All in good fun. This T-Shirt design cracked me up when I saw it in an ad on Facebook. Baseball is physical chess.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Sunday, May 15, 2016
If baseball was easy...
All in good fun. This T-Shirt design cracked me up when I saw it in an ad on Facebook. Baseball is physical chess.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Eugenio Suarez touches them all!
I was overeating today at Tank's Bar and Grill, when I saw this bomb by Eugenio Suarez of the Reds. He hit the ball pretty good, as Tony Perez used to say.
Geno provides the big blow for the #Reds Sunday. 💪https://t.co/GYN5XUprFX— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) May 15, 2016
In a rebuilding year...
...we will take this win today. Go, Reds!
RECAP: Suarez homer amid 5-run 4th inning boosts #Reds over Phillies. https://t.co/I0tQI59tdx pic.twitter.com/FEQmqLSKZM— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) May 15, 2016
Pentecost: The Holy Spirit and the Gift of New Life
Acts 2:1-21
Luke and Amber: Today’s message is for you. (But I hope that you won’t mind my inviting everyone else to listen in.)
This year, we switched the day when young people are confirmed at Living Water to Pentecost. It was on Pentecost that the Holy Spirit came to Jesus’ first disciples and empowered Christ’s Church to live in the freedom of forgiven sin and life with God and without embarrassment, to tell the whole world about Jesus.
This then, seems like a great day for instructed folks to be confirmed for several reasons.
One reason is that Confirmation is also called Affirmation of Baptism. And Baptism is when the Holy Spirit came to you, Amber and Luke!
Holy Baptism is a big deal!
Contrary to the lousy translation of 1 Peter 3:21 that appears in the New International Version, the version in our sanctuary Bibles, the Bible says that “baptism...saves you” [ESV].
In Baptism in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are saved from sin and death, our old sinful selves drowned in the waters of the baptismal font.
But our sinful selves are our inner zombies that, until we pass from life on this earth, will continue trying to pull us away from God. The devil, the world, and our sinful inner selves try to tell us that God is a wet blanket instead of our best Friend, that what we think of as “little sins” (though to God, every sin is equally horrible) are no big deal, and that you just need to be a nice person to get into heaven. Know this, Luke and Amber: Those are all lies and if we believe them, they will take away our eternal lives with God.
Thank God for your baptism!
It gives you a leg up in telling the devil, the world, and your inner sin self to get lost.
But today, and every day of your life, you have a decision to make: Will you rely on the God Who came to you in your Baptism or will you rely on those voices that urge you to break loose of God?
It all comes down to who you trust, the God you know in Jesus, or the voices, the people, and the world that oppose God.
Jesus says: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”
Today, you publicly affirm your desire to live your whole life and all eternity in the covenant of love God made with you in Holy Baptism.
There’s another good reason for having Confirmation on Pentecost Sunday. It’s only through the power of God’s Holy Spirit that we’re even capable of believing in Jesus.
We live in a bad news world--people treating each other horribly, wars, terrorists, and power plays. And that’s just the behavior displayed by little kids on elementary school playgrounds!
In a world filled with horrible news, it’s hard to believe in the good news that everyone who turns from their sin and believes in Jesus, God in human flesh who died and rose, can give us forgiveness, hope, purpose, and new and everlasting life.
The most we can do is say is, “Lord, I’m willing to believe.”
And you know what? God answers prayers like that.
1 Corinthians 12:3 tells us: “...no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.”
Amber and Luke, if you authentically want to affirm your baptism today and follow Jesus as you move into adulthood, the Holy Spirit will supply you with the faith you need every moment you live.
Today, Luke and Amber, and all of us who will confess God in the words of the Apostles’ Creed, resolve to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…”
Trust Him even when trusting is hard or life is hard because it’s exactly at these moments, when our faith runs into roadblocks we can't overcome that Jesus takes us by the hand and God's Holy Spirit builds up our faith the most! Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Luke and Amber: Today’s message is for you. (But I hope that you won’t mind my inviting everyone else to listen in.)
This year, we switched the day when young people are confirmed at Living Water to Pentecost. It was on Pentecost that the Holy Spirit came to Jesus’ first disciples and empowered Christ’s Church to live in the freedom of forgiven sin and life with God and without embarrassment, to tell the whole world about Jesus.
This then, seems like a great day for instructed folks to be confirmed for several reasons.
One reason is that Confirmation is also called Affirmation of Baptism. And Baptism is when the Holy Spirit came to you, Amber and Luke!
Holy Baptism is a big deal!
Contrary to the lousy translation of 1 Peter 3:21 that appears in the New International Version, the version in our sanctuary Bibles, the Bible says that “baptism...saves you” [ESV].
In Baptism in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are saved from sin and death, our old sinful selves drowned in the waters of the baptismal font.
But our sinful selves are our inner zombies that, until we pass from life on this earth, will continue trying to pull us away from God. The devil, the world, and our sinful inner selves try to tell us that God is a wet blanket instead of our best Friend, that what we think of as “little sins” (though to God, every sin is equally horrible) are no big deal, and that you just need to be a nice person to get into heaven. Know this, Luke and Amber: Those are all lies and if we believe them, they will take away our eternal lives with God.
Thank God for your baptism!
It gives you a leg up in telling the devil, the world, and your inner sin self to get lost.
But today, and every day of your life, you have a decision to make: Will you rely on the God Who came to you in your Baptism or will you rely on those voices that urge you to break loose of God?
It all comes down to who you trust, the God you know in Jesus, or the voices, the people, and the world that oppose God.
Jesus says: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”
Today, you publicly affirm your desire to live your whole life and all eternity in the covenant of love God made with you in Holy Baptism.
There’s another good reason for having Confirmation on Pentecost Sunday. It’s only through the power of God’s Holy Spirit that we’re even capable of believing in Jesus.
We live in a bad news world--people treating each other horribly, wars, terrorists, and power plays. And that’s just the behavior displayed by little kids on elementary school playgrounds!
In a world filled with horrible news, it’s hard to believe in the good news that everyone who turns from their sin and believes in Jesus, God in human flesh who died and rose, can give us forgiveness, hope, purpose, and new and everlasting life.
The most we can do is say is, “Lord, I’m willing to believe.”
And you know what? God answers prayers like that.
1 Corinthians 12:3 tells us: “...no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.”
Amber and Luke, if you authentically want to affirm your baptism today and follow Jesus as you move into adulthood, the Holy Spirit will supply you with the faith you need every moment you live.
Today, Luke and Amber, and all of us who will confess God in the words of the Apostles’ Creed, resolve to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…”
Trust Him even when trusting is hard or life is hard because it’s exactly at these moments, when our faith runs into roadblocks we can't overcome that Jesus takes us by the hand and God's Holy Spirit builds up our faith the most! Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
How the Holy Spirit Changes Everything
Acts 2:1-21
I wrote a special Pentecost message for the second service when Luke and Amber will be confirmed. But it didn’t seem quite appropriate for this service. So I made a decision. Even though I know you’ve all memorized my old messages, I’m presenting a slightly revised rerun of last year’s Pentecost message.
Pentecost already was an important day on the Jewish calendar when the day we Christians often call "the first Pentecost" happened. For Jews, Pentecost was the fiftieth day after Passover. While Passover celebrated ancient Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt, Pentecost celebrated the giving of the law, the ten commandments, by God through Moses to Israel (and, through him, to all the world) at Mount Sinai.
That may seem weird to us. We don’t like laws. They hem us in, keep us from doing what we want to do, control us. And some human laws can be unjust and oppressive, obviously.
But ancient Israel saw God’s Law, the ten commandments and the moral laws that stem from them, as good things, as blessings that marked out the boundaries of what they called shalom, a place of peace with God and neighbor and self. The Israelites even sang about God’s Law. “Oh, how I love Your law!” Psalm 119:97 says, for example, “I meditate on it all day long..”
God's people had a problem though: They loved God’s law. They couldn’t keep it.
If following God’s law was like staying on a paved road marked out for driving, disobeying it was like falling into a ditch of mud.
And like kids who have just taken a bath, Israel loved heading for the ditches of sin: the ditch of idolatry, the ditch of materialism, the ditch of wanting to fit in with others and ignore the will of God, the ditch of adultery and fornication, the ditch of false witness and character assassination, the ditch of self will, the ditch of thievery and false business and political dealings.
Life in the ditches leads inevitably to separation from God.
And to be separated from God, the Maker of life, is to be separated from life, to be dead.
Yet, like the ancient Israelites, you and I can’t help ourselves. We’re born ditch-seekers.
We can hear and know God’s law and even delight in it. But we cannot, through the force of our own characters or wills, keep God's law.
Our only hope is the Gospel, the good news.
The Gospel isn't some abstract story about love.
The Gospel springs from a particular true story, the true story of how God took on flesh in a particular human life. It’s the true story of Jesus, conceived by the Holy Spirit so that He would not inherit the sin that the rest of the human family inherits from our parents.
Jesus was the perfect once-and-for-all sacrifice for the sins of the world. Jesus rose from the dead and offers the benefits of His sacrifice--new life--to all who believe in Him as their God and Savior. That's the Gospel!
The new kingdom that Jesus died and rose to bring into being isn’t opposed to the law God gave through Moses. In fact, in some ways, Jesus makes God’s Law even more demanding than it is in the Old Testament.
“Do not think,” Jesus says in Matthew 5:17, “that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets…” Then He says in Matthew 5:20: “...unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Our situation would be hopeless were it not for the fact that Jesus Christ, the One Who delivers this stern message, has done for us what we can’t do for ourselves. He has obeyed the law. Perfectly. Jesus has kept the law perfectly and so, by His innocent death for us, has conquered the law and its stern verdict against every one of us! That commutation of an eternal death sentence is ours when we turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ as our only God and hope!
So Romans 8:1-2 tells us this: “...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.”
Those who are saved by God’s grace through their faith in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ are pulled out of the ditch of sin and death and set on the narrow path that Jesus speaks of in Matthew 7:13-14. “Enter through the narrow gate” Jesus says there. “For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
Jesus is the narrow path and there is life to be found nowhere else. In no legalistic religious system. In no psychobabbling fad. In nothing that this world has to offer. All of those wide and inviting paths lead to condemnation because, as they're all built around the idea that I can be good enough to warrant a pass from God, they leave us naked in our sin, worthy only of condemnation. When we follow Jesus, He clothes us in His righteousness.
All of which brings us back to Pentecost, recounted in chapter 2 of the New Testament boo of Acts. The first chapter of Acts shows us that the first Christians experienced how Jesus’ grace can change people’s relationships with God and with each other. Jesus forgave them for abandoning Him and denying Him on the night of His betrayal. Through the crucified and risen Jesus and their faith in Him, God pulled them from the ditches of shame and guilt. They were set right with God and learning what it meant to live in the kingdom of heaven.
But their minds, like ours, were still fogged by sin. So they ask, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” [Acts 1:6]
Jesus tells them that for God to pull them out of their fog, they needed to pray. Then, the power of God’s Holy Spirit, the power that created the universe, would come to them. That’s exactly what happened on the Pentecost of our second lesson.
Like the first disciples, all who today believe in Jesus and are baptized, receive the Holy Spirit.
Yet, the world is still in a massive ditch and it’s so easy for us to wallow in sin.
This side of our own resurrections, we will never be completely free of sin.
And, acting in our own strength, even when we think we're doing good things, we can only make things worse.
That’s why Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit gives birth to faith.
The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and drives us to the cross.
The Spirit also assures the repentant of forgiveness through faith in Christ.
And He enables us to be used by God to pull others out of their ditches.
As we submit our lives to the control and grace of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit can empower us to live differently. We begin to exhibit what Galatians 5:22-23 calls “the fruit of the Spirit,” things like “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” This is the life of the kingdom of heaven, the life of shalom, of peace with God, peace with others, peace with others.
The Pentecost crowd must have wondered how this kind of peace could come to them. So do we. How can we know peace in the midst of chaos? How can we have serenity in the midst of this world’s uncertainties?
Peter knew the answer to those questions, not because he was perfect or arrogant or intelligent. Peter knew the way to peace because like the other first followers of Jesus, he knew Jesus.
In Acts 2:21, the last verse in our lesson, Peter shares God’s peace with the crowd. Quoting from an Old Testament passage that used the word Yawheh, I AM, God’s Name revealed to Moses the lawgiver and which we translate in our Bibles simply as LORD, Peter commended to the crowd the One he and his fellow disciples had come to call, “Lord." He commended the Lord Jesus to them. Peter told the crowd:
You are saved from the gossip that tears you down, from the fears that haunt you, from the temptations that allure you, from the sadness that dogs you, from sin, from death.
To have Jesus is truly to have God’s peace.
Jesus Christ is in heaven right now at the Father’s right hand. But if you believe in Him and call His Name, you are not and you never will be alone.
The Holy Spirit has come to let you know that whoever calls on the Name of the Lord Jesus--when you call on the Name of the Lord Jesus--you are saved, safe forever in the arms of God, empowered forever to leave the ditch behind and walk as freed, redeemed, and forever loved children of God. Amen!
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
I wrote a special Pentecost message for the second service when Luke and Amber will be confirmed. But it didn’t seem quite appropriate for this service. So I made a decision. Even though I know you’ve all memorized my old messages, I’m presenting a slightly revised rerun of last year’s Pentecost message.
Pentecost already was an important day on the Jewish calendar when the day we Christians often call "the first Pentecost" happened. For Jews, Pentecost was the fiftieth day after Passover. While Passover celebrated ancient Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt, Pentecost celebrated the giving of the law, the ten commandments, by God through Moses to Israel (and, through him, to all the world) at Mount Sinai.
That may seem weird to us. We don’t like laws. They hem us in, keep us from doing what we want to do, control us. And some human laws can be unjust and oppressive, obviously.
But ancient Israel saw God’s Law, the ten commandments and the moral laws that stem from them, as good things, as blessings that marked out the boundaries of what they called shalom, a place of peace with God and neighbor and self. The Israelites even sang about God’s Law. “Oh, how I love Your law!” Psalm 119:97 says, for example, “I meditate on it all day long..”
God's people had a problem though: They loved God’s law. They couldn’t keep it.
If following God’s law was like staying on a paved road marked out for driving, disobeying it was like falling into a ditch of mud.
And like kids who have just taken a bath, Israel loved heading for the ditches of sin: the ditch of idolatry, the ditch of materialism, the ditch of wanting to fit in with others and ignore the will of God, the ditch of adultery and fornication, the ditch of false witness and character assassination, the ditch of self will, the ditch of thievery and false business and political dealings.
Life in the ditches leads inevitably to separation from God.
And to be separated from God, the Maker of life, is to be separated from life, to be dead.
Yet, like the ancient Israelites, you and I can’t help ourselves. We’re born ditch-seekers.
We can hear and know God’s law and even delight in it. But we cannot, through the force of our own characters or wills, keep God's law.
Our only hope is the Gospel, the good news.
The Gospel isn't some abstract story about love.
The Gospel springs from a particular true story, the true story of how God took on flesh in a particular human life. It’s the true story of Jesus, conceived by the Holy Spirit so that He would not inherit the sin that the rest of the human family inherits from our parents.
Jesus was the perfect once-and-for-all sacrifice for the sins of the world. Jesus rose from the dead and offers the benefits of His sacrifice--new life--to all who believe in Him as their God and Savior. That's the Gospel!
The new kingdom that Jesus died and rose to bring into being isn’t opposed to the law God gave through Moses. In fact, in some ways, Jesus makes God’s Law even more demanding than it is in the Old Testament.
“Do not think,” Jesus says in Matthew 5:17, “that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets…” Then He says in Matthew 5:20: “...unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Our situation would be hopeless were it not for the fact that Jesus Christ, the One Who delivers this stern message, has done for us what we can’t do for ourselves. He has obeyed the law. Perfectly. Jesus has kept the law perfectly and so, by His innocent death for us, has conquered the law and its stern verdict against every one of us! That commutation of an eternal death sentence is ours when we turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ as our only God and hope!
So Romans 8:1-2 tells us this: “...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.”
Those who are saved by God’s grace through their faith in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ are pulled out of the ditch of sin and death and set on the narrow path that Jesus speaks of in Matthew 7:13-14. “Enter through the narrow gate” Jesus says there. “For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
Jesus is the narrow path and there is life to be found nowhere else. In no legalistic religious system. In no psychobabbling fad. In nothing that this world has to offer. All of those wide and inviting paths lead to condemnation because, as they're all built around the idea that I can be good enough to warrant a pass from God, they leave us naked in our sin, worthy only of condemnation. When we follow Jesus, He clothes us in His righteousness.
All of which brings us back to Pentecost, recounted in chapter 2 of the New Testament boo of Acts. The first chapter of Acts shows us that the first Christians experienced how Jesus’ grace can change people’s relationships with God and with each other. Jesus forgave them for abandoning Him and denying Him on the night of His betrayal. Through the crucified and risen Jesus and their faith in Him, God pulled them from the ditches of shame and guilt. They were set right with God and learning what it meant to live in the kingdom of heaven.
But their minds, like ours, were still fogged by sin. So they ask, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” [Acts 1:6]
Jesus tells them that for God to pull them out of their fog, they needed to pray. Then, the power of God’s Holy Spirit, the power that created the universe, would come to them. That’s exactly what happened on the Pentecost of our second lesson.
Like the first disciples, all who today believe in Jesus and are baptized, receive the Holy Spirit.
Yet, the world is still in a massive ditch and it’s so easy for us to wallow in sin.
This side of our own resurrections, we will never be completely free of sin.
And, acting in our own strength, even when we think we're doing good things, we can only make things worse.
That’s why Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit gives birth to faith.
The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and drives us to the cross.
The Spirit also assures the repentant of forgiveness through faith in Christ.
And He enables us to be used by God to pull others out of their ditches.
As we submit our lives to the control and grace of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit can empower us to live differently. We begin to exhibit what Galatians 5:22-23 calls “the fruit of the Spirit,” things like “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” This is the life of the kingdom of heaven, the life of shalom, of peace with God, peace with others, peace with others.
The Pentecost crowd must have wondered how this kind of peace could come to them. So do we. How can we know peace in the midst of chaos? How can we have serenity in the midst of this world’s uncertainties?
Peter knew the answer to those questions, not because he was perfect or arrogant or intelligent. Peter knew the way to peace because like the other first followers of Jesus, he knew Jesus.
In Acts 2:21, the last verse in our lesson, Peter shares God’s peace with the crowd. Quoting from an Old Testament passage that used the word Yawheh, I AM, God’s Name revealed to Moses the lawgiver and which we translate in our Bibles simply as LORD, Peter commended to the crowd the One he and his fellow disciples had come to call, “Lord." He commended the Lord Jesus to them. Peter told the crowd:
“...whoever calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved.”Today, this week, the Holy Spirit can empower you to live each day in the assurance that, no matter how crazy, conflicted, marked by futility, sad, or even horrible and tragic the world may be, as you submit your sins, your hopes, your decisions, your family, your whole life to Jesus Christ, you are saved, again and again...from the law condemns us for our sin even as it shows us the will of God, from death, and from the devil.
You are saved from the gossip that tears you down, from the fears that haunt you, from the temptations that allure you, from the sadness that dogs you, from sin, from death.
To have Jesus is truly to have God’s peace.
Jesus Christ is in heaven right now at the Father’s right hand. But if you believe in Him and call His Name, you are not and you never will be alone.
The Holy Spirit has come to let you know that whoever calls on the Name of the Lord Jesus--when you call on the Name of the Lord Jesus--you are saved, safe forever in the arms of God, empowered forever to leave the ditch behind and walk as freed, redeemed, and forever loved children of God. Amen!
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Saturday, May 14, 2016
Emotionally Yours by Bob Dylan
"It’s like my whole life never happened
"When I see you, it’s as if I never had a thought
"I know this dream, it might be crazy
"But it’s the only one I’ve got"
Something So Right (Live) by Paul Simon
Sometimes even our most elaborately connstructed walls of protection are susceptible to an unsuspected attack of love.
Just Because
Place and Landscape of Italy https://t.co/7GQvASwuNU— ILoveItaly (@I__Love__Italy) May 15, 2016
Resurrection Conspiracy?
"[After the Roman soldiers who had been at Jesus' tomb and witnessed an angel announce Jesus' resurrection to several disciples, they went to Jewish religious authorities. They presumably did so in hopes that they could protect them from the wrath of Roman governor Pilate.] ...the religious leaders...came up with a plan: They took a large sum of money and gave it to the soldiers, bribing them to say, 'His disciples came in the night and stole the body while we were sleeping...The soldiers took the bribe and did as they were told..." (Matthew 28:12-13, 15, The Message)
Conspiracies always break down.
The lie that Jesus hadn't risen but that His body had been stolen, cooked up by the priests, who knew from the soldiers' testimony that Jesus had risen from the dead, couldn't be sustained. Conspiracies never can be. Someone always cracks. Someone always lets the cat out of the bag. So, it is with this conspiracy designed to suppress the truth that Jesus Christ had risen, hatched on the first Easter Sunday.
But the conspirators' lie contrasts with the message of the angel who met several of Jesus female followers earlier that day and the message of Jesus' resurrection carried from the tomb by those women. It wasn't a lie designed to keep people out of trouble. It was a truth that was bound to get anyone who believed and bore witness to it in trouble.
In spite of threats, persecution, ridicule, and the murder of believers though, none of the early Christian disciples "cracked."
Elsewhere in the New Testament, the apostle Paul, himself once a skeptic and later a witness of the risen Jesus, says that more than 500 disciples saw Jesus after His resurrection. None, that we know of, ever changed their story under pressure.
That's pretty remarkable when you consider that they had all pretty much fled from their fellow Jews and their Roman overlords or had stayed at a distance when Jesus was arrested, tried, and executed.
How to explain this sudden and sustained courage in the face of disdain and death threats?
It's this. They weren't in on a conspiracy to trick the world into believing that Jesus rose. There wouldn't have been anything in it for them--no power, no prestige, no wealth--to incite them to engage them in such a conspiracy anyway.
The powers of that time and place--the first century Judean equivalents of Church and State--and public opinion were against them and against their Messiah, Who by His refusal to fight and His acceptance of death, had offended some and disappointed others.
On the first Easter, a conspiracy was hatched. It's been exposed. It was the conspiracy of some power-hungry religious leaders threatened by the Savior of the world and some Roman soldiers.
On the first Easter, Christ rose and the evidence--in the courageous witness with nothing to gain by proclaiming Christ risen and in the lives of billions still being changed daily by following Christ--says that it really happened.
Help me today, Lord, to never turn tail and run, but to lift up the risen Jesus. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Conspiracies always break down.
The lie that Jesus hadn't risen but that His body had been stolen, cooked up by the priests, who knew from the soldiers' testimony that Jesus had risen from the dead, couldn't be sustained. Conspiracies never can be. Someone always cracks. Someone always lets the cat out of the bag. So, it is with this conspiracy designed to suppress the truth that Jesus Christ had risen, hatched on the first Easter Sunday.
But the conspirators' lie contrasts with the message of the angel who met several of Jesus female followers earlier that day and the message of Jesus' resurrection carried from the tomb by those women. It wasn't a lie designed to keep people out of trouble. It was a truth that was bound to get anyone who believed and bore witness to it in trouble.
In spite of threats, persecution, ridicule, and the murder of believers though, none of the early Christian disciples "cracked."
Elsewhere in the New Testament, the apostle Paul, himself once a skeptic and later a witness of the risen Jesus, says that more than 500 disciples saw Jesus after His resurrection. None, that we know of, ever changed their story under pressure.
That's pretty remarkable when you consider that they had all pretty much fled from their fellow Jews and their Roman overlords or had stayed at a distance when Jesus was arrested, tried, and executed.
How to explain this sudden and sustained courage in the face of disdain and death threats?
It's this. They weren't in on a conspiracy to trick the world into believing that Jesus rose. There wouldn't have been anything in it for them--no power, no prestige, no wealth--to incite them to engage them in such a conspiracy anyway.
The powers of that time and place--the first century Judean equivalents of Church and State--and public opinion were against them and against their Messiah, Who by His refusal to fight and His acceptance of death, had offended some and disappointed others.
On the first Easter, a conspiracy was hatched. It's been exposed. It was the conspiracy of some power-hungry religious leaders threatened by the Savior of the world and some Roman soldiers.
On the first Easter, Christ rose and the evidence--in the courageous witness with nothing to gain by proclaiming Christ risen and in the lives of billions still being changed daily by following Christ--says that it really happened.
Help me today, Lord, to never turn tail and run, but to lift up the risen Jesus. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Last 'Casablanca' Cast Member Dies
Madeleine Lebeau, the last surviving member of the cast of Casablanca, has died at the age of 92. Lebeau played the part of Yvonne, introduced early in the film as a jilted French expat in love with Humphrey Bogart's Rick Blaine.
In a subsequent scene, she walks into Rick's Cafe Americain on the arm of a German soldier. But when an underground leader seeking to flee the clutches of Nazi Germany, Victor Lazlo, played by Paul Henreid, leads the cafe patrons in singing La Marseillaise, Yvonne chokes back tears and reclaims her patriotism.
As such, she foreshadows a similar transformation on the part of Bogart's Blaine. Near the film's end, Claude Rains' police prefect, Captain Louis Renault, remarks, "Rick, you've become a patriot." Says Rick: "It seemed like a good time."
Lebeau's performance was affecting and, according to this piece from deadline.com, the tears she shed during the La Marseillaise scene were genuine. Lebeau, who was Jewish, and her husband fled from France as Nazi Germany occupied and overran their homeland.
She wasn't the only member of the Casablanca cast to know first hand about the savagery and antisemitism of the Nazi regime. Most notable among them maybe, was Conrad Veidt, who played the villainous Major Heinrich Strasser.
Casablanca is one of my favorite movies ever. I rarely pass up the chance to see it when it airs on TCM. Part of it is that the performance of Bogart, my favorite screen actor of all, and his costar, Ingrid Bergman, are perfect. No matter how they felt about each other personally, they convey the deepest poignance as two people who love each other and can never be together. (Though they know that they "will always have Paris.")
But, beyond Bogart and Bergman, the entire film deserves the label classic. The script, the supporting cast, the direction, the music, and the plot all combine to produce a compelling story of people running from a cruel madness, coping often with a cynicism which they drop before the bold idealism of Victor Laszlo.
Lebeau was an old woman when she passed and the world of Casablanca seems as removed from today as the Dark Ages. And yet, the movie continues to stir and people resonate to the astounding performances of Lebeau and all who made this a film worth seeing again and again.
Vive Casablanca!
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
[Thanks to @The_News_Diva for putting me onto this story.]
In a subsequent scene, she walks into Rick's Cafe Americain on the arm of a German soldier. But when an underground leader seeking to flee the clutches of Nazi Germany, Victor Lazlo, played by Paul Henreid, leads the cafe patrons in singing La Marseillaise, Yvonne chokes back tears and reclaims her patriotism.
As such, she foreshadows a similar transformation on the part of Bogart's Blaine. Near the film's end, Claude Rains' police prefect, Captain Louis Renault, remarks, "Rick, you've become a patriot." Says Rick: "It seemed like a good time."
Lebeau's performance was affecting and, according to this piece from deadline.com, the tears she shed during the La Marseillaise scene were genuine. Lebeau, who was Jewish, and her husband fled from France as Nazi Germany occupied and overran their homeland.
She wasn't the only member of the Casablanca cast to know first hand about the savagery and antisemitism of the Nazi regime. Most notable among them maybe, was Conrad Veidt, who played the villainous Major Heinrich Strasser.
Casablanca is one of my favorite movies ever. I rarely pass up the chance to see it when it airs on TCM. Part of it is that the performance of Bogart, my favorite screen actor of all, and his costar, Ingrid Bergman, are perfect. No matter how they felt about each other personally, they convey the deepest poignance as two people who love each other and can never be together. (Though they know that they "will always have Paris.")
But, beyond Bogart and Bergman, the entire film deserves the label classic. The script, the supporting cast, the direction, the music, and the plot all combine to produce a compelling story of people running from a cruel madness, coping often with a cynicism which they drop before the bold idealism of Victor Laszlo.
Lebeau was an old woman when she passed and the world of Casablanca seems as removed from today as the Dark Ages. And yet, the movie continues to stir and people resonate to the astounding performances of Lebeau and all who made this a film worth seeing again and again.
Vive Casablanca!
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
[Thanks to @The_News_Diva for putting me onto this story.]
Bible or Facebook?
It explains a few real thing too, probably. (By the way, I love Facebook. I just love the Bible more.)
"The New York Post reports that more people check their Facebook feed than read..." https://t.co/i793t6idg5 pic.twitter.com/s5xopNnJtJ— Fallon Tonight (@FallonTonight) May 14, 2016
Friday, May 13, 2016
Should the 2016 Rio Olympics Be Scrubbed?
A member of the medicine and law faculties of the University of Ottawa, writing for the Harvard Public Health Review, says the Rio Olympics should be "postponed, moved, or both, as a precautionary concession," giving five reasons.
1. "Rio de Janeiro is more affected by Zika than anyone expected, rendering earlier assumptions of safety obsolete."
5. "...proceeding with the Games violates what the Olympics stand for."
But big money--both that spent, committed, and anticipated--will likely leave these concerns, warranted or not, unheeded and not discussed.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
1. "Rio de Janeiro is more affected by Zika than anyone expected, rendering earlier assumptions of safety obsolete."
Rio de Janeiro’s suspected Zika cases are the highest of any state in in Brazil (26,000), and its Zika incidence rate is the fourth worst (157 per 100,000). Or in other words: according to the Brazil’s official data, Rio is not on the fringes of the outbreak, but inside its heart.2. "...although Zika virus was discovered nearly seventy years ago, the viral strain that recently entered Brazil is clearly new, different, and vastly more dangerous than 'old' Zika."
Phylogenetic mapping demonstrates that this particular virus arrived in Brazil from French Polynesia in 2013. Although the danger went unnoticed in French Polynesia at first, retrospective analyses now show that the risk of microcephaly increased by 23 to 53 fold.3. "...while Brazil’s Zika inevitably will spread globally — given enough time, viruses always do — it helps nobody to speed that up."
Later studies from Brazil now powerfully argue that the relationship is truly causal.
In particular, it cannot possibly help when an estimated 500,000 foreign tourists flock into Rio for the Games, potentially becoming infected, and returning to their homes where both local Aedes mosquitoes and sexual transmission can establish new outbreaks.4. "...when (not if) the Games speed up Zika’s spread, the already-urgent job of inventing new technologies to stop it becomes harder."
5. "...proceeding with the Games violates what the Olympics stand for."
The International Olympic Committee writes that “Olympism seeks to create … social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles”. But how socially responsible or ethical is it to spread disease? Sports fans who are wealthy enough to visit Rio’s Games choose Zika’s risks for themselves, but when some of them return home infected, their fellow citizens bear the risk too—meaning that the upside is for the elite, but the downside is for the masses.In the build-up to the games, we hear all manner of assurances about the healthfulness and safety of the Rio venues. (Although I don't think I'd want to participate in any of the water events.) But Attaran's points raise a whole added dimension of concern over the advisability of Rio as a venue for the Olympics and Paralympics.
But big money--both that spent, committed, and anticipated--will likely leave these concerns, warranted or not, unheeded and not discussed.
Mark Lane, JFK Assassination Conspiracy Theorist, Has Died
Here.
Lane was among the first of many people to follow who found it hard to accept that in 1963, a president couldn't be assassinated by a single crank with a rifle.
In this era of anger and gory violence as entertainment, such truth may be less difficult to swallow, though the necessity of sites like snopes and PolitiFact demonstrate that just because people have access to more information ever in history doesn't mean they don't find conspiracy theories alluring. For those who aren't picky about the truth, conspiracy theories offer convenient explanations of a messy, chaotic, and, yes, sinful world. But they're almost never true.
One reason for that is that conspiracies are difficult to sustain. Sooner or later, whether for money, or fame, or to avoid ridicule or even death, real conspiracies break down. Someone cracks. Clearly, Lee Harvey Oswald was JFK's killer and he acted alone.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Lane was among the first of many people to follow who found it hard to accept that in 1963, a president couldn't be assassinated by a single crank with a rifle.
In this era of anger and gory violence as entertainment, such truth may be less difficult to swallow, though the necessity of sites like snopes and PolitiFact demonstrate that just because people have access to more information ever in history doesn't mean they don't find conspiracy theories alluring. For those who aren't picky about the truth, conspiracy theories offer convenient explanations of a messy, chaotic, and, yes, sinful world. But they're almost never true.
One reason for that is that conspiracies are difficult to sustain. Sooner or later, whether for money, or fame, or to avoid ridicule or even death, real conspiracies break down. Someone cracks. Clearly, Lee Harvey Oswald was JFK's killer and he acted alone.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Thursday, May 12, 2016
'This is Not a Test' by TobyMac
Live each day!
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
'3 Ways to Be Instantly More Productive'
I don't know about you, but I'm busy every day. And at the end of every day, there are things left undone, all of which I hope and pray were the ones I should have left undone.
So, I'm always looking for tools to help me be more productive.
Number one for me is to begin my day with a Quiet Time with God and the Bible, a living breathing dialog with the living God. I note a qualitative and quantitative difference between the days I madly rush into my work, on the one hand, and those when I take the time to seek God's truth for my day and lay my needs before Him, on the other.
Martin Luther once wrote, "I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer." I can't match the Reformer for time spent in prayer. But I do try to begin each day in fellowship with God.
In an article on TIME's motto site, Lisa M. Gerry gives three simple techniques for becoming productive each day. They obviously represent the distillation of lots of other wisdom you've probably seen before, particularly that of author Charles Duhigg who Gerry cites, but I love it. And, doing maybe unforgivable violence to the short piece, I'm going to distill it.
The three ways to be instantly more productive [with my comments in italics], Gerry says:
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
So, I'm always looking for tools to help me be more productive.
Number one for me is to begin my day with a Quiet Time with God and the Bible, a living breathing dialog with the living God. I note a qualitative and quantitative difference between the days I madly rush into my work, on the one hand, and those when I take the time to seek God's truth for my day and lay my needs before Him, on the other.
Martin Luther once wrote, "I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer." I can't match the Reformer for time spent in prayer. But I do try to begin each day in fellowship with God.
In an article on TIME's motto site, Lisa M. Gerry gives three simple techniques for becoming productive each day. They obviously represent the distillation of lots of other wisdom you've probably seen before, particularly that of author Charles Duhigg who Gerry cites, but I love it. And, doing maybe unforgivable violence to the short piece, I'm going to distill it.
The three ways to be instantly more productive [with my comments in italics], Gerry says:
1. Ask yourself why you're doing something.Read the whole thing.
2. Think big picture. [We can't get lost in trivial distractions, even those that may be "good," that deter us from pursuing the overall purpose, whether it's as a parent raising a child, a CEO leading a company, or a pastor leading a congregation.]
3. Take control of one aspect of the situation--no matter how small. [How did the gnat eat the buffalo? One bite at a time.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
You can't claim to be a Christian if you don't believe in the Resurrection
"If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied." (1 Corinthians 15:19)
This past Easter, Jason Micheli, a self-proclaimed "tamed cynic," cited these words from the New Testament to say that, if the Gospel proclamation of Jesus' resurrection isn't true, the teachings of Jesus are meaningless.
Micheli's response to the pushback:
If Jesus wasn't raised from the dead, then all He taught about the new life, the power of surrender to God, and His being "I AM," Yahweh, God come to earth is nonsense.
The resurrection demonstrates that everything Jesus taught--about God, about love, about sin and repentance, about love and redemption--is true.
Jesus without a resurrection reduces Jesus to the status of a delusional crank and His teachings, inextricably linked to His death and resurrection, utterly false, unworthy of anyone's attention or allegiance.
People who claim to follow Jesus, based on the testimony of the Gospel writers in the New Testament, but reject the truth of their testimony about the Jesus' resurrection are guilty of a self-indulgence, the only purpose of which is to justify themselves on the bases of their own virtue. They try to square the circle: They'll take Jesus, but not the claim over their lives by a Savior Who tells us that, apart from the grace He imparts, we have no virtue, only death and separation from God. A Jesus Who does not rise leaves us as dead in this world as in the next: dead in our vanity, in the futility of our living, and in our death-dealing sins.
As Micheli puts it:
It's only when we trust in Jesus' resurrection that we can say that we follow Jesus.
Read Micheli's entire wonderful post.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
This past Easter, Jason Micheli, a self-proclaimed "tamed cynic," cited these words from the New Testament to say that, if the Gospel proclamation of Jesus' resurrection isn't true, the teachings of Jesus are meaningless.
Especially when it comes to Jesus’ teachings, I said, we’re off the hook if Jesus has not been vindicated by God through resurrection.Micheli got pushback from people in his congregation. As he tells it, he was told, "But you don't have to believe in the Resurrection to be a Christian. You can be a Christian by following Jesus' teachings." (This is something people have always said, but today even more.)
Micheli's response to the pushback:
Yeah, well, not really.He has a point.
Never mind the irritating fact that if Jesus was not raised from the dead then there’s nothing transformative and death-defeating about his teaching. It just got him killed. Death had the last word (and still does).
If God did not raise Jesus from the dead, then God did not vindicate Jesus’ life, his way of life.
His teachings.
So then there’s nothing special about them, they lead only to crosses.
If Jesus wasn't raised from the dead, then all He taught about the new life, the power of surrender to God, and His being "I AM," Yahweh, God come to earth is nonsense.
The resurrection demonstrates that everything Jesus taught--about God, about love, about sin and repentance, about love and redemption--is true.
Jesus without a resurrection reduces Jesus to the status of a delusional crank and His teachings, inextricably linked to His death and resurrection, utterly false, unworthy of anyone's attention or allegiance.
People who claim to follow Jesus, based on the testimony of the Gospel writers in the New Testament, but reject the truth of their testimony about the Jesus' resurrection are guilty of a self-indulgence, the only purpose of which is to justify themselves on the bases of their own virtue. They try to square the circle: They'll take Jesus, but not the claim over their lives by a Savior Who tells us that, apart from the grace He imparts, we have no virtue, only death and separation from God. A Jesus Who does not rise leaves us as dead in this world as in the next: dead in our vanity, in the futility of our living, and in our death-dealing sins.
As Micheli puts it:
To dismiss the Resurrection claim, which the evangelists believed whether or not you do, is to call them liars.It all comes down, Micheli says, to trust. If we're willing to trust in the validity of the Gospel accounts of Jesus' ethical teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, then we must also trust the thing on which all four of the gospel writers agree, that after being crucified, Jesus rose from the dead.
And if you think the evangelists liars about the climactic turn in their testimony, why in the world would you trust their prior testimony about the words and deeds of Jesus?
The disciples, after all, didn’t simply convert from one religion to another; they lived- suddenly- as if they inhabited a totally new world.
It's only when we trust in Jesus' resurrection that we can say that we follow Jesus.
Read Micheli's entire wonderful post.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
"Everybody complains about their travel problems...
...but nobody does anything about them."
That paraphrase of a quote from Charles Dudley Warner (who was never known to complain that Mark Twain got the credit for the witticism) summarizes a finding Mashable talked about yesterday.
But the Mashable article indicates that for many consumers, complaining (ineffectually) on the Internet is their first response to bad travel experiences:
Well, except for this:
They do that for one big reason, I think. There's a gratification they get from having "complaining rights."
If they addressed the right people with their concerns, the problems might get solved. What would happen to their righteous indignation, their self-justification?
People like that remind me of the lyrics from an old Carly Simon song: "Suffering was the only thing that made me feel I was alive..."
Of course, I'm not suggesting that everyone who goes the Internet bellyaching route right away is psychologically warped.
But I do think that people who forgo efforts to resolve conflicts they have (even with big corporations) are probably shrouded in a sense of impotence and insignificance. That's sad to me. (See the post that precedes this one regarding human dignity.)
Oh, and here's that Carly Simon song.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
That paraphrase of a quote from Charles Dudley Warner (who was never known to complain that Mark Twain got the credit for the witticism) summarizes a finding Mashable talked about yesterday.
If a vacation doesn't go as planned, consumers have a few options for getting some satisfaction, from avoiding a service provider in the future to demanding a refund.While I seldom write reviews of products or services online, I have been known to lodge questions or complaints on vendors' Twitter pages from time to time. I do this only after attempts to talk to human beings at the companies have come up empty. I've done this several times for myself and another person with AT & T. Their @attcares folks usually respond right away, sometimes with very good results.
According to a recent survey, however, travelers' favorite option is to complain. Not to the company that didn't meet their expectations, but to the world.
But the Mashable article indicates that for many consumers, complaining (ineffectually) on the Internet is their first response to bad travel experiences:
MarkMonitor surveyed 3,257 consumers in eight countries — including the U.S., UK, Germany, France, Italy, Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands — about booking travel online.In other words, people complain but nothing good comes of it.
About 42% of respondents said that when a vacation didn't turn out as promised, their very first response is to post a negative review. Another 35% said their first response is to complain to a licensing body, like the U.S. Department of Transportation or the European Union.
Meanwhile, 40% of respondents said they would try to get a refund first.
Well, except for this:
Complaining online about a recent booking experience is unlikely to get a traveler much more than (possible) catharsis, but it will likely help other travelers: 47% of respondents said they check online reviews before booking travel, according to Tnooz.Bellyaching seems to be a favorite pastime for some people. They prefer bellyaching--about lots of things in their lives--rather than trying proactively to address what it is that bothers them.
They do that for one big reason, I think. There's a gratification they get from having "complaining rights."
If they addressed the right people with their concerns, the problems might get solved. What would happen to their righteous indignation, their self-justification?
People like that remind me of the lyrics from an old Carly Simon song: "Suffering was the only thing that made me feel I was alive..."
Of course, I'm not suggesting that everyone who goes the Internet bellyaching route right away is psychologically warped.
But I do think that people who forgo efforts to resolve conflicts they have (even with big corporations) are probably shrouded in a sense of impotence and insignificance. That's sad to me. (See the post that precedes this one regarding human dignity.)
Oh, and here's that Carly Simon song.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Pope Francis: No one can rob us of our dignity, not even the devil
I'm a Lutheran Christian.
But that doesn't prevent me from saying enthusiastically that there's much I love about the Roman Christian who heads the Church at Rome, Pope Francis 1.
As part of a series of teachings on mercy, Francis yesterday delivered a homily about Luke 15:11-32. In those verses, Jesus' parable of the prodigal son is recounted.
In the parable, Jesus tells the story of a father and his two sons. The younger son, contrary to the customs in first century Judea where Jesus and His first hearers lived, receives one half of his father's estate, even before his father's death, then proceeds to squander it in often sinful ways.
Destitute and regretful, the younger son decides to return home and ask that his father hire him on as a servant, no longer feeling worthy to be a child of his generous father.
But before the young man is able to speak a word of remorse, his father has run to him with a welcoming embrace and ordered a celebration to begin.
In the last part of the parable though, we learn that the older son is less than happy about his brother's return and his father's forgiveness of the son.
The parable portrays how it is when we turn from God our Father and misuse the life that is the free gift of God. But it also shows how it is when, repentant and struck by the grace and generosity of God, we are able to return to Him through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus.
Some of what Francis said about the passage is recounted in this article:
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
But that doesn't prevent me from saying enthusiastically that there's much I love about the Roman Christian who heads the Church at Rome, Pope Francis 1.
As part of a series of teachings on mercy, Francis yesterday delivered a homily about Luke 15:11-32. In those verses, Jesus' parable of the prodigal son is recounted.
In the parable, Jesus tells the story of a father and his two sons. The younger son, contrary to the customs in first century Judea where Jesus and His first hearers lived, receives one half of his father's estate, even before his father's death, then proceeds to squander it in often sinful ways.
Destitute and regretful, the younger son decides to return home and ask that his father hire him on as a servant, no longer feeling worthy to be a child of his generous father.
But before the young man is able to speak a word of remorse, his father has run to him with a welcoming embrace and ordered a celebration to begin.
In the last part of the parable though, we learn that the older son is less than happy about his brother's return and his father's forgiveness of the son.
The parable portrays how it is when we turn from God our Father and misuse the life that is the free gift of God. But it also shows how it is when, repentant and struck by the grace and generosity of God, we are able to return to Him through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus.
Some of what Francis said about the passage is recounted in this article:
Our state as sons of God “is a fruit of love from the heart of the father,” the Pope said, adding that “it doesn’t depend on our merits or our actions, and therefore no one can take it away. No one can take this dignity away from us, not even the devil! No one can take this dignity!”...Knowing that God loves us and wants us to have a relationship with Him that frees us to live a life of purpose, love, and hope can imbue every life with dignity.
Jesus, the Pope observed, doesn’t describe a father that is “offended and resentful who says ‘I will make you pay!’” but on the contrary, illustrates that the only thing the father is concerned about is that “this son in front of him is healthy and safe.”
This parable teaches us “to never despair,” he said, and pointed specifically to parents who, like the father, see their children becoming distant and taking “dangerous paths.”
He also noted that the same can be said of pastors and catechists “who at times ask themselves if their work is in vain,” as well as prisoners, “those who have made poor choices and aren’t able to look to the future (and) those who hunger for mercy and forgiveness but believe they aren’t worthy.”
No matter what situation life brings, “I must never forget that I’ll never cease being a child of God, of a father who loves me and waits for my return. Even in the worst situations in life God waits, wanting to embrace me,” he said.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
How many miles on your Dyson?
I love Dyson sweepers. No other vacuum cleaners I've owned have ever come close to the job Dyson sweepers do...and I'm including a Kirby we bought years ago that had a payment book like the ones you used to get when you bought a car.
And speaking of cars, evidently the Dyson people are working on an electric car. Unlike Tesla, the breakthrough manufacturer of electric cars, which this article points out, have achieved cult status, a Dyson car would use solid state batteries.
The quest for an electric car has been going on for at least five decades. I can remember as a kid back in the 1960s reading an article about General Motors and other manufacturers' work on electric cars. It included pictures of prototypes that looked like something you could pick up at a local car dealer's showroom.
But the ongoing challenge in the development of electric cars has always been ensuring that they stayed charged for significant distances. Tesla has overcome that issue to a great degree, of course.
Solid state batteries offer the potential of longer charges and, unlike other batteries, safety from fire threats.
Even if Dyson is unable to develop a marketable product from their efforts, I hope that their entry into the competition will prod others to get in the race too.
[Thanks to Brit pub and Formula 1 race enthusiast Mark J. Daniels for linking to the Guardian article.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
And speaking of cars, evidently the Dyson people are working on an electric car. Unlike Tesla, the breakthrough manufacturer of electric cars, which this article points out, have achieved cult status, a Dyson car would use solid state batteries.
The company declined to comment but in 2015 it [Dyson] said it planned to invest £1bn in battery technology and in October it bought solid-state battery company, Sakti3, for $90m, which founder Sir James Dyson said had “developed a breakthrough in battery technology”.
One of Sakti3’s patents states: “The present invention provides a method and system for an all solid-state rechargeable battery and a vehicle propulsion system powered by the battery.”The article says that other companies are looking at developing solid state batteries for their cars. But given their track record (or maybe, non-track record), I'd put my money (if I had it to invest) on Dyson. It's just a company with a special culture of innovation and a flair for elegant design. (That's the same reason I'd bet on Apple producing a compelling smart car before any other of the current contestants in that technology race.)
...three key factors for electric car batteries are low cost, safety and a high “energy density” which gives a long range. But currently they are expensive, he said, and cannot drive as far as petrol or diesel vehicles on a single charge.
Solid-state batteries could provide a tenfold increase in energy density - how much power they pack in - and are also safer. This is because existing batteries use flammable organic solvents as an electrolyte (through which the current flows), whereas a solid electrolyte does not pose a fire risk and does not need expensive safety features. The solid electrolyte also means the battery electrodes can be made of a much more energy dense material, such as metallic lithium.
The quest for an electric car has been going on for at least five decades. I can remember as a kid back in the 1960s reading an article about General Motors and other manufacturers' work on electric cars. It included pictures of prototypes that looked like something you could pick up at a local car dealer's showroom.
But the ongoing challenge in the development of electric cars has always been ensuring that they stayed charged for significant distances. Tesla has overcome that issue to a great degree, of course.
Solid state batteries offer the potential of longer charges and, unlike other batteries, safety from fire threats.
Even if Dyson is unable to develop a marketable product from their efforts, I hope that their entry into the competition will prod others to get in the race too.
[Thanks to Brit pub and Formula 1 race enthusiast Mark J. Daniels for linking to the Guardian article.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Money
“Then one of the Twelve—the one called Judas Iscariot—went to the chief priests and asked, “What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?” So they counted out for him thirty pieces of silver.” (Matthew 26:14-15, The Message)
Until this morning, it hadn’t dawned on me how driven by money Judas Iscariot’s decision to betray Jesus to religious officials who wanted Jesus dead.
A woman had anointed Jesus with expensive perfume. Matthew says that all of Jesus’ disciples were angered by the woman’s extravagance. The perfume, they believed, could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor.
But Jesus applauded the woman, saying that she had anointed His body for burial.
Right then, Judas runs off to see how much money the priests will give him if he provides them with the chance to arrest Jesus quietly.
Judas seems obsessed with cold hard cash. That appears, from this passage anyway, to be his motivation for betraying Jesus.
1 Timothy 6:10 says: “...the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
Money in itself isn’t evil. (No matter how badly Pink Floyd misquotes that 1 Timothy passage.) Money is a tool by which we exchange value for value.
But the worship or the idolatry of money is a violation of God’s First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before Me.”
Depending too much on money leads to all kinds of evil, as happened when Judas betrayed Jesus.
Today in this passage, I sensed God telling me that while money has never been a driver in my life, I sometimes fantasize about the good I could do if I had more money. But if there are good things I want to do for God or for others, God seemed to say, I can do them with the money, gifts, relationships, and platforms I already have. "Don't put it off," I sensed God saying. "Be generous now!"
Lord, help me to do the good I can do today, with or without money. In Jesus’ name. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Until this morning, it hadn’t dawned on me how driven by money Judas Iscariot’s decision to betray Jesus to religious officials who wanted Jesus dead.
A woman had anointed Jesus with expensive perfume. Matthew says that all of Jesus’ disciples were angered by the woman’s extravagance. The perfume, they believed, could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor.
But Jesus applauded the woman, saying that she had anointed His body for burial.
Right then, Judas runs off to see how much money the priests will give him if he provides them with the chance to arrest Jesus quietly.
Judas seems obsessed with cold hard cash. That appears, from this passage anyway, to be his motivation for betraying Jesus.
1 Timothy 6:10 says: “...the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
Money in itself isn’t evil. (No matter how badly Pink Floyd misquotes that 1 Timothy passage.) Money is a tool by which we exchange value for value.
But the worship or the idolatry of money is a violation of God’s First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before Me.”
Depending too much on money leads to all kinds of evil, as happened when Judas betrayed Jesus.
Today in this passage, I sensed God telling me that while money has never been a driver in my life, I sometimes fantasize about the good I could do if I had more money. But if there are good things I want to do for God or for others, God seemed to say, I can do them with the money, gifts, relationships, and platforms I already have. "Don't put it off," I sensed God saying. "Be generous now!"
Lord, help me to do the good I can do today, with or without money. In Jesus’ name. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Prayer for Victims of Oklahoma Tornadoes
Lord, we pray for those impacted by the tornadoes in Oklahoma. Give comfort to those who have lost loved ones. Give comfort too, to all who have suffered the devastation of their homes, churches, schools, or businesses. Give healing to those who may have been injured. Grant that those who build new structures will be given Your wisdom, strength, and empowerment. Bless with success the efforts of those bringing relief, recovery, and rebuilding. Envelop all with Your powerful love and use this moment to help all exposed so dramatically to the vulnerability of human existence in this world to turn You, through Jesus Christ. Help all to know You as their "refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." In Jesus' name. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Monday, May 09, 2016
Finding God in What We Know
"How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Sunday, May 08, 2016
What's Christian Unity? And What It's For?
John 17:20-26
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus prays, shortly before His arrest and execution, for unity between God and the people who have been won to faith in Christ. Beginning at verse 20, Jesus prays: “My prayer is not for them [that is, the first century disciples who were following Him back then] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message [that’s you and me], that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you...”
Jesus prays for unity among Christians. But what exactly does it mean for Christians to live in unity with each other? It's easier, in some ways, to talk about what Christian unity isn't, allowing that to help us form an answer to that question.
So, first of all, it’s not unity with each other apart from unity with Christ. In a denomination to which many of us once belonged, we were accused of breaking the unity of Christ’s Church when we left. But when a group of people calling itself the Church breaks with Christ, it’s no longer united with Christ. We left that old denomination in order to have unity with Christ and with His true Church. Those who repudiate the authority of God’s Word over the life of the Church and the life of Christians are the ones who break the Church’s unity. Unity with other people without Christ is not unity.
Secondly, Christian unity isn’t coerced uniformity. I knew a man who bragged about his marriage: “I’m so proud that we’ve been married more than fifty years and we’ve never had one disagreement.” But I later learned that his wife had been taking antidepressants and seeing a counselor for years because her husband was a thoughtless dictator. He was happy; she was a wreck. Unity is not coerced uniformity, whether in a marriage or in a church.
Thirdly, the unity for which Jesus prays for His Church does not mean that Christians will never disagree or get upset with one another. In fact, since the Church is Christ’s body in the world, the group of people given the most important mission in the world--making disciples of all nations--conflict and disagreement are to be expected. Only spiritually immature people think that good churches don’t have disagreements! As someone has said, if two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant...or maybe dead.
Consider the Biblical record of Jesus when it comes to conflict.
Fourthly, the unity for which Jesus prays is also not about denominational organizations or even our congregations. As Lutherans, we believe that the earthly institutional Church is not to be confused with Christ’s Church, the body of Christ that exists in both heaven and earth. The real Church, says Article 7 of The Augsburg Confession, one of Lutheranism’s basic statements of faith, “is the congregation of saints...in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered.” “For the true unity of the Church,” the Confession then says, “it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.”
As much as I appreciate the North American Lutheran Church, of which Living Water is a part, it is only the Church to the extent that it remains faithful to that Biblically-rooted understanding of the Church.
The same is true of Living Water Church.
Of course, the unity of an individual congregation can sometimes seem to be threatened over disagreements, too. But we know from other relationships that disagreements aren’t unhealthy.
Presbyterian pastor and writer Charlie Shedd once told about a fierce argument he had with his wife Martha one morning. He left home angry. He came back several hours later to an empty house and a note. “Dear Charlie,” it said, “I hate you. Love, Martha.”
Love allows for disagreements, and even a little neurosis. As the sinless Savior Jesus loves and forgives us despite our faults, He makes it possible for us to love and forgive our sisters and brothers in Christ despite theirs.
Of course, Christ doesn’t want us to be united just so we can sit around being happy about our unity. What would be the point of that?
It turns out that Jesus has a particular purpose in praying for our unity as His Church. Look at verse 23 of our Gospel lesson. Jesus prays, “...Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”
The unity for which Jesus prays has one overriding purpose: to empower the disciples of His Church--you and me--in fulfilling our one and only mission of making disciples for Jesus Christ. That’s it!
I’ve known many churches whose members were so content with each other--and how comfortable and united they felt with each other--that they never thought about welcoming others into their fellowship. They would brag about how friendly their church was, but when visitors came to worship, Bible studies, or church activities, they were only friendly to each other, not the visitors. (That’s a contrast to Living Water, where visitors have to negotiate a gauntlet of unofficial greeters as they make their way to the sanctuary!)
A church united in Christ loves nothing more than making disciples, seeking out and welcoming others so that they can know Christ as their God, Lord, and Friend.
Disciples from united churches love telling the spiritually disconnected and lost about the new life that only comes from Jesus Christ, and calling all our fellow sinners to “come and see Jesus Christ.”
They love taking the time to help others to know and grow in a saving relationship with Christ!
We do this in the passionate hope that those not connected to Jesus will be reached by the amazing grace God extends through saved, repentant sinners like us, disciples of Christ who bet our whole lives on Jesus Christ!
In John 20:30-31, John explains why he wrote his gospel: “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Like the apostle John, a Church united with Jesus Christ wants to so present Jesus to others that they will come to believe in Him and so have eternal life with God. A united church has the salvation of the lost as its animating passion and purpose, the very reason for its existence!
As someone has famously put it: “The Church is the only organization that does not exist for itself, but for those who live outside of it.”
Jesus prays for our unity so that the world we touch and reach out to will come to believe in Jesus Christ, the only One Who can give human beings forgiveness of sin and the new life that He died and rose to give to those who believe in Him.
Disciples of Christ and His Church believe that Jesus meant it when He said in John 14:6: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
If Christians live in unity for any other purpose than helping people follow Jesus, they may be nice people; but they are not a church.
One last thing to note about the unity of the Church is that true unity can’t be manufactured by us. We saints who are also sinners are incapable of resolving to be united. Unity in Christ is God’s gift to people who are focused, not on themselves or their preferences or obsessions, but on Jesus Christ alone.
Sometimes, I have Catechism students scatter to different parts of a room and tell them to pretend that a Bible I place on a table is Jesus. Then I tell them to walk toward Jesus. Here’s the deal: As they draw closer to Jesus, they also draw closer to one another.
As we draw closer to Jesus, we grow closer to our fellow Christians. Jesus prays that His Church will be one with God and one another because Jesus knows we can’t manufacture or coerce our unity; unity is a byproduct of a people who turn their eyes on Jesus.
As we pray, read Scripture, receive the Sacraments, and serve others with a focus on Jesus, our hearts will be more dialed into others, not just ourselves.
Words like, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. I think that I may have misunderstood what you were saying, could you explain it to me again? How can I share Christ with others? How can I invite others to know and follow Christ?” will be spoken among us.
More and more disciples in our midst will understand that they too have been transformed by Jesus so that they can be part of His priesthood of all believers, each of us having ministries to the Church and to the world.
As we live each day as part of this community of Christian faith, Living Water, may we turn always to Christ in repentance and renewal and pray that, as we do so, Christ will unite us in doing the very thing that we all were saved by Jesus Christ to do: Turn this dying world upside down by living and dying for Christ alone and by making disciples; reaching up, reaching in, reaching out. Amen
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus prays, shortly before His arrest and execution, for unity between God and the people who have been won to faith in Christ. Beginning at verse 20, Jesus prays: “My prayer is not for them [that is, the first century disciples who were following Him back then] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message [that’s you and me], that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you...”
Jesus prays for unity among Christians. But what exactly does it mean for Christians to live in unity with each other? It's easier, in some ways, to talk about what Christian unity isn't, allowing that to help us form an answer to that question.
So, first of all, it’s not unity with each other apart from unity with Christ. In a denomination to which many of us once belonged, we were accused of breaking the unity of Christ’s Church when we left. But when a group of people calling itself the Church breaks with Christ, it’s no longer united with Christ. We left that old denomination in order to have unity with Christ and with His true Church. Those who repudiate the authority of God’s Word over the life of the Church and the life of Christians are the ones who break the Church’s unity. Unity with other people without Christ is not unity.
Secondly, Christian unity isn’t coerced uniformity. I knew a man who bragged about his marriage: “I’m so proud that we’ve been married more than fifty years and we’ve never had one disagreement.” But I later learned that his wife had been taking antidepressants and seeing a counselor for years because her husband was a thoughtless dictator. He was happy; she was a wreck. Unity is not coerced uniformity, whether in a marriage or in a church.
Thirdly, the unity for which Jesus prays for His Church does not mean that Christians will never disagree or get upset with one another. In fact, since the Church is Christ’s body in the world, the group of people given the most important mission in the world--making disciples of all nations--conflict and disagreement are to be expected. Only spiritually immature people think that good churches don’t have disagreements! As someone has said, if two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant...or maybe dead.
Consider the Biblical record of Jesus when it comes to conflict.
- Jesus publicly disagreed with Pharisees and Sadducees for valuing their religion instead of a personal, saving relationship with God.
- Jesus also condemned those among His fellow Jews who refused to believe in Him, despite Jesus being the clear fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah King God would send to save His people from their sins.
- Jesus called His own disciple, Peter, a satan for trying to keep Jesus from following God’s plan for Jesus’ cross and resurrection.
Fourthly, the unity for which Jesus prays is also not about denominational organizations or even our congregations. As Lutherans, we believe that the earthly institutional Church is not to be confused with Christ’s Church, the body of Christ that exists in both heaven and earth. The real Church, says Article 7 of The Augsburg Confession, one of Lutheranism’s basic statements of faith, “is the congregation of saints...in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered.” “For the true unity of the Church,” the Confession then says, “it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.”
As much as I appreciate the North American Lutheran Church, of which Living Water is a part, it is only the Church to the extent that it remains faithful to that Biblically-rooted understanding of the Church.
The same is true of Living Water Church.
Of course, the unity of an individual congregation can sometimes seem to be threatened over disagreements, too. But we know from other relationships that disagreements aren’t unhealthy.
Presbyterian pastor and writer Charlie Shedd once told about a fierce argument he had with his wife Martha one morning. He left home angry. He came back several hours later to an empty house and a note. “Dear Charlie,” it said, “I hate you. Love, Martha.”
Love allows for disagreements, and even a little neurosis. As the sinless Savior Jesus loves and forgives us despite our faults, He makes it possible for us to love and forgive our sisters and brothers in Christ despite theirs.
Of course, Christ doesn’t want us to be united just so we can sit around being happy about our unity. What would be the point of that?
It turns out that Jesus has a particular purpose in praying for our unity as His Church. Look at verse 23 of our Gospel lesson. Jesus prays, “...Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”
The unity for which Jesus prays has one overriding purpose: to empower the disciples of His Church--you and me--in fulfilling our one and only mission of making disciples for Jesus Christ. That’s it!
I’ve known many churches whose members were so content with each other--and how comfortable and united they felt with each other--that they never thought about welcoming others into their fellowship. They would brag about how friendly their church was, but when visitors came to worship, Bible studies, or church activities, they were only friendly to each other, not the visitors. (That’s a contrast to Living Water, where visitors have to negotiate a gauntlet of unofficial greeters as they make their way to the sanctuary!)
A church united in Christ loves nothing more than making disciples, seeking out and welcoming others so that they can know Christ as their God, Lord, and Friend.
Disciples from united churches love telling the spiritually disconnected and lost about the new life that only comes from Jesus Christ, and calling all our fellow sinners to “come and see Jesus Christ.”
They love taking the time to help others to know and grow in a saving relationship with Christ!
We do this in the passionate hope that those not connected to Jesus will be reached by the amazing grace God extends through saved, repentant sinners like us, disciples of Christ who bet our whole lives on Jesus Christ!
In John 20:30-31, John explains why he wrote his gospel: “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Like the apostle John, a Church united with Jesus Christ wants to so present Jesus to others that they will come to believe in Him and so have eternal life with God. A united church has the salvation of the lost as its animating passion and purpose, the very reason for its existence!
As someone has famously put it: “The Church is the only organization that does not exist for itself, but for those who live outside of it.”
Jesus prays for our unity so that the world we touch and reach out to will come to believe in Jesus Christ, the only One Who can give human beings forgiveness of sin and the new life that He died and rose to give to those who believe in Him.
Disciples of Christ and His Church believe that Jesus meant it when He said in John 14:6: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
If Christians live in unity for any other purpose than helping people follow Jesus, they may be nice people; but they are not a church.
One last thing to note about the unity of the Church is that true unity can’t be manufactured by us. We saints who are also sinners are incapable of resolving to be united. Unity in Christ is God’s gift to people who are focused, not on themselves or their preferences or obsessions, but on Jesus Christ alone.
Sometimes, I have Catechism students scatter to different parts of a room and tell them to pretend that a Bible I place on a table is Jesus. Then I tell them to walk toward Jesus. Here’s the deal: As they draw closer to Jesus, they also draw closer to one another.
As we draw closer to Jesus, we grow closer to our fellow Christians. Jesus prays that His Church will be one with God and one another because Jesus knows we can’t manufacture or coerce our unity; unity is a byproduct of a people who turn their eyes on Jesus.
As we pray, read Scripture, receive the Sacraments, and serve others with a focus on Jesus, our hearts will be more dialed into others, not just ourselves.
Words like, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. I think that I may have misunderstood what you were saying, could you explain it to me again? How can I share Christ with others? How can I invite others to know and follow Christ?” will be spoken among us.
More and more disciples in our midst will understand that they too have been transformed by Jesus so that they can be part of His priesthood of all believers, each of us having ministries to the Church and to the world.
As we live each day as part of this community of Christian faith, Living Water, may we turn always to Christ in repentance and renewal and pray that, as we do so, Christ will unite us in doing the very thing that we all were saved by Jesus Christ to do: Turn this dying world upside down by living and dying for Christ alone and by making disciples; reaching up, reaching in, reaching out. Amen
Saturday, May 07, 2016
A Prayer for Victims of Fort McMurray Wildfires
Creator God, we know that Your creation groans under the weight of human sin and that trouble is part of life on this earth. We also know You to be the God of healing and help. Bring Your healing and help to the people of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, reeling from wildfires that have destroyed many lives, homes, memories, essential services, and ways of life. Grant that those who have been impacted by this disaster will know Your help and healing. Bless and keep safe those involved in rescue and recovery efforts there. Use this tragedy to draw the lost to Jesus Christ, the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. In Jesus' name. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
General Scaparrotti Takes NATO Command
Mike Scaparrotti, who grew up in Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, where I pastored for six years, is a great leader and a fine man.
Saint Matthew, Logan, and the Scaparrotti family are justly proud of him!
Despite misinformed talk from the campaign trail this year, NATO and other similar alliances and arrangements remain important not just or even primarily for others' security, but for the security of the people of the United States. General Scaparrotti is a wonderful choice for this command.
Please keep him in your prayers, asking God to give him wisdom and safety. Please also pray for his wife Cindy, who is a great person in her own right.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Saint Matthew, Logan, and the Scaparrotti family are justly proud of him!
Despite misinformed talk from the campaign trail this year, NATO and other similar alliances and arrangements remain important not just or even primarily for others' security, but for the security of the people of the United States. General Scaparrotti is a wonderful choice for this command.
Please keep him in your prayers, asking God to give him wisdom and safety. Please also pray for his wife Cindy, who is a great person in her own right.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Friday, May 06, 2016
"You make me want to be a better man"
There are people who come into our lives who make us feel this way.
Sometimes, we are so confounding for them, so frustrating and infuriating, that we never get the chance to tell them how they make us want to be better people.
Nor do they see what effect they have on our characters, our actions, our thought processes.
I've had people like this in my life. They've never seen how God has used them to call me to repent and how, as the Holy Spirit sent by Christ uses them, calls my attention to the examples of their character, integrity, and honesty, and how God's Spirit is slowly changing me.
This is dedicated to people who have made me and make me want to be a better man.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Sometimes, we are so confounding for them, so frustrating and infuriating, that we never get the chance to tell them how they make us want to be better people.
Nor do they see what effect they have on our characters, our actions, our thought processes.
I've had people like this in my life. They've never seen how God has used them to call me to repent and how, as the Holy Spirit sent by Christ uses them, calls my attention to the examples of their character, integrity, and honesty, and how God's Spirit is slowly changing me.
This is dedicated to people who have made me and make me want to be a better man.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Thursday, May 05, 2016
How God is Speaking to This Recovering Sin Addict
I try to start each day in a quiet time with God. I use the "Stop, look, listen, respond" method for meeting with God each day.
As explained here, I stop, look, listen, and respond in order to interact with God before I "hit the bricks" of everyday life.
A few days ago, I looked at Matthew 16:5-12. This is The Message translation, an rendering of Scripture I'm using right now in order to break open truths from God that I may have previously missed because the renderings of other translations have become so familiar to me that I miss out on God's Word for me. Here's what I read:
God has never spoken to me in an audible voice, though I have sometimes heard His whispers in my soul and felt His touch on my shoulders when I'm on my knees in prayer.
But since the Bible is God's definitive word, often I sense Him pressing certain truths on me as I keep silence before Him after I delving into a passage of Scripture.
When this happens, I sometimes write what I feel God is telling me as though He were the speaker. God seemed to say this to me on this particular morning:
Being a recovering sinner saved by God's incredible grace given to us through Christ is like being a recovering alcoholic, drug addict, food addict, or compulsive gambler.
In this life, we always remain addicted to sin--addicted to our inborn desire to "be like God."
But each day--in a practice Martin Luther called "daily repentance and renewal"--we come back to God to help us face this day, to seek the power of God's Holy Spirit, sent by Jesus to all who trust in Him, to live as free grown-up children of God.
So, the Navigators say, just seek God's help to respond to His Word--be it His Word of direction, correction, promise, or grace--through the day you're entering. Don't resolve to live differently for the entire rest of your life. That's too daunting and way beyond our capacity to fulfill.
This then, was my simple response to what God taught me in Matthew 16:5-12, a few days back:
I almost remembered to respond to God as I resolved to do through much of the day. Like a recovering alcoholic, I've fallen off the wagon more than once since then. I get full of myself and tell myself to get my attention off of me and back on God and my neighbor. And I ask God to help me to remember.
Last week, during a study of Mike Foss' book, Real Faith for Real Life: Living the Six Marks of Discipleship, I decided to read these entries from my journal to the Living Water folks who were there. Though I occasionally share journaling of my quiet time with God, I don't make a habit of it because my quiet time is all about my own relationship with God, seeking to grow as a disciple of Christ, not a project for my call as preacher, teacher, leader, minister of Word and Sacrament.
But I also want people to know that just because God has called me to this work doesn't mean that I'm not a child of God in constant need of His guidance and reassurance. Fortunately, God makes guidance, reassurance, and so much more in His Word.
Martin Luther said that Christians are the Holy Spirit's workshop. Each day, through His Word, God chisels and scrapes, remodels and renews, those who are willing to submit to Him, and in the submission, experience the freedom of being made over--often slowly and with fierce blows to our egos--into the image of Jesus Christ, heirs of God's grace.
If that isn't as true of the subset of redeemed sinners called to be pastors as it is of laypeople, pastors shortchange God, ourselves, and the people we are called to work among as servant/leaders.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
As explained here, I stop, look, listen, and respond in order to interact with God before I "hit the bricks" of everyday life.
A few days ago, I looked at Matthew 16:5-12. This is The Message translation, an rendering of Scripture I'm using right now in order to break open truths from God that I may have previously missed because the renderings of other translations have become so familiar to me that I miss out on God's Word for me. Here's what I read:
On their way to the other side of the lake, the disciples discovered they had forgotten to bring along bread. In the meantime, Jesus said to them, “Keep a sharp eye out for Pharisee-Sadducee yeast.”As I looked into the passage, God underscored important truth for me. This is what I wrote in my journal:
Thinking he was scolding them for forgetting bread, they discussed in whispers what to do. Jesus knew what they were doing and said, “Why all these worried whispers about forgetting the bread? Runt believers! Haven’t you caught on yet? Don’t you remember the five loaves of bread and the five thousand people, and how many baskets of fragments you picked up? Or the seven loaves that fed four thousand, and how many baskets of leftovers you collected? Haven’t you realized yet that bread isn’t the problem? The problem is yeast, Pharisee-Sadducee yeast.” Then they got it: that he wasn’t concerned about eating, but teaching—the Pharisee-Sadducee kind of teaching.
The disciples realize that they've forgotten to take bread as they travel across the lake. Jesus gives a cryptic warning about avoiding the "yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees," two religious sects who dominate first century Judea's life. The disciples think that Jesus is chastising them for not bringing bread.
But Jesus asks if they don't remember how He'd fed the 5000 and the 4000 miraculously.
Bread isn't the issue. Jesus can provide daily bread.
The problem Jesus is warning the disciples to avoid is in approaching the questions of daily life--like bread--in the same way as Pharisees and Sadducees. Their worldview was me-centered, not God-centered. They even thought of righteousness as their achievement.
But everything comes from God.
"Remember," Jesus is saying, "I provide bread without you doing a thing. The religious leaders commend a righteousness of their own making, detached from Me or dependence on God. Be different from them!
How different we are to be is shown in Matthew 16:24-27. We're to embrace Christ and His cross; that's where life is, not in "the world's bread." Jesus is the bread we need.Next, I listened for God to tell me what I needed to know and apply from this truth that day.
God has never spoken to me in an audible voice, though I have sometimes heard His whispers in my soul and felt His touch on my shoulders when I'm on my knees in prayer.
But since the Bible is God's definitive word, often I sense Him pressing certain truths on me as I keep silence before Him after I delving into a passage of Scripture.
When this happens, I sometimes write what I feel God is telling me as though He were the speaker. God seemed to say this to me on this particular morning:
Too often, you settle for being half-Christian, Mark. You embrace suffering with the cross until the suffering comes. You seek to live pleasingly to Me, until it becomes inconvenient or threatens your "right" to ease. You fantasize about worldly vindication and success. You splinter your commitment to Me by your commitment to you. I said to follow Me; you follow, but take plenty go selfish detours along the way. That's not following!One of the things about the devotional method taught by the Navigators that I love is that, when it comes to the "respond" part of our time with God, the method acknowledges our humanity, how hard it is to keep any resolutions for us, especially when we drift into thinking that we must keep them in our own power.
Being a recovering sinner saved by God's incredible grace given to us through Christ is like being a recovering alcoholic, drug addict, food addict, or compulsive gambler.
In this life, we always remain addicted to sin--addicted to our inborn desire to "be like God."
But each day--in a practice Martin Luther called "daily repentance and renewal"--we come back to God to help us face this day, to seek the power of God's Holy Spirit, sent by Jesus to all who trust in Him, to live as free grown-up children of God.
So, the Navigators say, just seek God's help to respond to His Word--be it His Word of direction, correction, promise, or grace--through the day you're entering. Don't resolve to live differently for the entire rest of your life. That's too daunting and way beyond our capacity to fulfill.
This then, was my simple response to what God taught me in Matthew 16:5-12, a few days back:
(1) Today, Lord, help me not to complain; (2) Today, when selfish thoughts come to me, help me to crowd at my self-serving penchant by praising God, thanking God, and praying for someone else.Within twenty minutes of my quiet time, I was in the shower and a selfish thought crossed my mind. I remembered what I had asked God to help me to do. I filled my time in the shower with praises for God, petitions for the needs of others, and special prayers for friends and family.
I almost remembered to respond to God as I resolved to do through much of the day. Like a recovering alcoholic, I've fallen off the wagon more than once since then. I get full of myself and tell myself to get my attention off of me and back on God and my neighbor. And I ask God to help me to remember.
Last week, during a study of Mike Foss' book, Real Faith for Real Life: Living the Six Marks of Discipleship, I decided to read these entries from my journal to the Living Water folks who were there. Though I occasionally share journaling of my quiet time with God, I don't make a habit of it because my quiet time is all about my own relationship with God, seeking to grow as a disciple of Christ, not a project for my call as preacher, teacher, leader, minister of Word and Sacrament.
But I also want people to know that just because God has called me to this work doesn't mean that I'm not a child of God in constant need of His guidance and reassurance. Fortunately, God makes guidance, reassurance, and so much more in His Word.
Martin Luther said that Christians are the Holy Spirit's workshop. Each day, through His Word, God chisels and scrapes, remodels and renews, those who are willing to submit to Him, and in the submission, experience the freedom of being made over--often slowly and with fierce blows to our egos--into the image of Jesus Christ, heirs of God's grace.
If that isn't as true of the subset of redeemed sinners called to be pastors as it is of laypeople, pastors shortchange God, ourselves, and the people we are called to work among as servant/leaders.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Wednesday, May 04, 2016
Teacher Appreciation Day
Yesterday was Teacher Appreciation Day and I posted this on Facebook.
It's National Teacher Appreciation Day. I'm thankful to the many great teachers who have changed my life through the years.
I think of several in particular.
The first is Mrs. Dorothy Everett, my fourth grade teacher. She was demanding and fair, knowledgeable and caring.
Cleo Goldsberry, my fifth grade teacher, deepened my passion for reading as a means of knowing more of the world.
In junior high school, I appreciated Mr. O'Leary. He was our PhysEd teacher and though I was no athlete, he always encouraged me and my love for sports, a lifelong passion.
In senior high school, I especially appreciated Mrs. Rosemary Leuchter, the English teacher who taught us so much and demanded so much of us. Because of her, I was able to proficiency test out of all my English requirements at Ohio State.
Also, my Journalism teachers, Mrs. Becker and Mrs. Dritz, in their roles as sponsors of our high school paper, 'The Occident,' encouraged us to write succinctly and well.
Another high school faculty member, a man from whom I never took a class, had a positive impact on me. He was our head football and basketball coach, who won championships in both sports, Dave Koblentz. As noted above, I was no athlete and he coached a ton of good ones. But he also knew and interacted with every student in our school. Twenty years after graduating from high school, I saw Mr. Koblentz at a restaurant. I went over to him and said, "Mr. Koblentz, you won't remember me, but..." "Mark Daniels!" he said. "How are you?" Good teachers pay attention and Mr. Koblentz clearly did!
In college, I was blessed with so many great professors. Stan Swart, Jim Kweder, and Don Van Meter were just three. Stan was my history professor for my first two quarters at OSU. He used to tease me about coming to class in my West High School jacket, but he became a terrific friend and mentor. He and his wife attended our wedding.
In seminary, the professor and mentor who, more than anyone, challenged me to go deeper with Christ, to live in and study God's Word, to live my faith with passion, to employ whatever intellect I have to God's glory, and who, by the way he lived toward some often scornful critics, taught us how to love those who hate us, was Pastor Bruce Schein. Pastor Schein died just two years after I was ordained. But there isn't a day that passes when I don't think of him and remember what he taught us.
From each of these teachers, at every level of my life and schooling, I learned so much.
The saying, of course, is that those who can't teach. That's not true.
There are some teachers who have no business teaching, of course. But my experience is that the best teachers have a God-given passion for teaching. They love their students and then, out of that love, demand the best from them.
My teachers have, for the most part, been far better as teachers than I have been as a student. But God empowered the really good ones to take this unpromising lump of clay and do things that have changed and continue to change my life each day.
Thanks to all my teachers!
[UPDATE: I should add that I had a number of other great profs at seminary: Merlin Hoops, Tryg Skarsten, Wally Taylor, Jim Schaaf, Ralph Doermann, and Ron Hals.]
Sunday, May 01, 2016
When Christ Comes to Us (Understanding Revelation, Part 5)
Revelation 21:9-14, 21-27
In today’s message, the last of our five-part series on Revelation, I’ll be departing from my usual verse-by-verse consideration of the lesson. I’m going to try to summarize what I think should be the big take-away from what God is telling us in the last book of the Bible.
I once read about a reporter who spent time with a young man whose life was, in many ways, a sad inner city cliché.
His father left when he was a baby. He and his mother lived in decrepit housing. All around him were kids his age involved with drink, drugs, and crime. His classmates regarded doing well in school as a waste of time.
Yet this young man was an honor student. He kept out of trouble. He had dreams.
The reporter wondered why this young man was so different. So, he followed him for a week. The reporter had been with him for several days and still didn’t know what made the teen different.
But then he accompanied the young man one Wednesday evening to the balcony of a local church, where there was a prayer meeting. The reporter watched as this teen, often tempted to depart from the straight and narrow, shared the enthusiasm of several hundred others that night in worshiping God.
At times, the teen sobbed with other worshipers over the challenges and tragedies that are an undeniable daily inner city reality.
At others, he called out to God in songs and with fervent amens as he listened to God’s Word being preached.
He sang God’s praises at the tops of his lungs.
The young man had arrived for worship crushed by his burdens, tempted to give in to the easy sins of his environment. But as he praised the God made known in Jesus Christ, he abandoned his fears, sins, and temptations, and took the hand of God to walk with Jesus.
We all need to know that God doesn’t want to be separated from us.
We all need to know that if we truly want Him, God will come to us always, and when He does, He will lift us up!
These are the very things of which God has been assuring us as we’ve looked at the book of Revelation these past five Sundays.
And I believe that the apostle John, exiled on the island of Patmos, back sometime between 81 and 96AD, needed to be assured of these same things as he lived as a prisoner of the Roman Empire for his faith in Christ.
And I believe that for John, it was easier to believe that God was with him when he worshiped God, whether he did so in the company of others or during Quiet Time he spent studying God’s Word and praying.
The book of Revelation was born in worship! I’m not making that up. Scholars tell us that whenever the phrase “in the spirit” is used in Revelation, it narrates a time when John was worshiping God.
In verse 10 of our second lesson for today, John writes: “[One of seven angels]...carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”
Listen: John worshiped God and God came to him.
Consider some of what John saw. First: He saw what he calls “the new Jerusalem” come down from heaven. God came to him.
Second: John describes this new Jerusalem, which we talked about last week. In this new Jerusalem, there will be no temple, because, John explains, “its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”
This is what Jesus had been talking about when once, knowing that a conspiracy was being hatched to kill Him, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
Jesus, God in the flesh, is the temple.
Even today, before God sends the new Jerusalem, all who believe in Jesus are part of it and Jesus can come to us where we work, where we go to school, where we live.
If God can come to a man in chains on a little Mediterranean Island, he can come to us when we worship God too!
Third: John tells us that the new Jerusalem will be a place in which the blazing light of God will illumine everything.
Unlike ancient cities, the gates will never be shut. There will be no reason for gates to be closed, locks to be secured, or alarm systems set. There will be no night, no fear.
And, beyond the gates of death, in the new Jerusalem, life as it was meant to be will belong to all who have trusted in Jesus Christ.
God wants to come to you and me with this promise and His presence each day; He will, when we worship Him.
John presents us with staggering images in Revelation. And even if we can’t sometimes fully understand them, when life lays us low or when death stares us in the face, or even when the everydayness of life overwhelms us, these images can sustain and encourage us because in them we see the promise of the new Jerusalem we have in Christ. We are not forgotten ever. Christ will come to us when we reach up to Him, when we worship!
Many know the name of George Frideric Handel. Handel was already writing cantatas when he was nine years old. Not long after that, he presented his music to the king of Prussia.
But then, things took a turn for the worse. His father died. Handel’s music was no longer appreciated. If he were around today, we’d day no one was favoriting his music on iTunes or Spotify. He was yesterday's Elvis to today’s Beyonce. He was passe.
Bankrupt and hopeless, Handel locked himself away for twenty-four hours and in the end, emerged with an oratorio, The Messiah, based partly on John’s vision as recorded in the book of Revelation.
Something like 15% of all adult Americans living today have sung the The Messiah at some point in their lives. That’s pretty good for a musician who died 257 years ago!
But think of that: A work of art composed at what was a low point in Handel’s life has lifted millions of people into an experience of God and of what it means to be blessed by God’s love.
When asked how he was able to compose The Messiah, Handel said, “I [saw] the heavens opened and the great God himself seated on his throne.”
Handel worshiped God and, as he did so, God came to him.
Imagine how God might come to you and me if we daily spent time worshiping God, studying His Word and praying over those words and praising God for being God, for sending Jesus, and for caring about us and everything that happens in our lives!
One of my favorite twentieth century Christian heroes is a man named Frank Laubach.
Laubach was a missionary concerned with the grinding poverty in which most of people lived. He wanted to do something about it, but had no idea what it might be.
So, this man of prayer turned his eyes on Jesus, asking for guidance. It was while praying that God gave Laubach a vision: Teach adults to read, God seemed tell Laubach, and they could learn...about agricultural methods, about the importance of clean drinking water and hygiene, about the God Who loved them in Christ and Who could help them pursue love and justice in their everyday lives. Teach adults to read!
Laubach began what became a worldwide adult literacy movement still active today. Frank Laubach worshiped God and God came to him! (Are you beginning to detect a pattern?)
One of the lessons God is teaching me is that when we take the time to worship God, praise God, thank God, study His Word, and seek the will of God, it displaces things on which our minds and lives would otherwise be focused.
You don’t have as much time or energy, for example, to feel sorry for yourself when you’re intent on worshiping God.
There’ll be room for people you would otherwise ignore when you worship God.
Resentment is replaced by gratitude to God and compassion for others when you worship God.
In short, when we focus more of our lives on God and less on ourselves, we become a lot less distasteful to ourselves and more useful to God and to the people around us.
When we worship God, we learn that God is still God, still there, still for us!
Do you need assurance that God won’t turn you away, now or in eternity?
Do you have a problem you’re trying to figure out?
Is there some need in your family, our community, or our church you’d like to address, but you’re uncertain how?
Do what John was doing when God gave him the book of Revelation.
Do what that inner city youth did when facing the challenges of growing up.
Do what Handel did when his music was hated and his life seemed meaningless.
Do what Laubach did when he wanted to address poverty.
Worship! Reach up to God!
Give yourself over to the praise of God.
Worship God by reading God’s Word, loving God, loving neighbor, surrendering your life to Christ, making disciples, doing your best for everyone because, in fact, whatever good we do for others, we really do for God.
Worship! Reach up and give God the opportunity to descend to you the way He did in the new Jerusalem to John.
Worship, always on Sundays with others and on your own every day!
Reach up and you’ll be strengthened in the knowledge that God really is with you.
Worship and you’ll know that all believers in Christ belong to God forever, including you.
Worship! Reach up to the One Who is always reaching out to you.
And even when things seem dark, God will lighten your way. If we will come to God, God will always come to us.
Besides, one day in the new Jerusalem, we will be constantly worshiping and enjoying God's fellowship. So, we may as well start practicing worshiping and enjoying God right now, here, each and every day!
That, when all is said and done, is the ultimate message of Revelation: Worship God and live! Amen
[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]
In today’s message, the last of our five-part series on Revelation, I’ll be departing from my usual verse-by-verse consideration of the lesson. I’m going to try to summarize what I think should be the big take-away from what God is telling us in the last book of the Bible.
I once read about a reporter who spent time with a young man whose life was, in many ways, a sad inner city cliché.
His father left when he was a baby. He and his mother lived in decrepit housing. All around him were kids his age involved with drink, drugs, and crime. His classmates regarded doing well in school as a waste of time.
Yet this young man was an honor student. He kept out of trouble. He had dreams.
The reporter wondered why this young man was so different. So, he followed him for a week. The reporter had been with him for several days and still didn’t know what made the teen different.
But then he accompanied the young man one Wednesday evening to the balcony of a local church, where there was a prayer meeting. The reporter watched as this teen, often tempted to depart from the straight and narrow, shared the enthusiasm of several hundred others that night in worshiping God.
At times, the teen sobbed with other worshipers over the challenges and tragedies that are an undeniable daily inner city reality.
At others, he called out to God in songs and with fervent amens as he listened to God’s Word being preached.
He sang God’s praises at the tops of his lungs.
The young man had arrived for worship crushed by his burdens, tempted to give in to the easy sins of his environment. But as he praised the God made known in Jesus Christ, he abandoned his fears, sins, and temptations, and took the hand of God to walk with Jesus.
We all need to know that God doesn’t want to be separated from us.
We all need to know that if we truly want Him, God will come to us always, and when He does, He will lift us up!
These are the very things of which God has been assuring us as we’ve looked at the book of Revelation these past five Sundays.
And I believe that the apostle John, exiled on the island of Patmos, back sometime between 81 and 96AD, needed to be assured of these same things as he lived as a prisoner of the Roman Empire for his faith in Christ.
And I believe that for John, it was easier to believe that God was with him when he worshiped God, whether he did so in the company of others or during Quiet Time he spent studying God’s Word and praying.
The book of Revelation was born in worship! I’m not making that up. Scholars tell us that whenever the phrase “in the spirit” is used in Revelation, it narrates a time when John was worshiping God.
In verse 10 of our second lesson for today, John writes: “[One of seven angels]...carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”
Listen: John worshiped God and God came to him.
Consider some of what John saw. First: He saw what he calls “the new Jerusalem” come down from heaven. God came to him.
Second: John describes this new Jerusalem, which we talked about last week. In this new Jerusalem, there will be no temple, because, John explains, “its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”
This is what Jesus had been talking about when once, knowing that a conspiracy was being hatched to kill Him, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
Jesus, God in the flesh, is the temple.
Even today, before God sends the new Jerusalem, all who believe in Jesus are part of it and Jesus can come to us where we work, where we go to school, where we live.
If God can come to a man in chains on a little Mediterranean Island, he can come to us when we worship God too!
Third: John tells us that the new Jerusalem will be a place in which the blazing light of God will illumine everything.
Unlike ancient cities, the gates will never be shut. There will be no reason for gates to be closed, locks to be secured, or alarm systems set. There will be no night, no fear.
And, beyond the gates of death, in the new Jerusalem, life as it was meant to be will belong to all who have trusted in Jesus Christ.
God wants to come to you and me with this promise and His presence each day; He will, when we worship Him.
John presents us with staggering images in Revelation. And even if we can’t sometimes fully understand them, when life lays us low or when death stares us in the face, or even when the everydayness of life overwhelms us, these images can sustain and encourage us because in them we see the promise of the new Jerusalem we have in Christ. We are not forgotten ever. Christ will come to us when we reach up to Him, when we worship!
Many know the name of George Frideric Handel. Handel was already writing cantatas when he was nine years old. Not long after that, he presented his music to the king of Prussia.
But then, things took a turn for the worse. His father died. Handel’s music was no longer appreciated. If he were around today, we’d day no one was favoriting his music on iTunes or Spotify. He was yesterday's Elvis to today’s Beyonce. He was passe.
Bankrupt and hopeless, Handel locked himself away for twenty-four hours and in the end, emerged with an oratorio, The Messiah, based partly on John’s vision as recorded in the book of Revelation.
Something like 15% of all adult Americans living today have sung the The Messiah at some point in their lives. That’s pretty good for a musician who died 257 years ago!
But think of that: A work of art composed at what was a low point in Handel’s life has lifted millions of people into an experience of God and of what it means to be blessed by God’s love.
When asked how he was able to compose The Messiah, Handel said, “I [saw] the heavens opened and the great God himself seated on his throne.”
Handel worshiped God and, as he did so, God came to him.
Imagine how God might come to you and me if we daily spent time worshiping God, studying His Word and praying over those words and praising God for being God, for sending Jesus, and for caring about us and everything that happens in our lives!
One of my favorite twentieth century Christian heroes is a man named Frank Laubach.
Laubach was a missionary concerned with the grinding poverty in which most of people lived. He wanted to do something about it, but had no idea what it might be.
So, this man of prayer turned his eyes on Jesus, asking for guidance. It was while praying that God gave Laubach a vision: Teach adults to read, God seemed tell Laubach, and they could learn...about agricultural methods, about the importance of clean drinking water and hygiene, about the God Who loved them in Christ and Who could help them pursue love and justice in their everyday lives. Teach adults to read!
Laubach began what became a worldwide adult literacy movement still active today. Frank Laubach worshiped God and God came to him! (Are you beginning to detect a pattern?)
One of the lessons God is teaching me is that when we take the time to worship God, praise God, thank God, study His Word, and seek the will of God, it displaces things on which our minds and lives would otherwise be focused.
You don’t have as much time or energy, for example, to feel sorry for yourself when you’re intent on worshiping God.
There’ll be room for people you would otherwise ignore when you worship God.
Resentment is replaced by gratitude to God and compassion for others when you worship God.
In short, when we focus more of our lives on God and less on ourselves, we become a lot less distasteful to ourselves and more useful to God and to the people around us.
When we worship God, we learn that God is still God, still there, still for us!
Do you need assurance that God won’t turn you away, now or in eternity?
Do you have a problem you’re trying to figure out?
Is there some need in your family, our community, or our church you’d like to address, but you’re uncertain how?
Do what John was doing when God gave him the book of Revelation.
Do what that inner city youth did when facing the challenges of growing up.
Do what Handel did when his music was hated and his life seemed meaningless.
Do what Laubach did when he wanted to address poverty.
Worship! Reach up to God!
Give yourself over to the praise of God.
Worship God by reading God’s Word, loving God, loving neighbor, surrendering your life to Christ, making disciples, doing your best for everyone because, in fact, whatever good we do for others, we really do for God.
Worship! Reach up and give God the opportunity to descend to you the way He did in the new Jerusalem to John.
Worship, always on Sundays with others and on your own every day!
Reach up and you’ll be strengthened in the knowledge that God really is with you.
Worship and you’ll know that all believers in Christ belong to God forever, including you.
Worship! Reach up to the One Who is always reaching out to you.
And even when things seem dark, God will lighten your way. If we will come to God, God will always come to us.
Besides, one day in the new Jerusalem, we will be constantly worshiping and enjoying God's fellowship. So, we may as well start practicing worshiping and enjoying God right now, here, each and every day!
That, when all is said and done, is the ultimate message of Revelation: Worship God and live! Amen
[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]
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