POINT: God can forgive any sin. If you've already had sex outside of marriage, God is willing to forgive the sin of any who want to turn away from (what the Bible calls repent) for a sin and turn to the God we meet in Jesus Christ. (Turning to Christ, repenting, by the way, is a continuous struggle even for the most seasoned Christians I have known, including me.)

If you're already living with someone in a sexual relationship, I urge you to move away from one another now, even if you're engaged to be married.

It will help you to see that sexual intimacy isn't just something you do to punctuate a night out or a night with seemingly nothing else to do. You will be restoring sexual intimacy to its proper place as total giving of a husband to a wife and of a wife to a husband that God intended it to be, no holding back.

Almost everyone is blessed with the physical capacity for a sex life. But just as you should only eat food when you're hungry or use God's Name when you're speaking to Him, for Him, or about Him,  sexual intimacy is only for people in marriages between husbands and wives. Any other use of this precious gift is dissing the God Who created the gift. My guess is that you don't want to do that.

*Lewis's original word here was queer. But he used the term in 1952, long before it became commonplace to use it for anything other than an adjective for strange.

**Probably not uncoincidentally, the explosion of our culture-wide sexual-obsessions has been accompanied by a similar almost grotesquely pornographic interest in food, if shows like The United States of Bacon on the Food Channel, of which my wife and I caught about five minutes the other night before being so grossed out, we turned off the TV. What was a farfetched absurdity to Lewis in 1952--lust for food--is a craving obsession in 2013, it seems.

***I couldn't care less about marriage licenses, by the way. As an added service to couples whose weddings I perform, I fill out the state paperwork. But frankly, I think the state ought to get completely out of the marriage business. So, my arguments in favor of marriage have nothing to do with the often and rightly dismissed, "piece of paper." When I talk about marriage here hasn't got a thing to do with any piece of paper!

What Is 'Justification'? (Augsburg Confession, Part 4)

Have you ever had to prove yourself to somebody?

Maybe it was a teacher or a coach.

Or the relative you disappointed, the woman you were trying to woo, or the man you loved.

Maybe it was an old boss or the person you wanted to be your new boss.

When you want to prove yourself to someone, you work hard at it. You put in more effort, extra hours, all for the sake of winning over a person whose approval or disapproval stands between who you are and who you want to become.

In fact, it seems like much of our lives can be spent, in one way or another, doing things to justify our existences, doing things to prove our value. That fact about our lives is either going to make the message of today’s sermon deeply upsetting or the most freeing word you’ve ever heard! Here's a preview of what's to follow: You don't have a thing to prove!

In the sermon series in which we're involved now we’re considering the question, “What is a Lutheran Christian?” To find the answer, we’re looking at one of the basic statements of faith produced by the Lutheran movement, The Augsburg Confession, written by Martin Luther’s colleague, Philipp Melanchthon back in 1530.

Today, we look at what both the New Testament and Article 4 of the Confession call, “justification.” Luther said that on this article, the Church “stands or falls.” Lutherans have always believed that justification is “the chief article of our faith.” Justification is at the center of Biblical Christianity.

So, what is justification? Two weeks ago, we talked about Article 2 of the Confession, the one dealing with original sin. We said that original sin is the lack of trust in God and love for others with which we are born. Like David in Psalm 51:5, we all, if we’re honest, can say, “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.”

The Greek New Testament words for guilty, justify, justification, and even righteousness are borrowed from the language used about criminal justice. Think about how a legal system works: A person is accused of a crime. A judge or a jury will either find him or her innocent or guilty. Justice, a word that sounds like justify, is done. A person convicted of a crime is guilty. A person found not guilty is acquitted; they’re justified in the eyes of the court; they’re innocent, right in the eyes of law, just as being righteous is to be right in the eyes of God.

But what hope do we have if we’re born guilty? If we come into this world alienated from God and have an irresistible orientation to violating the will of God for human beings as revealed in the Ten Commandments, what hope do we possibly have as we stand before God, the righteous judge?

The world, including most of its religions, answers those questions by saying that we need to get busy to win over God in the same ways we try to win over the people of this world: work, work, work.

But the problem with that answer is that from the moment you were conceived, you inherited a debt for sin to God so big that it makes the national debt look like chump change. Even if you had a million lifetimes to make things right by being a nice person, you still couldn’t pay off the debt you owe to God for your sin.

Our position is stated well in Isaiah 64:6: “...we are all like an unclean thing. And all our righteousnesses [all our violations of God’s holiness] are like filthy rags. We all fade as a leaf and our iniquities [our sins], like the wind, have taken us away.”

To the charge of sin, it must be said, each one of us is guilty. And the Bible makes it clear that there is nothing we can do to expunge sin from our souls and that God will not tolerate any particle of sin in His presence. There’s nothing we can do to prove ourselves worthy of salvation.

That’s just the way things would stay in all of our lives were it not for something that God does for us because He loves us. That something is called justification. So, what is justification? Please pull out the buff and brown editions of The Augsburg Confession you’ll find in the pew racks and turn to Article IV, Justification. It says:

Our churches teach that people cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works. People are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake. By His death, Christ made satisfaction for our sins. God counts this faith for righteousness in His sight...

Think of what that means: The Judge cast aside His robes, then volunteered to take our sentence--the eternity of separation from God we deserve--on Himself. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death, but Jesus, totally innocent God and man, took those wages and paid for our sins in full on the cross. The guilty can do nothing to make themselves acceptable to God. But God does all that for us through Christ. The apostle Paul explains it this way in Romans 3:22-26 (I’m starting at the end of verse 22):

For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus Whom God set forth as a propitiation [Propitiation is an act designed to gain favor.] by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance [in God’s patience] God has passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time [pay attention here, please] that He might be [both] just [that means, just in condemning us for sin] AND the justifier [the one who renders the verdict of  innocent] of the [person] who has faith” [in Jesus Christ!]

We are born slaves to sin, inheritors of death without hope of protection from our rightful condemnation and hell. But through His shed blood on the cross, Jesus redeemed or bought out of slavery to sin and death everyone who believes in Jesus. This is the greatest miracle God has ever done: The very Judge Who convicts us, justifies us by dying on the cross for us!

So, here’s a little test for you, just five questions, each with a single one-word answer. Feel free, Lutherans, to say the answers out loud. Ready?

What must you to become worthy of being in God's presence?

NOTHING.

What must you do to prove yourself worthy of heaven?

NOTHING.

What can you do to get the forgiveness of sin?

NOTHING.

What can you to earn everlasting life with God?

NOTHING.

What can you do to get God’s presence and help with you through the uncertainties of this life?

NOTHING.

You can do nothing to gain all these blessings because, in Jesus Christ, God has already done everything you need to receive them!

“Now wait a minute!” I can imagine someone saying. “It says we have to believe in Jesus. Isn’t faith something we have to do in order to be saved?”

We ask this because it violates our arrogant pride to take something for nothing, even from God.

It sticks in our craws to have to admit that, like every other ordinary human being in history, we’re garden variety sinners, in need of God’s forgiveness.

It gives our sense of self-sufficiency--the idea that we can be good enough and strong enough on our own steam--a firm smackdown from the God Who made us and has the final say over our lives!

But the fact is that even the faith to believe that Jesus Christ gives me forgiveness and eternal life is a gift I can do nothing to receive, or earn, or deserve. Turn please, to Ephesians 2:8. It says: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God...”

Even the faith we need to receive the justification that God gives through Christ is a gift.

You can not manufacure faith.

You can’t earn faith.

You can’t steal faith.

You can’t even inherit faith from your parents by being a dutiful pew-occupying Lutheran.

Faith in Jesus Christ is a personal gift God gives to us one person at a time.

Faith can only come to you when you stop “doing,” put down your dukes, and let God give you the faith that in Jesus Christ, God declares you justified, righteous, right with God. Innocent despite all the evidence to the contrary. 

So, what about good works?

What about giving food to the CHAP food bank; money for the world hunger efforts of Lutheran World Relief, funneled through the ELCA; health kits for the ministry of Lutheran World Federation; the prayers we offer for the missionaries of the World Missionary Prayer League; our sponsorship the little Ethiopian girl, Toiba Seid, through World Vision; and the things we do for southern Ohio through Lutheran Social Services?

Don’t our good works count for something?

Good works have a place in the life of a Christian. They’re a way of telling God, “Thank You” for the free gifts of faith, justification, and new life we receive through Jesus.

But our good works won't make us any more loved by God than we were when stubbornly refused to repent for our sins. Our good works won't make us any more redeemed than we were the hour we first believed. We’ll talk about the place of good works in Christians’ lives later in this series.

But for now, this morning, this week, let this simple truth soak into your hearts again:  

There’s nothing you must do to be justified by God.

There’s nothing you can do to be justified by God.

It is Jesus Christ Who has proven your value and your worth for all eternity. You were worth His death on the cross.

It is Jesus Christ Who justifies sinners.

Not you.

Not me.

Not our works.

Not being nice.

Christ has done it all.

Christ alone.

Thanks be to God! Amen

[This was prepared to be shared during both worship celebrations with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, where God has granted me the undeserved privilege of being pastor.]

[Although anything cringe-worthy, misinformed, or otherwise embarrassing to the cause of Christ in this sermon is solely attributable to moments when I wasn't paying attention to God's guiding, I did find D.J Lura's approach Article 4 of the Confession extremely helpful!]