Will I be a servant of God or a blob of Silly Putty?

Once again, I present how God recently spoke to me through His Word during Quiet Time today. The chapter of the Bible on which I focused was John 5.

Look: “I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:43-44) 

Jesus is the speaker. Earlier in the chapter, He reminds people that John the Baptist had testified as to His identity as Messiah. Later, He would assert that Moses had pointed to Him. Also, in the chapter, He speaks of Himself as the Son of God the Father, making Himself equal to God. But Jesus knows that these witnesses won't convince the crowd about Who He is. They’ve already made up their minds about Him. ("Don't confuse us with the facts!") 

Here, Jesus cuts to the reason for the crowds’ rejection of Him as God and Messiah: He comes to them in the name of the Father. 

If, Jesus says, someone comes to them in their own name--in other words, in their own interests, brazenly seeking glory and adulation for themselves, the crowd is all ears, eyes, and open pocketbooks. People love (at least for a season) self-promoters, be they rock stars, athletes, politicians, or would-be saviors.

I suspect that there are several reasons we human beings are prone to, paraphrasing Paul Simon, throw another hero up the pop chart. 

One is that we all want to be like God. That was the seminal temptation that sucked Adam and Eve into sin. It's our seminal temptation. When we see a shiny new “star” of one kind or another, thumbing their noses at niceties and being boorishly self-absorbed, we’re prone to applause. In them, we see someone “getting away with” what we secretly wish we could get away with. (Of course, the shininess wears out and soon we tire of the spoiled and entitled "hero" and we go searching for the next shiny new self-glorifying star.)

The other reason is that a self-glorifying would-be god is more tangible and more susceptible to our control than self-emptying God. God’s greatest feat was dying on a cross, then being raised from the dead, not for Himself, but for undeserving people. We can become heirs to His saving action when we acknowledge how undeserving we are, turn from sin (all of it rooted in our stubborn desire to be like God), and trust not in themselves--or their “goodness,” or their accomplishments, or their star power--but in the God revealed in Christ alone.

The person who comes to us in their own name can be controlled by us. The success of their self-glorifying schtick is entirely dependent on our going along with it. The abusive husband, whether the abuse is physical, emotional, sexual, or otherwise, inflating himself at the expense of a wife, will be deflated if the wife leaves. The arrogant politician can get away with their arrogance only so long as his/her constituents put up with it. People can’t set themselves up as godlets without our permission.

Jesus came into the world to honor God and to save us. Despite the power that He manifested, because He didn’t act selfishly, the world saw Him as weak, contemptible, worthy of scorn, worthy of death. His selflessness actually threatened those who had power or wanted power. (That would include the entire human race.)

The crowd--me, Jesus says, is willing to live off of the glory that others give to us (to me). Jesus lived (and died and rose) to glorify His Father. Big difference in orientation there. 

Jesus, of course, achieved more than anyone else in human history. He opened the way of salvation to all who believe in Him. Through Him, eternal life invades this dead world through all who trust in Him. (God's life enters my dead frame through Jesus!) None of the world’s self-glorifying godlets can offer that. Their achievements and the adulation of adoring worshipers are finite. What Jesus achieved is eternal.

Listen: God, I wonder what my life would look like if I quit concerning myself with what I want and stopped bothering with others’ opinions of me? Like others, I pretend that neither of these things concern me. But you that that’s a lie.

You could have as easily had me in mind when you said of ancient Israel in Isaiah 29:13: “...this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips (this Mark says all the right things to me and about Me), while their hearts are far from me (his heart is far from me), and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men…” And while you’re talking about religious commandments imposed on people that have little or nothing to do with You, I don’t think it’s eisegesis to say that “commandments taught by men” include our codes for getting ahead by getting along, being the uber-confident self-worshiper who commands allegiance, even when it's all dressed up as being religious and decent. 

Subconsciously, I suspect that I make a little bargain with the world (I may even tell myself that I make it with you): I will be what people want me to be so that they’ll like me, accept me, not find me objectionable, even, in a way, worship me. (Like Adam and Eve, I'd sort of like to "be like God," not in the self-serving sense. But you know, in the Creator of the universe, everyone bow down to me sense. It's embarrassing to see in writing. Yet, I know that at some level it's true. I wonder if I'm rare among the together, loving, devoted Christians I know?) 

It must be true that if you’re all about you and want everybody else to be all about you, becoming a pliant piece of Silly Putty is the way to go. "I'll be whatever other people want me to be if they'll love me." This is not what Jesus meant by losing ourselves to find ourselves. He meant to no longer be concerned about oneself, only about the glory of God and the good of our neighbor. It's when we commit ourselves to that "shalom lifestyle" that we find our true selves, loosed from self-consciousness or self-worship. (One of the first things to happen to humans after falling into sin was the paralysis of self-consciousness. They hid themselves from God because they were naked. "Who told you that you were naked," God asks. 

As Silly Putty godlets, receiving worship because we're looking our for ourselves, we become like the apocryphal French general Robert Kennedy mentioned in the foreword to the memorial edition of his brother’s book, Profiles in Courage. “There go my people,” the general said. “I must follow them so that I may lead them.” 

You can't lead when you seek others' adulation. You can't serve either. That's why true leadership and true servanthood are the same thing. 

Make me more than Silly Putty, Lord. Instead of looking out for me or for the most comfortable and least troubling pathway through life, help me to seek to glorify You. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit so that I can lift You--not me--before the world.

Respond: Lord, today, show me how I can glorify You only. Help me to refrain from those behaviors in which I look out for me. In Jesus’ name.

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

What God taught me today about who's qualified

Five days a week, I make it a point of spending Quiet Time with God, asking Him to speak the message He has for me that day through His Word. Recently, I spent time with God in John, chapter 4. Here are my reflections.

Look: “Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.” (John 4:36) This chapter of John’s Gospel is one of my favorites, a touchstone to which I return time and again. 

When I prayed that God would show me some new truth here though, I confess to being skeptical that could happen because the passage is so familiar to me.

But, in John 4:36, a truth appeared that I had never really noticed. 

Before this, Jesus has encountered the Samaritan woman and, after He told her everything about herself and revealed to her that He was the Messiah, she forgot her dread of encountering the people of Sychar, running back into the village and telling people about Jesus. (The woman went to the well during the hottest time of the day, when none of the other women would be drawing water there. She didn't want to face condemnation for her sinful lifestyle, living with a man to whom she wasn't married.)
At the tail end of the encounter, the disciples return from their food-gathering errand. After that, the woman leaves on her “mission” and the disciples urge Jesus to eat. He says that He already has food and that His food is to do the will of God.

But then, He says: “ Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.” (John 8:35) It seems an incongruous thing to say, but Jesus is teaching in a teachable moment when His disciples expectations are being upended, when their understanding of "proper" behavior is challenged. 

There are, Jesus is telling them, people ready to be "harvested," brought out of the mission field of a deathbound world and brought into Christ’s eternal kingdom. Here, even in Samaria, the fields were white with ready souls. Jesus tells the disciples to “look,” to see this reality. 

It’s something I need to see, too. Those people who are hostile or indifferent to Christ aren’t enemies! They’re the mission field, a crop in varying stages of readiness to be harvested for Christ’s kingdom: People who, through the power of the Holy Spirit, will be at varied places in their receptivity to the gospel of new life through Jesus.

It's here that Jesus says: “Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.”

Listen: It never struck me before: Jesus moves from a universal statement about the field to a specific statement about what’s happening at Sychar that very moment.
Jesus is surrounded by His apostles, the sent ones, who will carry the gospel and lead the Church after His death and resurrection. 

But the first “reaper,” the first evangelist to gather in the harvest, receiving her wages by gathering the fruit of eternal life through Jesus is this woman from the wrong side of the tracks.

The woman’s slight and embryonic faith--”Can this be the Christ?” (v. 29)--which, despite its seeming incompleteness and her seeming incompetence, compelled her to witness is being rewarded in many ways, two most notably. 

(1) First, she reaps a harvest of believers in Christ; 

(2) She no longer is ashamed. She can face those from whom she once hid. The Jewish man--Jews had no dealings with Samaritans and men never spoke to women from outside of their families in public, who was at the least, in her reckoning, “a prophet” had spoken to her, had offered her eternal life, living water that never gives out. 

She experienced the grace and forgiveness of God that swallows up guilt and shame and makes those who trust in Christ new.

The first evangelist was a Samaritan woman of questionable character. The first to carry the good news of resurrection on Easter (the first Easter sermon) was carried by women.

But never before had I realized so clearly that the Samaritan woman--never named--was the first to give the disciples an object lesson in how the Gospel was going to be carried into the world.

Never before, perhaps, had they seen that Jesus was the sower and all we need to do is simply, humbly, without eloquence or “cuteness,” reap His harvest. 

The woman who had gone to the well at the time of day when she wouldn’t have to be around the respectable women who drew water in the morning or the evening, became a bold evangelist. She could do that because she wasn’t commending herself or protecting herself or looking out for herself. She was just sharing the message that the man at the well--the Messiah, had just changed her life forever.

I'm not qualified to share the Gospel because of what I've done; I'm qualified by what Christ has done for me...and every other human being on the planet! 

So cool!

Respond: Lord, help me to share this truth with the Church, so that their self consciousness will go away. Help me to live this truth. Help me be prepared to reap the harvest that is planted by Your eternity-chanting Word! In Jesus’ name.

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

Where the Light Shines Through by Switchfoot

"The wound is where the Light shines through
"The wound is where the Light finds you."

This is the title track from the new Switchfoot project...and it tells a really important truth.

The apostle Paul tells about a wound that afflicted him which he asked God to remove. But three times God refused, then told Paul: "'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore [Paul goes on to say] I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." (2 Corinthians 12:9)

Fight the Good Fight!

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
A pastor once told a group of us who were meeting together his theory on communicating information to people. “Just about the time you’re sick of hearing yourself say it,” he said, “is probably just the time that people are beginning to hear what you’re saying.”

As we come to our second Bible lesson for today, we may suspect that the apostle Paul had a similar theory about communication.

In 1 Timothy, the first letter he sent to the young pastor, Timothy, Paul wrote, “ I am giving you this command in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by recalling them you may fight the battle well…” (1 Timothy 1:18).

Later in that first letter, Paul wrote, “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.…” (1 Timothy 6:12)

And in today’s lesson, Paul encourages Timothy to learn from Paul’s life, telling Timothy, even as Paul faced what he regarded as the certainty of execution for his faith in Christ, “ I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.…” (2 Timothy 4:7)

For any who have grown sleepy with an unchristian sentimentality over the Bible’s description of Jesus as “the Prince of peace,” all of Paul’s talk about living out faith in Christ as a “fight,” may be a bit jarring.

Don’t misunderstand, though! Jesus is the Prince of peace, of course. Paul himself wrote about how, in Christ, God made peace with the human race and offered us the incredible peace of knowing that all who trust in Christ belong to God forever. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:18 about how “God, who reconciled us to himself [or made peace with us] through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation…” Through Christ, we can have peace with God, with others, and even with ourselves. And we are called to share that peace.

But that doesn’t mean that following Jesus Christ in this world will be without its struggles.

Sometimes, those struggles will be within us, as we battle to stay faithful in the midst of experiences we can’t explain and, that we fear, are beyond our endurance. Or, when we struggle to justify our own sins despite the will of God made clear in His Word.

Often though, those struggles will come in the form of conflict with other people. Mark it down: Hold onto Jesus and you will sometimes be in conflict with others, sometimes with people you once thought were close to you.

“Do not suppose,” Jesus says in Matthew 10:34-38, “that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

Each week during worship, through the words of either the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed, we confess that the God we know in Jesus Christ is the only rightful Lord and King of the universe. We confess that only Jesus is worthy of our ultimate allegiance. And we also confess that it is only through faith in Jesus Christ and repentance for sin in His Name that humanity can find joy, healing, hope, forgiveness of sin, reconciliation with our Maker Who we push our of our lives when we sin, and everlasting life.

Make confessions like these, both Jesus and Paul tell us, and you will have a fight on your hands! And that's especially true if your faith in Jesus Christ is more than just words recited in this sanctuary on Sunday mornings. When we dare to carry Jesus beyond these walls, we may find ourselves in a fight or two.

Whenever, for example. we, in Jesus’ name and in the power of the Holy Spirit, dare to love the unlovable or forgive the unpardonable, we will offend people and get a fight.

But even in the face of resistance, we must ask God for strength to keep fighting the good fight: to keep making disciples by sharing Jesus and our lives with others.

The reason for this is simple. C.S. Lewis puts it this way in Mere Christianity: “Christianity is a fighting religion.”

As Christians, our call isn’t as Paul reminds us elsewhere, to struggle against flesh and blood, other people. We fight the devil and the demonic powers who want to hold people for whom Jesus died and rose eternally captive to sin, death, and darkness.

But we don't fight alone...or even in our own power!

God fought for us--for our very lives--all the way to the cross and then, after Jesus’ crucifixion had seemingly signaled that nothing about us could be made right, the Father pulled the Son up from the grave and gave Him life again, a life that He shares with all who turn from sin and trust in Him.

This good news--this gospel--changes the lives of those who follow Jesus forever! We have victory no matter what the devil may hurl at us!

Today, it’s our task, no matter how we may be buffeted, rejected, ignored, or scoffed at, to fight the good fight to communicate over and over, however many times we may need to repeat it in words and actions and service and love, that God really did so love the world that He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him will be not be separated from God and the life that only God can give, but live with God and God’s people for all eternity!

Sharing and living this message is the good fight of faith. And friends: It’s the only fight worth our time or attention!

I know that in the midst of a hotly contested election season, that may be hard to remember. But we must remember it! A president will be elected and serve four or eight years. But Jesus is Lord, Savior, God, and King for eternity. No accomplishment of any president or king or emperor or prime minister  comes even close to what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross!

It’s this message of new, eternal life with God for dying sinners that Paul felt worth repeating again and again, in many different ways and circumstances. It's a message worth building our lives on too!

When life throws you a bad break, fight the good fight: hold onto Jesus.

When you find yourself disagreeing with God about what constitutes a sin, fight the good fight: repent and ask God to help you to live according to God’s will, not your own.

When a friend loses a loved one, don’t make yourself scarce, afraid of saying the wrong thing; pray God to give you the right words and the right listening silences, and go to that friend. That’s fighting the good fight, too.

When you see a classmate mistreated or a co-worker shafted, fight the good fight; go to them and be the loving presence of Christ and pray with them.

When you see someone struggling with life without a clue, fight the good fight; go to them, pray with them, and tell them about the hope you have in Jesus Christ.

Pastor George Hartman, a former missionary, was the senior pastor of Saint John Lutheran Church in Grove City for many years. I first got to know George when I was the twenty-five year old Elder of our home church on the west side of Columbus and Saint John was part of the same cluster of congregations. I came to know George better when Saint John was a mission partner to the mission congregation I pastored in Cincinnati, Friendship. George Hartman was absolutely sold-out, no turning back, no-doubt-about-it in love with Jesus Christ! He wanted people to be saved from sin and death by becoming Jesus’ disciples.

I’ll never forget one Sunday afternoon about twenty-five years ago. The people of Friendship were invited to Saint John for a joint worship service celebrating and praying for our partnership. (At that time, Friendship had grown to a whole 20 members, including my family!) I preached.

Sitting in the front row was George Hartman. I explained that though Friendship was small, already we had seen several adults come to faith in Jesus Christ. “Thanks to you, your prayers, and your gifts” I told the people of Saint John, “there are people you will meet one day in heaven, even if you never meet them on earth, people who, without your commitment to Jesus, might have been lost to God for all eternity.”

I wasn’t going for sentimentality, just stating the facts. But just as I said that, I caught sight of George. Tears were streaming down his face as he thought about the people saved by the sharing of Christ’s gospel who he would one day see in heaven. Folks, those were the joyful tears of a follower of Jesus committed to fighting the good fight of faith, fighting to ensure that every lost soul has a chance to know and follow Jesus!

Among our neighbors, family members, co-workers, and classmates, there are people you and I know who face their days without Christ and without the help that only He can bring.

There are people we know facing an eternity without Jesus Christ, of eternal separation from God and an eternity in hell.

There are people we know who need Jesus Christ.

Doesn’t that make you fighting mad at sin, death, and the devil, the devil who has always tried to deceive people into believing that they can be their own gods, that their sins aren’t so bad?

Don't you want, every single day, to fight for the eternal salvation of such people?

Please, in Jesus’ Name, I beg you to pray for the people in your lives who don’t know Jesus.

Serve them in Jesus’ Name.

Help them to know Jesus.

Help them to see how your perfect Savior is helping you, loving you, and saving you despite your imperfections.

Start a Bible study with them. (I’ll direct you to materials to make it happen.)

Pray with them.

Be there for them.

More than ever before, the world needs Christians to fulfill the mission Jesus has given to us: to be and to make disciples of Jesus Christ.

That’s the fight of our lives!

It’s a fight fought with the love of Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, the truth of God’s Word, and the prayers of disciples who know that all is hopeless without Jesus.

When we fight this fight, the devil opposes us, (the devil always opposes faithful churches and faithful people) but God-the God Who died on a cross and rose from the dead and gave us faith--stands with us, just as He did with Paul.

Fight the good fight of faith in Christ. It truly is the only fight worth fighting in this world. Amen

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

Holy Water by Switchfoot

The first track on the new LP by Switchfoot. Make sure to crank it up!

Close Your Eyes by James Taylor

Song for Someone by U2 (Acoustic)

Come Away with Me (Live) by Norah Jones

Let Me Roll It by Paul McCartney

"I wanna tell you
"And now's the time
"I wanna tell you
"That you're gonna be mine."

That's confidence, I guess.

The whole baseball world wonders...

...where Steve Bartman will be tomorrow night.

Steve Bartman didn't cause the 2003 Cubs to lose the sixth game of the National League Championship Series, when many assumed the team would punch its ticket for the World Series. Cubs pitching and fielding in those two games were the real culprits.

But Bartman became a scapegoat for the frustration of Cubs fans over (then) ninety-five years in which the team hadn't won a World Series. That drought continues. But, as was true in 2003, the Cubs head into a sixth NLCS game with a three games to two advantage over their opponents, this year the Los Angeles Dodgers.

I would love to see Cubs Nation bury the hatchet with Bartman, himself a lifelong Cubs fan, who hasn't been seen back at Wrigley Field on that fateful night when he, like any other self-respecting baseball fan, reached for a foul ball hit his way.

But whatever he does, he (and probably every other fan) should stay away from Aisle 4, Row 8, Seat 113. You don't want to be there if a ball gets hit down the left field line tomorrow evening.

The skinny on murder in the US

This graph is a testament to the chasm that often exists between perception and reality. According to the FBI, murder is at its lowest rate in fifty years.

Dylan, the Bible, and the Nobel Prize for Literature

Poet and pastor Malcolm Guite applauds Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize for Literature and explains the connections between Dylan's body of work and his reading of the Bible.

Years ago, I read an article in Rolling Stone about Roger McGuinn, lead singer and lead guitarist of The Byrds, a band that successfully covered several Dylan songs. This was during Dylan's "Christian phase." But McGuinn explained that in the mid-60s, ten years before Dylan's "conversion," Dylan told McGuinn that he always turned to the Bible for song-writing inspiration. You can hear it on every Dylan LP. He's steeped in the Scriptures and they're apparent in his cadences, sensibilities, and imagery.

Dylan deserves his Nobel Prize and my life has been enriched by his work.



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

Can't Stop Me Now by Lecrae

Just released today.

This Never Happened Before by Paul McCartney

Just sit back and listen (again) to this beautiful ballad.

Some thoughts on loss

The pain associated with a loss never goes away.

No matter what the loss--the death of a loved one, the rupturing of a relationship, the loss of a job, the death of a dream--the pain always remains. It would be unnatural for us not to grieve or always a carry a sense of our loss: We were made in God's image, created for eternity and shalom. But the inborn condition of alienation from God--what the Bible calls sins--distorts us and disrupts God's good intentions for each of us. We grieve as we lose the life we know, deep in our DNA, for which we were made. But there is good news!

God became one of us in Jesus Christ. He lived a sinless life on this planet, yet faced the terrors of this life, yielding Himself on a cross He didn't deserve, all for our benefit.

Why?

So that God can stand with us in all our losses and assure us that our Maker, Who also has endured loss, understands.

So that Christ could receive the wrath and rejection that our wrathful rejection of God earns us, turning the wrath from us onto Himself, setting us free from judgment for our sinful condition and the sins we perpetrate against God, each other, and ourselves because of that condition.

So that Christ could, as the prototype of a new human race, devoid of sin, filled with everlasting life, made strong in grace, secure the same resurrection victory for us that God the Father gave to Him on the first Easter Sunday.

Jesus says, "In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world!" (John 16:33)

The world and all of its losses have been overcome by Jesus and His victory belongs to anyone who, by the power and grace of God's Spirit that can change a life for eternity, turns from their own sin and sense of self-sufficiency and instead entrusts themselves to Christ. This is what Jesus calls believing in Him or having faith.

Loss is a reality in this finite and fallen world. The God of the cross can comfort us with His Word, the sacraments, and the Church. The Church is the fellowship of recovering sinners (I'm one of those!) who are being reshaped by the grace only Christ gives.

But, make no mistake about it, loss has met its conqueror. He is Jesus Christ, God the Son in the flesh.

Believers in Christ know that beyond their futures in this loss-filled world, we will live as God intended us to live: free of death, sin, relational disruptions. We will be eternally one with God and with all those sinners who are sainted by grace through faith in Christ.

There, God "...will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." (Revelation 21:4)

In the light of this reality, we can live today fearlessly. We can love even when our love is rejected. We can fight to bring justice to the despised, the ignored, the unloved. Even in the face of our losses, Jesus can free us to live.

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

Trust in God, me, people?

Five days a week or so, I begin my day with a Quiet Time with God. In Quiet Time, I meet God with this format: stop, look, listen, respond.

Today, the focal point of my Quiet Time was John 2. Here are my reflections and what God showed me.

Look: “Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.” (John 2:23-25, English Standard Version)

Listen: Jesus has been among crowds throughout this chapter. He was at the wedding at Cana, with His disciples, where He turned water into wine, His first sign.

He was at the temple at Passover and drove the money-changers out of the place.

But these verses show how alone Jesus was, even amid a crowd. He was true God and true man. He was as vulnerable as other men, as the Passion Account will show. But He was also God, omniscient. Jesus could “read people like a book,” a truth pointed out in countless subsequent events in His ministry, recounted in all four Gospels.

But I was still a bit baffled by this passage about Jesus not entrusting Himself to them--that is the believing crowds--as I read it today. (Baffled as I have been before and simply glossed over it, I guess.) I wondered this morning what God was saying here.

I decided to look at the Greek in which the New Testament was originally written. The first thing I noticed is that when John speaks of Jesus not entrusting HImself to them, the verb is a form of pisteo, the most common verb form used for believing or having faith. (The noun form is pistis.) That struck me as odd. While the word can be used for common, everyday trust--”I trust my kids not to get in trouble when they go out at night.” “I trust that the pilot of my plane knows what she/he is doing.”--it struck me as funny that John reports that Jesus didn’t trust in the crowd. It seemed more cosmic than the everyday use of the term. Jesus had no faith in the crowd. Jesus had no faith in human beings, even though He loved them enough to go to a cross for them. Why? Because “he himself knew what was in man.”

The Greek has the article: “Jesus knew what was in the man.” While I wouldn’t probably want to press this too far, Jesus speaking of not trusting the man--the Adam--at this juncture in the narrative forms a nice counterpoint to His earlier (and sort of strange) address of His mother as “Woman,” as in “Woman, what does this have to do with me?” (John 2:4). That passage shows us that while He is God and man, with no need for human beings, He nonetheless loves “the Woman.” (And not primarily as His earthly mother, but as a human being.)

Nonetheless, John is telling us in verses 24 and 25 that Jesus wouldn’t entrust Himself “to them” because He had divine insight into what human beings are like. They could not be trusted. That’s why I say Jesus lived a lonely life.

Verse 23 tells us who the people are in whom Jesus did not entrust Himself: They were among the “many [who] believed in Him.” Again, the verb is a form of pisteo, the same verb Jesus uses in John 3:16, when He says that we are saved by belief in Him. Belief is the whole ballgame, the road to justification and sanctification of sinners by God. Yet Jesus doesn’t trust even those who believe in Him.

The Message translation nicely presents this reality: “...many people noticed the signs he was displaying and, seeing they pointed straight to God, entrusted their lives to him. But Jesus didn’t entrust his life to them. He knew them inside and out, knew how untrustworthy they were. He didn’t need any help in seeing right through them.” (John 2:24-25, The Message)

Yet later, after His death and resurrection, Jesus would empower people who believed in Him (His Church) with the mission of making disciples. That seems like a gargantuan act of trust on His part.

What changed?

Above all, Jesus had died and risen from the dead. He had made clear that every follower of His would bear the cross, seeing their own sinful flesh crucified by repentance and going through physical death too. The cross tells us that following Jesus isn’t a walk in the park. Until would be followers of Jesus recognize this, any talk of believing in Him is shallow and meaningless.

This is why Jesus usually instructed people He had healed or set free from demons to tell no one. You can’t understand Jesus as the Messiah until you understand Him as the suffering Messiah who joins us in our suffering in order to redeem it and make us new. John the Baptist had it right when He pointed to Jesus and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world.” It was Jesus' sacrifice as a Lamb unblemished by human sin that makes it possible for sinners like me to be saved. No cross; no empty tomb. No death; no rebirth for fallen sinners. No surrender; no real trust or belief.

The people who believed in Jesus because of His signs were incapable of believing in Him as in belief, or faith, or surrender that actually saves, belief that acknowledges that there’s nothing about us that’s salvation-worthy but we trust in the perfect sacrifice of Christ on the cross to make us worthy.

Jesus only could trust the post-resurrection Church with the “great commission” because, through Holy Baptism, He was going to pour His Holy Spirit on His Church. Jesus loves the human race and He loves His Church completely. But He only trusts human beings insofar as they have, by the power of the Holy Spirit’s witness through disciples, come to believe in Him as crucified and risen Savior (John 3:16-18). He only trusts the Church insofar as, by the power of the Spirit, it preaches repentance (Mark 1:14-15) He only trusts the Church insofar as, by the power of the Holy Spirit, it confesses Jesus as Lord (2 Corinthian 12:3) ...and not as a decision made by people who, from their fallenness, is capable of believing in Jesus. The crucified and risen Jesus, then, unlike Jesus before His crucifixion and resurrection, trusts the Holy Spirit in us; but He doesn’t trust in us because He knows exactly what’s in us.

Listen: Though I regularly rail against such things, I realize that I often cave into the temptation to put my ultimate trust or trust on a par with the trust I’m called to have in Christ, in people.

The first “people” I put my trust in most often is me. The absurdity of this should be clear to me, Lord. While I don’t know me as well as You know me, I know enough to know that I’m utterly untrustworthy. In fact, I’ve made a shambles of some friendships because I’m not always trustworthy.

I am, and this is my ongoing struggle as a Christian--though I don’t struggle with it enough: being about me. I let the old Adam have too much say in how I live from day to day. I dream about things that are contrary to Your will. I fantasize being a BMOPE (big man on planet earth). I look for what’s in it for me. I seek more to be comfortable than faithful.

I put my trust in other people. There’s nothing wrong with having trusting relationships with others. But I suppose I have a tendency to idealize people, because of the Christ I see in them. But no one is perfect. No one is worthy of the kind of trust I’m meant and can confidently have only in You.

Respond: Help me to put my trust in You alone and to act on that trust in You alone today. Show me what that might mean for my thought life and for my actions.

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

A point of pride: America's clean election system

For those concerned about voter fraud, this article by a law professor who has looked for fraud in every US election since 2000, should assuage your concerns. The prof teaches at the Loyola College of Law in L.A., known as a conservative institution.

Here are the money paragraphs from the piece he wrote for The Washington Post:

"I’ve been tracking allegations of fraud for years now, including the fraud ID laws are designed to stop. In 2008, when the Supreme Court weighed in on voter ID, I looked at every single allegation put before the Court. And since then, I’ve been following reports wherever they crop up. 

"To be clear, I’m not just talking about prosecutions. I track any specific, credible allegation that someone may have pretended to be someone else at the polls, in any way that an ID law could fix. 

"So far, I’ve found about 31 different incidents (some of which involve multiple ballots) since 2000, anywhere in the country."

In pointing this out, I am not making a political statement.

But I do think it's alarming when major political figures allege that we have a fraudulent election system. The United States has the cleanest election system in the world. That's a fact. It's one of the blessings we enjoy as citizens of this country. America isn't perfect, but we can be proud and grateful that our votes are counted and reported accurately.

The world thinks you're crazy? Christ vindicates the faithful

Luke 18:1-8
Imagine this scenario. A man, insisting on his innocence, is convicted of a terrible crime and put in prison for decades. A group of law students becomes interested in his case and, employing DNA evidence not available at the time of the trial as well as finding other evidence the man’s defense attorney never used, prove that the convicted man is innocent. TV cameras and reporters wait outside the prison walls as the man is set free. “How do you feel?” they ask. “I’m sad that I can never get all those lost years back,” he says, “but I’m thankful to finally be vindicated.”

Vindication. When we know that we’re innocent or that we’ve been violated, but justice finally comes, or when we see the things we believe in are prone true, vindication is sweet.

In the passage in Luke that comes before today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus says that those who have trusted in Him, who have followed Him, and allowed His Word to reign with authority over our lives and have endured the rejection or dismissal or even persecution of others for our faith in Him, will be vindicated. We are justified.

Jesus says there that the vindication of our faith in Him, rejected by a cynical and sinful world, will come when He returns to bring judgment on those covered in sin and vindication to those who, by their faith, are covered by His grace.

“I tell you,” Jesus says, “on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.” [Luke 17:34-35] Many Christians get this wrong, by the way. The ones taken away are, in fact, the ones facing judgment and hell; it’s the ones “left behind” who will remain with Jesus in His eternal kingdom! They will be vindicated for staying faithful to Him.

Jesus continues the vindication theme in our Gospel lesson for today, Luke 18:1-8. It begins: “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: ‘In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, “Grant me justice against my adversary.”’”

Now, there are several things it’s important to remember as we dig into Jesus’ words.

First, in first century Judea, widows were in a tenuous position. They weren’t supposed to have any property and women generally had no rights. If a woman was wronged, she was completely at the mercy of a society in which a woman’s testimony was inadmissible in court.

Second, Old Testament law made it clear that God expected His people to care for widows, as well as orphans, the poor, and strangers (what we would today call immigrants). [Maybe, a better word would be refugees.] But first century Judea didn’t like talking about God’s Law when it was uncomfortable. (They're not very different from us, are they?)

Third, in the first century world, there was no distinction between civil and criminal law. In our country, we have agencies like police departments to gather evidence and seek indictments against people who have committed crimes. Then we have prosecuting attorneys to prosecute crimes. In first century Judea though, if a member of your family was murdered, the job of finding and seeking a conviction against the murderer was yours. There were no law enforcement officials, no professional prosecutors.

That’s the situation in which the widow in Jesus’ parable, a woman likely penniless and certainly powerless, finds herself as she seeks vindication. We don’t know what the crime was that had been committed against her. (Although the judge seems to acknowledge that she was in the right.) But we do know that the deck is stacked against her because the judge to which she makes her constant petitions didn’t care about God or about the opinions of others. Jesus’ original hearers, knowing how the world usually worked, undoubtedly thought as Jesus began His parable, that the widow and her cause were toast!

Go back to the lesson, please, starting at verse 4: “For some time he [the judge] refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

The word translated here as attack me, in the Greek in which Luke originally wrote the Gospel, is the verb, ὑπωπιάζω. It means, literally, strike under the eye. The judge was worried that the widow would give him a black eye. That phrase could be, just like today, used both literally or figuratively. The judge is worried that this widow who keeps bothering him, seeking vindication day after day after day, will give him the black eye of a bad reputation.

He’d been careful to conceal the fact that he was a cynic and a sinner who loved neither God or people. But this relentless woman could ruin everything for him. Because she was so incessant, her story was bound to come out. The town would know that she had been wronged and that the judge had refused to do anything for her. So, the judge thinks, “Enough, already! I will see that this irksome petitioner gets justice!”

Of course, this is where people most often misunderstand this parable. They think that God is the unjust judge and that, if we want to get Him to do what we want Him to do, we have to wear Him out with our praying. In this interpretation of the parable, God becomes a surly call center operator who gives us blessings because we keep pestering Him. I hope that, from what you know of the God we meet in Jesus Christ, that picture of God doesn’t seem right.

Jesus sets us straight on this. Verse 6: “And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.”

Jesus is saying that God is nothing like that unjust judge! The judge finally vindicated the widow against his will. But God, our Father in heaven, wants to vindicate us. He wants to demonstrate to us that we haven’t been crazy to trust in Him, that He is the God Who gives life, forgiveness, purpose, and peace to all who put their trust in His Son, Jesus.

When life seems to have gone dry...when hope seems hard to find...when relationships become challenging...when the world seems to make a mockery of our faith, we can cry out to God and He will fill us with the power of His Holy Spirit, the strength of His love, the assurance of His presence. We will know our faith isn’t for nothing. We will be vindicated!

Through Jesus, the promise given to ancient Israel is also for we who confess that Jesus is our Lord and God: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” [Deuteronomy 31:6]

In Matthew 28:20, Jesus underscores this promise for we disciples: “I am with you always, even to the close of the age.”

Some read this passage and think that it means if we pray for a new Lamborghini--I saw one parked by Five Guys a few weeks ago--God will give it to us.

God does provide for our daily bread, of course. Jesus teaches us to pray for our daily bread to acknowledge Him as the giver of everything we need to live.

And God does entrust some people with greater wealth...along with the high obligations associated with being a wealthy person who has the ability to care for so many of his or her neighbors on this planet.

But remember that in this parable, Jesus is talking about praying for the vindication of our faith in Him.

Today, in the United States, it’s become increasingly fashionable to ignorantly dismiss the existence of God, the deity of Jesus, His resurrection, or the justification of sinners by the grace of God through faith in Jesus. “Where is God in the midst of all of the world’s sufferings and injustices?” they ask.

The answer: He’s where He’s always been, with those who trust in Him. He’s with us when we go through the cross experiences of our lives, having gone through His own cross for us. And He’s with us when our faith sustains and inspires us to lives filled with His love and, powered by His Holy Spirit, we share the Good News of Jesus, making disciples in His name.

As the apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:7, “we live by faith, not by sight.” But when Jesus returns, when He calls us out of our graves and says, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father…” [Matthew 25:34], we will, like the widow in Jesus’ parable, be fully, eternally, perfectly vindicated in our faith. He will give us the justice not that we deserve, because that would mean death and eternal condemnation. He instead will give us--is giving us even now as we trust in Him--the justice of God’s grace: forgiveness, life, and love we don’t deserve and could never earn, but that God gives freely to all who follow Jesus.

All of which leads to the question Jesus asks at the end of the parable today: “However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

We are all, of course, sinners. We fall short of the glory God intended for us to live in as creatures made in His image.

If we were to be tried for sin by God, the righteous Judge, no amount of evidence could disprove our guilt. The conviction rate would be 100% and our lives would bear witness against us.

Only our faith in Jesus, the Son of Man, can vindicate us, can justify us.

So, in response to Jesus' question here, I give you this exhortation, this encouragement: Pray each day that the Holy Spirit, the author of faith in Jesus Christ who plants it in the hearts and the lives of sinners willing to believe, will fill you with faith and with the assurance that, despite your mistakes, sins, and failings, God loves you with an infinite love and declares you free to live in His grace for all eternity.

God wants to vindicate you in this way, quickly, now, always. Amen

Without You

A nice song.

Treat You Better by Shawn Mendes

I just heard this song for the first time yesterday while sitting in a restaurant.

Listening to it, the lyrics reminded me of other songs in which plaintive males try to convince the woman with whom they're in love that they would be better loved by the narrators than by the jerk the women are with. I bet every male on the planet has felt exactly this way. One of the my favorite songs of this ilk is the Beatles' This Boy.

But the video for young Mendes' song takes a far more serious tack, showing us that the object of the narrator's love is being abused by the guy she's seeing. There's even a graphic at the end of the video urging women who are in abusive relationships to seek help to get free.

Through my years as a pastor, I've occasionally counseled with women in abusive relationships or worked with women's shelters to help women who have bravely left such relationships.

So, if you're a woman in a relationship in which you're being abused--physically, sexually, emotionally, psychologically--by your husband or boyfriend, get out! Find a women's shelter, if you need to. No human being should be abused.

And don't be afraid to call the police; men who physically abuse women are guilty of assault.

Remember, that you were made in God's image and Christ died and rose to bring all who follow Him wholeness and eternity. No one "deserves" to be abused. No one.

I Won't Let Go of You by Switchfoot

Switchfoot sings a love song to anyone who's ever had hurt in their lives, all from the perspective of the loving God we know in Jesus Christ. So good!

Baby, I Love Your Way by Peter Frampton

Lots of hair here. Nice song. Heard it while out and about today.

Dodgers Clinch: Congratulations, Wince

Tonight I was pulling for the Washington Nationals to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in their National League Divisional Series rubber match. But, congratulations go to LA for taking the game and the series, advancing to the National League Championship Series against the Chicago Cubs.

Congratulating LA sort of sticks in my throat. The Dodgers were my Cincinnati Reds' National League West rivals back in the 1970s. I remember staying up late to listen to radio broadcasts of hotly contested and consequential games the Big Red Machine had with the Dodgers, also a very good team in those days.

A few years back, I went to a Boys and Girls Club regional meeting where the Dodgers first baseman from that era, Steve Garvey, spoke. I admit that I listened intently. After the event, I approached him and said, "I wanted to meet a guy who used to give me fits as a Reds fan." We talked for a bit and Garvey said, "Those were some amazing games!" They were.

We've had some amazing games so far this post-season. The 2016 Dodgers were impressive tonight.

But I wonder of they can handle the Cubs, who, this year, I believe, has been the best team in baseball.

I would love to see a World Series involving the Cubs, a franchise that hasn't won a World Series in nearly a century, and Cleveland, a franchise that last won the Series in 1948. And, of course, it would be great if the Tribe could bring a second major sports championship to Cleveland this year, after the Cavaliers became champions of the NBA in June.

Cleveland will be playing the the Toronto Blue Jays for the American League Championship Series and a chance to go to the World Series.

PS: I loved seeing former Reds player Chris Heisey smash a pinch hit home run for the Nationals tonight, the first player to do that in team history, going back to 1969, when the franchise began as the Montreal Expos.

Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize for Literature

Bob Dylan is among the greatest wordsmiths of the past 50 years, which is why I think his Nobel Prize for Literature is so well-deserved.

Just consider these lines from his 1974 song, 'Shelter from the Storm':

I’ve heard newborn babies wailin’ like a mournin’ dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love
Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn?
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

In just these four lines, he portrays the human condition and the need we all have of one to give us shelter from it all. He portrays love at its most basic and wondrous level.

Those four lines are sheer beauty, part of a lifelong corpus of beautiful, insightful, soul-stirring lyrics.

Dylan's music has always meant so much to me. I'm so happy about this recognition of his work I feel like I got the award myself. I don't know whether to laugh or cry from the joy of it. Probably, if I can get away with it, I'll do a little of both.

3 Books

Recently, I finished reading two books and listening to another.

I'd started reading Nabeel Qureshi's Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Jesus, a while ago, but had set it aside in order to turn my attention to two other books--one that my Navigators coach, Bill Mowry, wanted me to read and another one recommended me to by my son.

The Qureshi book is an important one, especially given the penchant of some in the post-911 US, who erroneously think that all religions are the same and when others, in the name of tolerance, claim that all religions can lead people to God.

Qureshi was raised in a devout Muslim home and was himself an avid believer. But when he went to Old Dominion University, on his way to medical school, he met David, a mate on the school debate team, who was a deeply committed follower of Jesus.

In the context of their friendship, Qureshi became committed to proving the superiority of Islam and the errors of David's Christianity.

To do so, he dug into not just the Qu'ran and Muslim teaching, but also the Bible and Christian teaching. Qureshi chronicles a series of jarring insights that led him, with heart, head, and will to accept that Jesus is the crucified and risen "way,...truth,..and life" (John 14:6) and that Islam isn't a  witness of God. As he writes in the book's introduction: "As I studied Islam more carefully, what I learned shook my world: there is no good reason to believe that either Muhammad or the Quran teaches the truth about God."

It hasn't been an easy road for Qureshi since coming to faith in Christ. But he has remained steadfast in following Christ, even now as he fights stomach cancer.

This book is not a rabid polemic against Islam. Qureshi sensitively and lovingly explains Islamic belief with a love for his own family members and for Muslims alike. In the bargain, he helps Christians and others to more clearly and sensitively understand Islam.

I can't recommend Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus highly enough.

My wife and I (and our kids when they were young) have always made a habit of reading books in the car on jaunts of any distance. I'm the reader, since, as I've explained here before, I'm the only family member who can read while traveling without barfing.

But, a few weeks ago, I found the audio version of Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, a book which was made into an unfortunate and less than faithful to the text movie by producer Angelina Jolie. So, instead of my reading, we listened to the late, great Edward Herman read Hillenbrand's riveting telling of the story of Louis Zamperini, Olympic gold medalist and World War II hero and POW.

Much of the book is taken up with Zamperini's wartime experiences, which included a harrowing time on a raft in the Pacific after the bomber on which he was a crew member was shot down and his even more harrowing experiences in Japanese POW camps. He endured almost unimaginable privations, daily beatings, and starvation. His survival is certainly in miracle territory.

After the war, Zamperini met and fell in love with Cynthia Applewhite and they married. But the war hadn't ended for Louis. Like many veterans, he suffered from PTSD, horrible flashbacks, and increasing intervals of sullen hatefulness. He sank into alcoholism.

Eventually, Cynthia filed for divorce and Zamperini's life seemed to spiral ever more out of control. He'd never had much exposure to or interest in religion. In fact, it turned him off completely. And though he'd had what can be described as encounters with God during some of his worst experiences of the war, he never seemed to give God a thought.

Neither really had Cynthia. But not long after she filed for divorce, she attended Billy Graham's famed Los Angeles mission. The year was 1949. Cynthia received Christ by faith for the first time and His presence in her life made an immediate change in her outlook. She announced, to Zamperini's surprise and delight, that she wasn't divorcing him.

But soon his delight was mixed with anger as Cynthia pressed Louis to attend one of Graham's crusade events and meet Christ for himself. He resisted, but finally relented. He attended one night, but left as soon as Graham completed his sermon. Implausibly, he told Cynthia he would attend one more gathering if she would promise to never pester him about it again. It was that night, through Graham's preaching, the God's grace given in Christ, met Zamperini's deepest needs: forgiveness, the ability to let go of his past, freedom from his addiction, a purpose for living, life with God.

He never drank again. He never experienced another horrific dream of the beatings he endured during the war. His desire for vengeance, a desire that had grown so deep that he had been saving money in order to go to Japan in order to kill his primary tormentor.

Eventually, Zamperini became the director of a camp that transformed the lives of troubled kids like he had been and an evangelist who preached around the world about the power Jesus gives to His believers to forgive those who have hurt us so that we can live the life God has in mind for us. He even forgave and called to faith those who had menaced and beaten him when he was a POW.

He died in 2014 at the age of 97. In January, 1998, before the Olympics in Nagano, Japan, he ran a leg of the Olympic torch relay, passing the camp where he had been interned.

Whether you read it or listen to it, Hillenbrand's riveting narrative of this remarkable man's life is moving and inspiring. Like Qureshi, Zamperini found life in Jesus Christ. So can anyone.

The final book I'll mention is pure and delightful brain candy: Agatha Christie's Cards on the Table, a 1937 book that features her famous fictional detective (who she came to detest), Hercule Poirot. I love Christie's books and picked this one up for ten cents at a library book sale in Georgetown, Texas earlier this year. It's a great read.

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

More on humility

"...all of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for 'God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.' Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time." (1 Peter 5:5-6)

God really spoke to me in these verses during my quiet time with Him today. Praying that God will help me to subordinate my ego and my wants to Him and His will.

Christians: I choose making disciples for Jesus over electioneering

Let's be honest. This election campaign, which began sixteen months ago, has been, no matter what your party or philosophy, depressing.

The ugliness exhibited not just by candidates, but by voters, has made the whole thing a wretched exercise. There have been media reports of a significant number of Americans ending their friendships over this campaign.

My Facebook and Twitter feeds fairly explode with attacks not just on other candidates, but on "friends" who support other candidates. One person I know has decided, because it's all become so hateful, to just stop looking at Facebook until after the election.

I'd like to say just a few things. And they're directed at my fellow Christians.

First, I've personally made it a habit for some years now not to make any comments about my preferred politician or party.* Not even my family knows for sure how I will vote on November 8.

Both as a Christian and as a pastor, I have bigger fish to fry than to tell you who my (probably inadequate) judgment tells me to vote for.

Back in the mid-first century, the apostle Paul told the Christians at Corinth: "...I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2).

The mission of every Christian--not just pastors--is to make disciples of the God Who lived a perfect human life and bore our sins on a cross to set us free from sin, death, and darkness.

Personally, I don't want to dilute or diminish the message of new and everlasting life through Jesus by self-indulgently peppering you with my political opinions.

If I have to choose between electioneering, on the one hand, and making disciples of Jesus Christ, on the other, I will choose discipling every single time. No contest. No second thoughts. Who wins an election is far less important than sharing Jesus so that people can know Him, follow Him, receive His grace, get His power for living, be filled with the hope that only He can give! I'd rather seek to make disciples than get someone to vote for one political candidate or another.

This isn't to say that that's the right course for you. But, I can tell you that it works for me.

Second, no candidate--not Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, not Gary Johnson, not Jill Stein, not Evan McMullin--is worth destroying any Christian's witness for Christ or decimating our friendships.

Candidates, presidents, prime ministers, kings, and dictators will come and go. But God and the life that He offers to all of us through Jesus Christ, endures forever.

With the psalmist, I can say of this God revealed in Jesus: "Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God" (Psalm 90:2).

Besides, candidates and presidents are only mortal people like you and me: "It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in humans. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes" (Psalm 118:8-9). Princes and other people, generally, will let us down. (I let people down.) To expect people to be some kind of foundation on which we can build our lives is absolute foolishness.

Third, if we feel we have to speak up politically, as I frequently do with members of my family, we who seek to follow Jesus need to do it with civility.

Proverbs 15:1 makes the common sense observation: "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger."

The simple fact of the matter is that if we press our views with harshness, insisting on stereotyping our opponents as "devils" or "deplorables"--to cite terms used by Trump and Clinton, respectively--we aren't going to win anybody over.

Fourth, after this election is over, we will have a new President-Elect. Whether we voted for the winning candidate or not, that person will be the president of all Americans.

Opposing presidents' programs is fine. But the same need for civility that is so apparent during this campaign will be needed after the new president's inauguration on January 20.

So will our prayers. Writing to the young pastor Timothy in the midst of both shunning and persecution of Christians by governmental authorities, the apostle Paul gave this directive: "I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people—for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior..." (1 Timothy 2:1-3).

Of course, there are times when Christians must speak up: when lives are threatened, when injustices are done. But even then, our witness should be civil and loving. I daily pray that God will help me to get out of His way so that I can exhibit these traits, so foreign to my nature.

*What about that post from yesterday? That was about what how a Christian pastor mischaracterized and effectively excused the sinful objectification of women, not about politics. I acknowledged in the post that Donald Trump had apologized for his 2005 comments and that it was up to God and to voters to decide whether it was genuine. I refuse to give a public opinion on that question.

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

Update on Changing the "Weigh" I Eat

I've written here, here, and here about my quest to create a healthier lifestyle and lose weight. For me, it's a spiritual adventure as much as anything else. I find myself relying on God to alter a previous dependence on food beyond what was healthy for me.

This past Thursday, I went for my annual physical and, as has happened previously, I was wary of the inevitable weigh-in, fearing that I had gained a few pounds recently. But I was amazed to see that I had dropped a bit more and registered at 170 pounds. That was a loss of about three pounds since I last weighed myself during a visit to a local Little Clinic a few weeks ago.

On June 13, during my annual appointment with the cardiologist, I weighed the most I ever have, 189.7-pounds. As I stepped off the scales, I decided that enough was enough. I asked God to help me reduce and to develop a different relationship with food.

It hasn't been easy. Old snacking habits don't die without a fight. But, usually, when the urge to snack gratuitously hits me, I pray, "God, help me resist this temptation," and I'm able to back away from the food! (It would be comical for someone to actually map out my many soul-searching trips to the kitchen!)

Anyway, I want to assure you that if you've been thinking about taking off weight, it can be done. If, with God's help, I can, you can for sure.

One tip from my experience that I think is really important I've mentioned before. But I can't overemphasize its importance, for me anyway: Don't weigh yourself that often. We don't own scales and I want to keep it that way. To get caught up in the ounces from day to day could get depressing for me. Besides, this isn't just about losing weight. It's about treating the body God gave to me more respectfully and, as I mentioned earlier, establishing a different relationship with food. At least for me, the refusal to buy a set of scales and do daily weigh-ins has been important.

Another tip: Treat yourself from time to time. When I found that I'd lost a few more pounds and got kudos from my doc, I ate a savory snack on Friday. (And on Saturday, we walked over 14,000 sometimes challenging steps. That burned some calories!)

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

Another ticket?

Ken Rudin, the Political Junkie, suggests that there might be another ticket to root for in this year's presidential election.

You can help Haiti

The death toll from Hurricane Matthew is now more than a thousand in Haiti. Cholera has begun to break out in some parts of the country. With poor infrastructure, staggering poverty, and an endemically corrupt government, the people of Haiti, still reeling from an earthquake several years ago, will find this latest natural disaster a tough thing from which to recuperate.

For over five years now, the people of the congregation I serve, Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, have worked with a ministry headquartered in Indiana, SMI Haiti, to bring the Gospel and practical help for improving the everyday lives of people in Haiti. It's one of the most exciting mission partnerships we have.

SMI Haiti works steadily in a few places in Haiti, partnering with local churches, orphanages, and schools there.

Under the auspices of the organization, a group from Living Water goes every February for a substantive mission trip. (Not a North American photo op!) Our folks have helped build church worship areas, an orphanage, and wells, in addition to doing Bible studies. Each year, our congregation does fund raising, a rice and beans drive, to help SMI Haiti feed people in need. The great thing is that 100% of what we send goes directly to the needs of the Haitian communities in which SMI operates.

If you would like to help bring direct help to the Haitian people, a donation toward hurricane relief through SMI Haiti will be a solid investment in that cause!

Please keep Nabeel Qureshi in prayer

Getting my second round of chemo right now - prayers appreciated for maximal impact and minimal side effects. Thanks! pic.twitter.com/smo0J3bzfW

— Nabeel Qureshi (@NAQureshi) October 6, 2016

See here for more information, please. Pray that God will bring him complete healing. Thanks.

Here is a link to Nabeel Qureshi's web site.

"Your faith has made you well"

Luke 17:11-19
Our Gospel lesson for this morning ends with Jesus telling a man He has cured of leprosy, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”

Passages of Scripture like this one have often been misconstrued by people. What does Jesus mean by these words? Is He saying that if you and I have enough faith, bad things won’t happen to us?

I hope that the answer to that question is obvious.

After all, Jesus Himself, sinless, completely trusting in the other two persons of the Holy Trinity--God the Father and God the Son--nonetheless suffered more than any of us ever has or ever will. Completely innocent of sin, Jesus, true God and true man, suffered and died for the sins of the world.

In Matthew 5:45, Jesus says: “[God] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” You and I have all known faithful people--people who trusted their whole lives to the God we know in Jesus--who suffered, some dying at young ages despite their uncompromising faith. And often people encounter suffering--persecution, shunning, and death--not in spite of, but because of their faith in Jesus Christ. Faith in Christ is no insurance policy against suffering in this fallen world.

To understand what Jesus means in the final verse of our lesson--”Rise and go; your faith has made you well”--we need to look at the entire incident recounted in the lesson.

So, please go to our Gospel lesson, Luke 17:11-19. We’re told: “Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance...”

Jesus is heading for Jerusalem. Today's lesson is part of a section of Luke's gospel that scholars call "the great interpolation." It begins at Luke 9:51 and ends at Luke 18:18, opening with Jesus setting His face toward Jerusalem, intent on His mission of dying on the cross as the perfect sacrifice for our sins and rising from the dead to open the gates of eternity to all who turn from sin and trust Him as their only God and Savior. In the midst of rising opposition, Jesus continued in His mission on earth. As His people, we are called to be similarly steadfast, counting on the Holy Spirit to guide and strengthen us.

Jesus passes between His native Galilee and the country of Samaria. The Samaritans, you know, were disdained by Jesus' fellow Jews. They hated the Samaritans in the way only family members can hate each other. The history was that after the death of King Solomon, God's people divided into two separate nations: Judea to the south (with which Galilee was connected) and Samaria to the north. The Judeans would have argued that while their land had often been guilty of idolatry, Samaria was even worse. In some ways, they had a point. The Samaritans had intermarried, adulterating and syncretizing Old Testament faith. To the Jews, Samaritans were low lives.

In those days, when people had leprosy, they were forced to live in isolation from family, friends, and neighbors in colonies on the edges of towns. No one touched them. They were forbidden to touch anyone else. That’s why the lepers had to call Jesus from afar.

To Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries, lepers wouldn’t have been regarded as prime candidates for the attention of a holy God! They likely would have completely ignored them, the way we human beings often ignore other human beings in our world who have great need. And the people Jesus encounters here were Samaritan lepers, the worst of the worst.

Go to verse 13, please: “...and [the lepers] called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’" In desperation, the lepers called out to Jesus. They seek something no one else is giving to them: mercy.

Our willingness to hear the cries of those around us for mercy is one measure of the presence of Jesus in our lives.

And it is precisely here that we human beings can often be found wanting.

In recent weeks, my heart has been wrenched by the plight of the Syrian people, victims of constant bombing and attacks, including assaults on an aid convoy heading for Aleppo, under the direction of two thugs--Vladimir Putin and Basher al-Assad--and the world is doing nothing. If you and I were filled with the mercy for others that Jesus has given to us, wouldn't we work tirelessly to convince our own government and the members of the United Nations to put a stop to this?

And as I look at what has happened in Haiti, a country with almost no infrastructure and a corrupt government, in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, I pray that we will all be filled with sufficient Christian mercy to pray for and give to providing Haitians comfort and relief.

As Jesus has been merciful to us, we’re to be merciful to others.

Verse 14: “When [Jesus] saw them, he said, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were cleansed." Old Testament law said that once a priest certified that a person had been cleansed of their leprosy, they could return to their homes. Jesus instructs the ten lepers to see priests. Even as they went, their leprosy disappeared. It’s hard to imagine how the ten of them must have felt at that moment. Their earthly lives had been changed by the compassion of God, given in Jesus Christ.

But look at what happens next. Verses 15 and 16: “One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.”

When our children were growing up, we explained that we prayed to thank God before eating because, as Martin Luther said, people who don't thank God are pigs, just gobbling up God's blessings as though they were theirs by divine right. Our kids remembered this. If for some reason we forgot to pray, one of them inevitably would throw up their hands and say, "We're pigs!" Then we would give thanks.

Not every beneficiary of God’s mercy acknowledges all that God has done for them. They just go on with their lives as though goodness and blessings from God are things to which they’re entitled.

But none of us is entitled to anything from God. Life itself is an undeserved gift! Every good thing added to it is gravy.

Often though, I’ve seen that people who have been helped by God through extraordinary circumstances, evidence no gratitude to God. They seem unable to admit their vulnerability or their need of God’s help.

Maybe this is why only one of the ten cleansed lepers returned to give Jesus thanks. The other nine didn’t want to even think about how weak and helpless they had been. The fact is, we are all weak and helpless. We all need God’s help.

Verses 17 and 18: “Jesus asked, ‘Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?’” (Of course, Jesus knew the answers to these questions. These are what you might call rhetorical questions.)

The truth is, you never can tell who is going to respond to Jesus Christ. Nor can you know when or how they will respond.

That’s why we as Christ’s disciples, individually and as a congregation, must remain resolute in sharing the good news of new, everlasting life for all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ.

If, as we share the good news of Jesus with others, nine out of ten people reject the message, so be it. Our call is to simply keep on sharing Christ, keep making disciples.

Then, Jesus says to the one thankful man in verse 19, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well."

We know that ten people had been made physically well and we don’t know that they had much in the way of trust in Jesus beyond what they’d heard about his ability to perform miracles.

But, I don’t think that Jesus is talking about people being physically well here. Jesus didn’t suddenly revoke the healing He had given the other nine because only one man displayed gratitude.

So, here’s the key fact in this passage: All ten were physically healed, but only one was made well.

A person can be physically healed, but still not be well.

And a person can be physically or psychologically or emotionally broken down, but still be well!

The New Testament, of course, was written in Greek. And the root verb of the word translated as “has made you well” is, in Greek, sozo. What Jesus really says, "Your faith has saved you."

The grateful man was well because he had been saved. The person dying on a hospital gurney can, even as they die, know: “It is well with my soul!” They know that they are just as saved as the healed leper was at the moment Jesus declared that his faith had made him well!

Even at the point of death, it’s possible for us to live in the certainty that nothing can separate us from the love of God given in Jesus Christ. When we entrust our lives to Christ, we are saved.

How? How can we know that? By faith! 

By faith, the healed man acknowledged God’s blessing.

By faith, he fell at Jesus’ feet and worshiped.

And Jesus declared that, no matter what suffering may await that man through the balance of his life, for there is nothing more certain than suffering and death on this dying planet, the healed man had nonetheless been saved for all eternity because He believed in Jesus Christ!

By God’s grace, he had been saved by his faith in Jesus Christ. He could live his life on earth in confidence and hope and joy; through Christ, he was saved--eternally saved--for a life with God that never ends.

We can live our lives with the same confidence, hope, and joy as we yield our whole lives in faith in Jesus Christ!

It is Jesus Christ alone Who can save us--not denominational affiliations, not church rituals or traditions, not liturgies, though each of these things can play constructive roles in the lives of God's people.

We cannot be saved by habits or political action.

We can't be saved by caving into the warped values of a world out of sync with God.

We won't be saved by our personally preferred interpretations of Scripture or by our love, which is only a faint and sin-tinged echo of the perfect love of God.

We can't be saved by our morality, by being good, or by obeying the rules.

It is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone who saves us from sin, death, and futility.

Paul writes in our second lesson for this morning: “...if we endure [with Christ], we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us…” [2 Timothy 2:12]

We can bet our lives on those words. More to the point, we can bet our lives for all eternity on Jesus.

And, like the one man who returned to give thanks to Jesus, we can be filled--eternally filled--with gratitude for grace beyond measure. Amen

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