How we can believe

This is my journal entry for a recent quiet time with God. How I approach quiet time is something I explain here.

Look: “Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.” (Luke 24:45)

Throughout Luke 24, which is where we read Luke’s account of Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples struggle to “get” what’s happened.

The women see the empty tomb. But it takes a reminder of “two men” whose clothes gleamed like white lightning, to remind them of how Jesus had said that He would be crucified, then rise from the dead (vv.7-8).

Peter runs to the empty tomb, but wondered “to himself what had happened” (v.12). The other disciples had written off the women’s witness as “nonsense” (v.11).

Cleopas and the other disciple (maybe his wife) unknowingly encountered the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus and only recognize Him after He breaks and gives the bread to them (vv.30-31).

Later, when some of them are gathered in Jerusalem, Jesus suddenly appears among them. Even with Him there among them, they doubted, thinking that they were seeing a ghost (vv.38-39).

Finally, in verse 45, Jesus opens their minds to understand what they were seeing.

What interests me is the word, understand. In the Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel, the word is συνιέναι. It carries the meaning of comprehending. But it’s a compound word having the literal meaning put together. Any time we understand something, it’s the result of putting together multiple facts.

For the disciples, it wasn’t enough to see the risen Jesus before them. They’d never seen a resurrected person. (They had seen people raised from the dead by Jesus. But, they’d never thought that Jesus would be raised if He were killed. Who, they would have reasoned, was going to do the raising?) For the disciples to believe the evidence that stood before them, it was necessary to put that evidence together with other things: the reminder of Jesus’ past prophecy; the way the risen Jesus broke and served bread the way He had before He was crucified; the witness of the Law, the Prophets, and the psalms; and finally, Jesus unfolding the Scriptures for them.

When God’s Word was brought to bear on the claim that Jesus was risen, the disciples were able to put things together. They could understand.

Listen: This chapter and this verse in particular, underscore how completely dependent we are on Jesus to integrate what we see or hear from the Word of God with our openness to Jesus’ teaching, to Jesus Himself. The disciples knew the Scriptures. They knew what they’d heard Jesus say before His crucifixion. They could see the risen Jesus. But until Jesus “opened their minds,” they couldn’t “understand the Scriptures.” They couldn't understand Jesus and the new thing He was doing. They couldn’t put things together.

Martin Luther writes: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in the true faith.”
Memorizing God’s Word is a great way to allow God’s truth to permeate our lives. But if we look at it only as a way to gain head knowledge or to find justifications for our own sinful behaviors and decisions, we will never understand the Word. We won’t put it together. It’s only when we, like Mary, as described earlier in Luke's gospel, place ourselves at the feet of God, our Teacher, that anything about the risen Jesus or the life to which He calls me will make any sense. (Luke 10:38-42)

I’m reminded of the passage from Proverbs 3:5-6, we’ve been memorizing for our discipleship small groups: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.”

Without the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus to be My teacher, Christian faith will be nothing but a clump of words and assertions. When I place myself at Jesus’ disposal and ask Him, “What are to you telling me here, Lord?,” I begin to understand...at least I begin to understand what I need to understand for that moment.

Respond: Lead me today, Lord, and help me not to resist. Bring to mind Your Word whenever I’m about to speak, when I’m tempted, when I’m with others, when I pray. Open me up so that I can integrate Your Word and Your will with my life today. Help me to experience Your living Word. In Jesus’ name. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. I'm also married, the father of two grown children, a son, a brother, a 1975 graduate of The Ohio State University (Bachelor of Science in Social Studies Education), holder of a Master of Divinity degree, a reader, a nerd, and a fan of baseball and rock music. Oh, and I fix egg whites and turkey bacon most mornings for breakfast. I love the small group of men with whom I presently participate in a small discipleship group twice a month. And I really miss my friends in Woof, our one-time wine-drinking, snack-gnoshing, theology-talking, friend-supporting group who gathered each week around our dining room table after a church Bible study. And I love it when I get to interact with elementary and high school classmates.]

He Reigns by The Newsboys

A song

"Give me your tired..."

Statue of Liberty as it was dedicated 1886: #LOC pic.twitter.com/PJz9BhF20a

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) August 3, 2017

The New Colussus (the poem is posted at the Statue of Liberty)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus (November 2, 1883)

Putin by Randy Newman

Before Randy Newman spent most of his time composing music for movies (Toy Story) and television shows (the theme for Monk), following the family trade, he was a brilliant solo recording artist whose lyrics satirized the insanities he saw around him.

His LP, Sail Away, from 1972, remains one of my favorites. (It includes a song used in the Norman Lear-Bud Yorkin film, Cold Turkey, which starred Dick Van Dyke and Bob Newhart.)

Happily, Newman has been back in the studio. Two tracks from Dark Matter, a new LP which comes out on Friday, have been released.

One of them is Putin, a hilarious and brutally honest send-up of the thuggish and pretentious Vladimir Putin. Like all dictators--a description which may be too charitable to Putin, since he's more like a mafiosi--Putin is increasingly a parody of himself, which may make him all too easy a target for Newman. But this song is delicious.

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

Today's 11:11, August 2, 2017

My favorite dark ride at Disneyworld in Orlando was always Maelstrom, housed in the Norwegian pavilion at Epcot. But Maelstrom is no more. This was its last run on October 5, 2014.

Of course, videos seem never to do these attractions justice. But Maelstrom was a multi-sensory experience. When the boats were cut loose in the North Sea amid the oil rigs, the air turned chilly and the sea mist was in your nostrils. At the ride's end, you really imagined yourself to be in a Norwegian village.

It's understandable that Maelstrom is no more. The Disney parks have always evolved and changed, sometimes to present fantastic new imagineered attractions, sometimes to piggyback on the latest Disney film. I'm not a nostalgist. I don't pine for the "good old days." But it is fun to look back on what was a terrific achievement. Glad that someone took the video.



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

How to face temptation

"No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it." (1 Corinthians 10:13)

One reason we cave into sin, violating God's will as expressed in the Ten Commandments, is that we grow deaf to God when we're tempted. Instead of living in the freedom and dignity of a child of God, we're trapped by slavery to self, the opinions of others, and, to be honest, the devil. It's happened to me. It's happened to you.

The key to resisting temptation, with an aim to living lives that express gratitude to God for the grace and life we only receive from Christ, is to be tuned into what God wills for our lives, again as expressed in the Ten Commandments.

You get tuned into God and an intimate relationship with God when you spend time in His Word each day, not just reading it, but soaking it up, even memorizing it.

For example, this passage from 1 Corinthians 10:13 is one that small groups at Living Water have been memorizing in our Navigators discipleship small groups.

A good example of how God's Word can protect us from making sinful, stupid decisions is found in the experience of Joseph, son of Jacob, in the Old Testament book of Genesis.

Joseph's brothers had sold him into slavery in Egypt. But there, he ended up working for a powerful man named Potiphar, essentially functioning as his chief of staff and administrator.

Potiphar's wife was attracted to Joseph and tried repeatedly to get Joseph to go to bed with her. Joseph explained that he couldn't sin against God nor his master in this way.

But Potiphar's wife wouldn't take no for an answer. One day, she grabbed Joseph's tunic, saying, "Lie with me!" Joseph ran. When he did, the tunic slipped off of Joseph and he found himself running from Potiphar's wife naked. Enraged, she accused him of trying to rape her. Her possession of Joseph's cloak implicated him. Potiphar had Joseph slapped into prison.

Some might hear or read that story and think that the moral is that Joseph could have spared himself imprisonment if he'd only gone along with Potiphar's wife.

Nope!

The moral is that Joseph ran from temptation and chose to walk with God, even when that meant being falsely accused and imprisoned for some time. He maintained his faith, his integrity, and his usefulness to the purposes of God for our lives. And Joseph was able to make the decision to run because He knew God through being steeped in God's Word.

Ultimately, of course, it was precisely because Joseph was imprisoned that he came to the attention of the Pharaoh. And because of Joseph's faithfulness to God and his faithful stewardship of gifts God had given to him, including the gift of administration, he was able to save his own people--God's people, Israel--from extinction. It was to be from the people of Israel that God's plan for salvation from sin and death was to be opened to all humanity through Jesus Christ. So, Joseph's decision to run from sin rather than to acquiesce to it is of eternal significance.

Truth be told, every time we face the temptation to sin, the stakes are higher than we may realize or imagine. Not only is our eternal salvation in play, so, potentially, is the salvation of every person whose life is impacted by our decision, whether we decide to cave or run.

Running from the temptation to sin can be painful. The things that tempt us hold out the real promise of pleasure. At least, they do for the short term. The fruit that Adam and Eve ate tasted good, but it also brought the burden of sin, of knowing not just good and righteousness, but also knowing evil and death.

It's better to run from sin and into the arms of the God we know in the crucified and risen Jesus. When we do that, we literally run from death to life.

Of course, when we cave into sin, that need not be the end of our life story. It need not be the end of our connection with the God of grace we know in Jesus Christ. It needn't be the end of a useful life. Jesus came to ensure that sin and death need not be the last word over our lives. It's a matter of trusting God with our sins, our past, our present, our future, our whole lives. It's a matter of running to Him. 1 John 1:9, another of our Navigators verses, reminds us: "If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9)

Deep down, we probably all want to run from sin. We want God, whether we know much about Him or not. God wants to help us enjoy the life Christ died and rose to make possible. Soak up God's Word each day and He will help you stand where you should stand and run when you need to run.

Just some thoughts on this Wednesday.

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

Something Old, Something New

Matthew 13:44-52
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells us that life with God is built on two strong legs: The old and the new.

In the final verse of our lesson, Jesus says: “Therefore every teacher [or, every scribe] of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.” (Matthew 13:52)

What does Jesus mean?

When Jesus began teaching, preaching, and healing, He crashed into the staid orthodoxies of first century Judea like a nuclear hand grenade.

People didn’t know what to make of Him. He threatened the iron-fisted rule over people’s lives with God exerted by the scribes, the teachers, of what we know as the Old Testament.

These scribes were experts on what God’s Word said in the Old Testament, but unlike the people of faith in the Old Testament to whom that Word was first revealed--people like Abraham, Sarah, Moses, David, Ruth, Isaiah, and Rahab--they didn’t know God.

They had boiled God down to an implacable philosophical proposition, a grim judge who dispensed blessings only to those who kept His Law.

Now comes Jesus saying things like, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (Matthew 5:17) Jesus is saying, in effect, “You can’t keep the Law fully. You’re incapable of it. The old law was meant to point you to that fact and to your need of Me. And that’s why I’m here: To obey the Law perfectly for you so that, if you will trust in and follow Me, My obedience will cover your sins and change your relationship with God. And it won’t make you feel that it’s OK to indiscriminately violate the old law. It will make you seek My help each day to be obedient, just because our relationship has been made new.”

But for all that was new about Jesus, those who really listened to and followed Him heard the echoes of the old.

The God Who, through Jesus, breathes His Holy Spirit on His Church to give it life is the same God Whose breath first gave life to Adam and Whose Spirit moved over the waters and made creation happen! In Jesus, the Word becomes flesh, God takes on our humanity, enters our lives.

The person who follows Jesus can come to know God as Father, just as Jesus did.

Because of what Jesus has done for us, we have a new respect for the old law, not because we think that if we obey it, we’ll be saved from sin, death, darkness, and futile living...but because of our thankfulness that Jesus shed His blood for us on the cross, we see that God’s Law, as reflected in the Ten Commandments, the way Jesus lived is how we aspire to live.

I took my dad to lunch the other day. I’m 63. Nonetheless, I find myself wanting to please my dad now more than ever, not because I think that he’ll withhold his love from me if I don’t, but because I know how much he loves me already.

This is like the new reality that Jesus came into this world to proclaim and to die and rise to bring into being. He moves me from feeling I have to obey God, to wanting to obey God (even though I often resist Him) because I know that He loved and died and rose for me despite the death punishment I deserve.

“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

The scribes of the old religion were shaken by Jesus. They were afraid of what might happen if people became Jesus’ disciples and actually believed that they could speak and live intimately with God, read and know His Word, pray in Jesus’ name, teach others how to have life with God.

They wouldn’t be in control; God would be.

The Holy Spirit would be unleashed in believers’ lives, freeing them to live without fear of death, empowering them to love God and to love neighbor, confident, as our second lesson for today puts it, that nothing could separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus. (By the way, the fear of letting God take control of our thoughts didn't go out with the first century scribes. There may be nothing that terrifies any of us more than just letting go and letting God take control of our lives. "Mark," a wise older pastor told me once, "the biggest problem in the Church is that we're afraid of the Holy Spirit?")

So what difference does this all make to you and me?

Just this: The Word of God, Old and New Testaments, is the Word of God for one reason, it points us to Jesus as the way, and the truth, and the life. The Bible, this perfect and authoritative witness of God by God is a treasure chest and when we read it through the prism of Christ’s death and resurrection, it brims over with the life and love of God for us. (As someone has said, “The Bible isn’t humanity’s word about God, it’s God’s Word to humanity!”) 

To spend time in God’s Word--reading it, praying about it, reflecting on it, soaking it up not as stagnant print on a page but for what it is--an urgent love letter from God--is to know God and it is to know life. 

Old and new, it points us to the truth we read in 2 John 5:11-12: “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” The Bible is a living storeroom and powerhouse filled with the infinite treasures of God.

The Word reveals the Gospel to us. Romans 1:16 say: “...I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.”

It is this powerful gospel that Christ detonates repeatedly when we dare, by faith, to take in God’s Word, old and new. 

In those who believe the Bible’s message, crafted by the Holy Spirit, written in the blood of Jesus, life abounds.

It ushers us into God’s Kingdom.

And just how valuable this kingdom Word is, Jesus shows in a string of parables in today’s Gospel lesson.

Jesus says the kingdom witnessed by His Word is like a treasure so valuable that when a man finds it in a field, he spends everything to have it.

It’s like pearls so amazing that when someone encounters them, they sacrifice all to have them.

It’s like a net laid down by God, a net in which you want to be caught so that you can be part of the gospel kingdom, so that you will never be separated from God.

And it is by taking from this treasury, old and new, that we who are believers in Jesus can face each day, help others to do the same, and let others know the good news of new life that they they too can have with Jesus.

Years ago, the US government worked to allow Christians who had been imprisoned for their faith in the old Soviet Union to come to this country. I remember reading in a news magazine about one of these Russian Christians who emigrated to America. In the Soviet Union, it was difficult for him to get or keep a Bible. It was forbidden to own one. But in the United States, he met people who had as many as six Bibles in their homes...many of them left unopened.

Fellow disciples of Jesus, Jesus did not spend centuries giving us His Word just so that we can ignore it.

He didn’t give us the gospel of new life through faith in Jesus so that we could blend in with the rest of the roiling, selfish, dying world.

He didn’t open the way to the Kingdom of God so that we could treat our faith like an occasional trip to McDonald’s.

We’re to be scribes of the new kingdom, steeped in God’s Word, filled with the power of the Gospel, so that we can live in the confidence of God's grace and share Christ and His Gospel with others. 

If you’re not spending time with God each day, you’re missing out on a treasury of intimacy, grace, love, and guidance.

So, please consider taking up the practice of daily quiet time. I aim to do this five days a week.

In quiet time, you read a bit of Scripture each day, ask God to show you the truth He wants you to see for that day, and ask God to help you to live that truth. Then, pray for the chance to share your faith so that you can share the kingdom of God with others.

Our Navigators’ life and learning discipleship team is now beginning to pray about who God wants to participate in the next wave of discipleship small groups. (Our goal is that one day, every member of Living Water, plus many of our friends and neighbors, will be involved with these groups.) Be open to their invitations.

But you don’t need to wait for an invitation: Seek out others with whom you can study and pray and grow together. (I or other of our Navigators team will be happy to help you get started, just as a new group of men recently has.) God’s Kingdom is available to any who willing to receive Jesus and take in His Word, old and new.

Listen: I don’t need to tell you how difficult life can sometimes get. In any given week, I speak with any number of people who feel discouraged, even hopeless.

But neither they nor we need to be kept down. The devil wants to keep us down; but Jesus wants to lift us up! Even in the midst of life’s difficulties, we can have the very power and the kingdom of God filling our lives.

The treasury of God, old and new, is open to any willing to receive it. And it should be available through any disciple willing to share it.

Today, I ask you, be that open and available disciple.

Make it your daily aim to live in and spread God’s life and love and kingdom wherever you are.

Here’s a simple plan for being a disciple: Meet God through His Word daily. Soak it up. Spill it out. Repeat each day.

Meet, soak, spill, repeat.

Meet, soak, spill, repeat.

This is the life of a disciple, a scribe of God’s Kingdom. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This is the text for the worship message yesterday morning.]

Today's 11:11, July 27, 2017

This is from when the Newsboys were good, Peter Furler on lead vocals and Phil Joel playing guitar. I Surrender All is part of the fun and meaningful Love, Liberty, Disco LP. It was released in 1999.

Favorite lyrics?

He doesn't love us 'cause of who we are
He only loves us 'cause of who he is 

Words by John P. Kee, music by Peter Furler.



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

Belated 11:11 for July 26

Even though it's already July 27, here's this:

“I do the very best I can, I mean to keep going. If the end brings me out all right, then what is said against me won't matter. If I'm wrong, ten angels swearing I was right won't make a difference.”

It's one of my favorite Lincoln quotes. Leaders must take others' opinions into account, but they can't be shackled by the quest to win people over.

Who's the greatest?

This summarizes what God seemed to be trying to teach me during my quiet time with Him today. To see how I structure these intimate encounters with God, look here.

Look: “A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest.” (Luke 22:24)

Before this verse appears, Jesus has just instituted the Sacrament. He then tells the twelve apostles that someone among them is going to betray Him and that condemnation will fall on the one who does this.

According to Luke, the apostles then shift into a debate as to who among them the betrayer could be.

But just as quickly, their short attention spans showing, they move to a different argument: Which of them is considered to be the greatest?

I checked on the Greek here for several key words.

The first is dispute. In the Greek in which Luke first wrote his book, the word is φιλονεικία (philoneikia). That’s a compound word, the first part of which means love, like in philadephia (brotherly love). Philoneika literally means lover of strife. It seems to refer to people who just like to argue.

At this dramatic moment, when their Lord has just told the twelve that He is going to be betrayed and die, their love for Him isn’t stirred. Instead, their first reaction is to see who they can pin the blame on for the betrayal. Then they indulge their love of dispute to argue over which of them is the greatest.

The greatest is with them, Jesus. Yet here they are, glorifying themselves. “I’m number one.” “I’m the greatest.”

It’s all so hollow. In a matter of hours, the one Jesus has already designated to lead this lot of losers, Peter, will deny any association with Jesus. Among those to whom he denies following Jesus is a powerless servant girl whose testimony is toothless in that ancient sexist world.

But neither Peter nor the other apostles mind pounding their chests with pride when they don’t feel threatened. They love a good argument when the risk is low. (They’re like moderns who battle with strangers on the Internet, but are loathe to confront or resolve conflicts face to face in their own daily lives.)

The other word I was interested in was considered. In the Greek, the word is dokia, meaning thought. The idea here is that the twelve were interested in how others perceived them. The question wasn’t really who was the greatest, but who people thought was the greatest. Rather than striving to be the greatest, they were aiming at being perceived as the greatest. (And we think that the whole desire to look good more than to be good is a new phenomenon.)

But Jesus, both by word and example, points the twelve to a different measure of greatness: “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.” (Luke 22:25-27)

It’s true, as Proverbs 22:1 says that: “A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.”

But a true good name cannot be conferred by the world. The world is fickle. The world is confused, often confusing bombast and violence, wealth and possessions, for greatness.  True greatness, Jesus says, isn’t about celebrating oneself, pushing one’s self forward, bullying others, or even being seen as the nicest person in the room.

Looking great isn’t the same as being great. And we have to know the difference.

According to Jesus, true greatness=true servanthood. Just as Jesus came among us as One Who serves, we are to be servants.

So, Philippians 2:5-11 says: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

In God’s Kingdom, Jesus has the greatest name because He is the greatest servant of all.

He descended deep into the sin, violence, and darkness of our world and then deep into hell itself, in order to, respectively spare those who trust in Him from sin and death and to proclaim God’s victory over evil to the demons.

Jesus emptied Himself of all the advantages of deity and became a servant to all for the sake of all.

His was the greatest act of service ever rendered, not just because He was and is God, but also because He was and sinless, yet bore our sin on the cross.

“Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:7-8)

If we would have truly good names, names written in the book of life, we must daily give up our pretensions to greatness, we have to quit trying to be “all that,” whether among our families, churches, co-workers, etc., and seek, in the power of the God we meet in Jesus, to be servants.

Not servile.

Not suck-ups.

Servants: People who seek each day to be lovingly useful to God and to others. People who know where the real power is, emptying ourselves and letting the power of God’s Holy Spirit unleashed in believers in Jesus, be given expression and to take control of us. “...for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

My ambition is to have a faith like Paul’s, as expressed in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Listen: All I need is Christ. Christ alone. Through Him, God has given me life (Colossians 1:16). Through Him, God has given me new life 2 Corinthians 5:17; 1 John 5:11-12). Through Him, God provides daily bread (although we human beings can be stingy about sharing it). Through Him, we know that more than daily bread, we need Him, the living bread from heaven.

When I’m full of myself or afraid or apprehensive or resentful or sad, I must remember that Christ is all I need.

Response: God, help me to act boldly with faith in Christ, knowing that You will empower me to do exactly what You want me to do. Help me to remember that when I give myself away to You and to those who need me, there isn’t less of me, there’s more of You and become more like the person You created me to be. Help me to live for Your glory, not my own. Help me to seek Your will, not my own. In Jesus’ name I pray.

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

John McCain's Speech

I had just returned from making runs this afternoon when I saw the Senate vote on proceeding to debate an as-yet undisclosed health care bill, followed by Senator John McCain's first speech since being diagnosed with brain cancer.

It was, maybe, the best speech McCain has ever given, full of amity mixed with criticisms of his fellow Republicans and Democrats alike and a call to the kind of civil and sometimes incremental governance that the Framers of the Constitution had in mind.

McCain has received criticism from some members of both parties today. Some Democrats felt that his vote to proceed on debate was a vote against the kind of health care coverage he enjoys as senator. A few Republicans didn't like his criticisms of the two most recent health care bills to be produced by Senator Mitch McConnell and the Republican leadership.

But, after listening to McCain's eloquent speech today, I was moved. I saw it as a ringing call to renew American democracy, something which I'd think people of both parties and of no party can get behind.

If you haven't seen the speech, watch it here and decide what you think.

Today's 11:11, July 25, 2017

Sometimes you realize that you're where you're supposed to be, even if the reason you went there in the first place didn't pan out.

Earlier today, I went to an area nursing and rehabilitation center to see a member recuperating from recent surgery.

When I walked across the parking lot, a woman, leaving the place after making her own visit, called out from her car, "Hello, Father. Where's your church?"

"Actually," I said, "I serve Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville."

"Oh!" she told me, "years ago, when I was going through some tough times, I went to talk with a Lutheran pastor. He helped me so much."

We talked for awhile. Our brief conversation reminded me that, while sometimes monstrous things are done in the name of Christ by those who claim to be Christian, the Church, whether laypeople or clergy, also does a world of good in Christ's name. And people like that woman are grateful for it.

When I went to our church member's room, she wasn't there, but in physical therapy. By experience, I know that takes some time and it's not a convenient moment for therapist or patient to be interrupted for a visit that includes prayers and Holy Communion. So, I decided to leave a note.

I asked for a piece of paper from a nurse at the nearest desk. She handed it to me and asked, "Are you a pastor?"

"Yes," I said.

"My parents go to Grace Lutheran Church in Springfield."

"One of my favorite pastors is the senior pastor there," I told her.

"You know Pastor Powell? He's great! I'd go, but we live pretty far away. And my husband likes a more contemporary service. They have one, but it's once a month."

I told her that there are lots of churches, Lutheran and otherwise, that offer varied worship services. "There might be a good one for you and your husband."

I then handed her the note for our Living Water member, asked her for her name so that I could pray for her. She seemed genuinely touched.

Out of the facility and onto the parking lot again, a man with a "Vietnam Veteran" ball cap was getting into his car. "Hi!" he called out. "How are you today? Do you have a loved one here?" I asked.

He explained that his ninety-seven year old father was a resident there. His mind is still sharp, he explained, but he can't hear and he's nearly blind. He's got other health issues and he sometimes says he wishes that he could die. "I tell him he can't feel that way," the vet told me, "but I understand how he does."

He looked down. "We also got some bad news today. My wife's got some sort of heart problem. The doctor says she doesn't necessarily need surgery. They're going to try to use medicine. But it was discouraging for her."

As we talked more, he told me of his own health issues, including diabetes and accompanying neuropathy.

He said all of these things without any discernible self-pity, but I could tell that all of it was weighing on his mind. He expressed gratitude for the care he gets through the Veterans' Administration.

Our conversation covered other topics too. He mentioned having gone on an Honor Flight, something that my dad, a Korean War-era Air Force veteran is going to be doing in September, on his eighty-eighth birthday.

As I got ready to leave, I told the man, "Believe me, I think that I can understand a bit how you feel with your dad's situation, especially with you being pulled in different directions. My own mom just died in April and though my dad is in great shape, you can't help being concerned.

"But, I want to encourage you when it comes to your wife's situation. Seven years ago this past month, I had a serious heart attack. had a 100% blockage of the left anterior descending artery. They call that the widow-maker. I've got a stent and a pacemaker/defibrillator. I lost 40% of my heart muscle. I just saw my cardiologist for my annual check-up yesterday. He still says that he can't understand how I developed a blockage and he doesn't know why I survived the heart attack..."

"I do," the vet said. I agree with him, of course, that God spared me that day in June, 2010. And I chastise myself often for not always remembering that if God saved me, He did so for His purposes not mine, so that I can accomplish the things He has for me to accomplish. Things like going to nursing homes when the person I'm visiting is unavailable.

"You tell your wife, there are all kinds of things the cardiologists can do. I'm living proof of it. And let me pray for your wife and your dad. What are their names?"

"Denise and Martin," he said.

"I'll be praying," I told him. (If you'd pray for Denise and Martin, too, I'd appreciate it. Prayer in Jesus' name is powerful!)

Three people I'll probably never see again. Each of them a divine appointment for this date in God's day planner for me. Each an opportunity, in little ways, to share a reminder that the God we meet in Jesus Christ is around and that He cares and that His people, the Church, care too.

In Hebrews 13:2, Christians are told: "Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it." The verse directly references an incident from Genesis in which Abraham welcomed messengers or angels of God, including the Lord Himself, to His tent. Christians are to be welcoming people, knowing that everyone they meet reflects the God in Whose image they were first created.

But, sometimes we show hospitality--a word related to the word hospital, the name for places of healing--when we meet people out in the world and extend to them the healing compassion, concern, and shelter of the God Who loves them infinitely, the God we can only know through Jesus Christ.

That's why Jesus says that whenever we serve those the world considers to be the least--the elderly, the young, the hurting, the overlooked--we serve Him.

And for that to happen, we have to be in the right places, open to being interrupted by God's plans, willing to trash our own. I sometimes forget that, getting caught up in my own agenda. But living with an openness to God's appointments for me is one of the most fulfilling aspects of following Jesus.

When you get out of God's way long enough, you realize that you're exactly where you're supposed to be, even if the reason you went there in the first place didn't pan out. At least that's what I've experienced.

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

Today's 11:11, July 23, 2017

I posted a link to an installment of Today's 11:11 over on Facebook and someone asked me what the significance of 11:11 was. Here's what I said, with a few more comments.

Since the advent of digital clocks, 11:11 seems to have always been the readout I've noticed whenever I randomly check the time.

Unless I have a meeting, class, or appointment, I generally don't look at clocks. But when I randomly do so, I often see 11:11.

A friend of mine reports the same experience, which is funny. We're both kind of obsessed with it.

I attach no significance to 11:11, really. It would be just as striking if what I frequently saw was 10:10 or 12:12...and just as meaningless.

But I decided it would be a good blogging discipline to daily post about something that I've read or thought about and post it at the same time every day. 11:11 seemed like a good time to do it. It's a writing prompt, a blogging prompt.

Another reason, I suppose, is that we're in the centennial period for World War 1 right now. It's on my mind. I was always taken with the fact the Armistice bringing the war to an end went into effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, November 11, 1918. (Originally celebrated as Armistice Day, November 11 is now Veterans' Day.)

One final reason. There's a tradition among some Christians that refers to the moment of Christ's return as midnight, the end of the old creation, the full institution of the new. All time before that moment is the eleventh hour. We need to live life to its fullest and keep following Christ in the eleventh hour.

Yeah, I probably have given this too much thought. 😀 But all this other rationale came to me after I thought, "I'll be sure to post at 11:11 every night."

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

Be Patient...We're Not There Yet

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
“Are we there yet?” That question, at one time or another, is the bane of every parent’s existence. Patience is not most kids’ strong suit. And here's the deal: It’s not anybody else’s strong suit either.

In today’s Gospel lesson, we have another instance of Jesus telling a parable which the disciples later ask Him to explain. If in last week’s parable about a farmer scattering seed over different kinds of soil, seed stood for God’s Word spread indiscriminately over the world, the seed in this week’s lesson stands for something else entirely.

And the overarching message to believers in Jesus is this: Be patient; we aren’t there--”there” being the full unfolding of God’s kingdom that Jesus died and rose to bring us--we aren’t there yet.

Let’s take a look at Jesus’ familiar words. “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

The “weeds” Jesus refers to here are likely darnel, a Eurasian ryegrass, which look a lot like wheat when they first sprout. Jesus assures us that the farmer in this story only sowed good seed in his field. But an enemy of the farmer sowed the darnel seeds. The two crops are tangled together. The farmer recognizes what has happened and tells his servants about it. The servants want to “fix” everything, asking if the farmer wants them to pull up the weeds. The farmer says, in effect, “No. We have to be patient. I’ll sort things out later, at harvest time.”

[This picture shows darnel growing among wheat. The two look nearly identical when they first rise from the ground.]

Later, the disciples ask Jesus to explain the parable. He does: “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

Jesus came into this world in order to bring to life a new race of human beings, new Adams and new Eves to populate His new creation. “...if anyone is in Christ,” 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us, “the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

All who trust in Christ are good seed, new seed, created by God’s grace through faith in Christ.

God creates us anew for two purposes: to grow as citizens of God’s new creation and to “bear fruit,” making new disciples as the Holy Spirit uses our witness for Christ to bring life.

Anywhere God’s Word about Christ is heard and believed, God performs a miracle: He transforms weeds into wheat, into good seed!

The only mission of the Church is to grow as disciples and to make disciples. God deputizes us, Christ's Church, to be the conduits by which this miraculous transformation happens!

The apostle Paul puts it this way: “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ” (Romans 10:17).

Weeds can become good seed when we share the Word about Christ with others!

And this is exactly what’s been happening for more than two thousand years, the kingdom of God sprouting up all around as billions of people have been made new by Jesus through their faith in Him.

But something else is also going on, according to Jesus’ parable. And our experience confirms His Word: There are weeds growing among the wheat, growing in the world, growing even in Christ’s Church.

They’re the crop planted by Satan, the crop responsible for every sin that exists in this world: idolatry, gossip, murder, materialism, racism, sexism, envy, selfishness, double-dealing, child abuse, adultery, corruption, you name it.

In the parable, the weeds are all those people given over to sin, often looking as innocent and healthy as hearty wheat on the outside, but filled with evil, death, and decay in their thinking and their living.

In Jesus’ parable, the servants are so alarmed by the weeds that grow in the garden amid the wheat that they ask the farmer, “You want us to pull the weeds up?”

This response to bad wheat is akin to a common reaction to evil on the part of Christians. They want to take drastic measures: Read people the riot act. Form a committee. Vote for a slate of candidates. Pass some new laws.

But, folks, this can be dangerous and ungodly behavior! When you’re confident that you’re part of God’s good new creation (you know, wheat rather than weeds), the devil comes along with a big temptation: He tries to convince us that we were saved not by grace, but by being such a wonderful person. You can begin to think that because you’re so “in” with God, you have the right to cast judgment on all those unrighteous weeds around you.

We can forget that unless we daily submit to God’s use of a little weed killer on us--unless we own our sin and allow our old sinful selves to be daily killed so that the new people Christ died and rose to empower us to be, we too are in danger of becoming increasingly weedy, walking away from Christ and the life that only He can give.

An adage reminds us, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Without the grace of God given in Jesus, I would be just another eminently disposable weed!

But, you may say, there’s so much evil in the world, so many people given over to evil who are getting away with murder, what is God going to do about it?

The answer is this: God has already done something about the evil in the world. 

In Jesus Christ, God bore all evil on the cross, including your sins and mine. He bore it all on His sinless shoulders. He accepted the verdict and the punishment for sin you and I deserve, death, and because of His complete innocence, was able to kill off the power of sin, death, and the devil for all eternity for all who trust in Christ.

There will come a time when the crucified and risen Jesus will return and usher in His eternal kingdom to the full. Evil and death, grief and loss, will be finished. “...[Jesus] will wipe every tear from [believers’] eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things [will have] passed away” (Revelation 21:4). But, friends, we’re not there yet!

Until we are there, our call is to be patient, because Jesus’ death and resurrection guarantee us that God is going to make everything right.

We need to be as patient in following Christ. As Psalm 103:8 reminds us that, “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.”

And we need to be patient with others.

When the disciples who made up the first century church at Corinth started judging all the “weeds” around them for being spiritually inferior, the apostle Paul reminded them: “You know that when you were pagans [weeds], somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols” (1 Corinthians 12:2).

“You’d still be nothing but weeds if it weren’t for the good news of Jesus,” Paul is saying.

We need to remember that there isn’t a single evil person who can’t be saved by faith in Jesus. Just as Jesus has saved me from sin and death through what He accomplished on the cross and my faith in Him, anyone can be saved from sin and death.

Weeds can turn into wheat under the power of God’s Word about Jesus. We need to trust in that truth.

Which leads us to the most important reason you and I need to be patient as we wait for Jesus to return and make everything right: We have work to do! 

The apostle Peter, in his second New Testament letter, wrote to churches who couldn’t understand why God was allowing evil--sometimes evil persecution against the Church--to go on. What was the hold up? When would God pull down the curtains on this old creation and set His people from evil and suffering? Why is God so slow in acting?

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness,” Peter said. “Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

God wants as many sin-sick souls as possible to be given the chance to turn to Christ and live. 

And God wants His Church--you and me--to fulfill our great commission, to share the gospel, to call people to repentance and faith, so that they can have the same new and eternal lives Christ has given to us. 

God wants you and me to patiently share Christ with others. 

He wants us to bring in a harvest of wheat, disciples growing strong in faith, in response to our faithful, patient witness, powered by the Holy Spirit!

We’re not there yet--not yet experiencing the kingdom in its fullness as we one day will.

But let’s have patience with God and our neighbor.

Let’s live our faith, share our faith, pray it, serve in response to it.

As long as we have breath, let’s be patient in following and sharing Jesus with everyone...and trust that God will sort things out and make everything right on the day of Jesus’ return.

Amen

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

Today's 11:11, July 22, 2017

A year ago, John Kiesewetter presented this photo essay on the history of the soon-to-be-demolished Cincinnati Gardens.

To me, the most interesting item shown is the "Settlement Sheet" from the Beatles' appearance at the Gardens. The band and their manager, Brian Epstein, netted $41K from a $58K gate. A friend who was there says he paid five bucks for his ticket. (Keep in mind that in 1964, a vinyl LP sold for about three bucks and a 45 RPM single went, depending on where you bought it, for anywhere from 79 to 98-cents. I got mine at the local Zayre for the lower price.)

I recall being at the Gardens twice. The first was for a basketball game between Xavier and Marquette in the 1990s.

The other, also in the 90s, was for a concert, the opening act of which was the Newsboys. I was into that band in those days. They would go on to have a steady stream of Christian rock hits, while helping to establish Peter Furler and Phil Joel as solo artists. But it was so early in their careers that when they came out to do an encore, they performed a song they'd already done in their set. It was 'I'm Not Ashamed,' which had sold well as a single. No matter the redundancy, we loved it.

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

Why this sinner dares to preach the Word of God

As a sinner, I know that someone like me proclaiming the Word of God--both His Law and His Promise--would be the height of hypocrisy except for two things.

One is that, other than Jesus Who was sinless, only sinners can proclaim the Word of God. That's the only earthly pool of available candidates God has at His disposal. I come from that pool.

And, of course, it is a Word from God that must be preached. As the apostle Paul puts it in Romans 10:17: "...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ." So, for better and worse, imperfect human beings like me are who get nominated for preaching God's Word.

But I am conscious of my sins. Some days more than others. But, like all the human race, I am called to daily repent, that is, turn from my sin, and believer in, trust in Christ, perfect man, God incarnate, and in what He has done for all people through His cross, to destroy the power of sin and death over my eternal destiny. When I entrust my old sins and my present, future, and eternal existence to Christ alone, I am saved from my sin. Acts 4:12 says of Jesus: "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved." I depend on the grace God gives only through Christ.

If I saw myself as anything other than a sinful person whose only hope for forgiveness and life is Jesus Christ, I wouldn't dare take the pulpit.

The other reason I dare to take the pulpit is that, it appears and has appeared for nearly four decades, through the affirmation of the Church and an inner compulsion of faith, that I have been called to preach. Called by God.

I attended my first seminary class more than thirty-seven years ago, have been ordained for nearly thirty-four. To this day, I ask God whether I heard Him right when it came to my call. I still think that the sermons I've prepared aren't good enough. (Of course, they're not. But God uses my study and prayer to make more of my "not good enough" efforts, it seems.) I still cringe when I hear recordings of my preaching or teaching; how can people stand to listen, how could I have neglected to make that point, why did I let me get in the way of God?

And yet, God's call to this sinner continues. No one could be more inspired by this particular example of God's grace than I am.

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

Today's 11:11, July 21, 2017

One-hundred years ago, the Harlem Hellfighters, a division composed of African-American soldiers in the segregated United States Army fought with distinction during World War 1, called at the time the Great War.

The global conflict officially ended at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918.

That's how November 11, came to be known as Armistice Day, later Veterans' Day in the US. It was a day of joy that seemed to hold so much promise democracy, especially in the countries who fought for that system of government according to the democratic vision of President Woodrow Wilson.

Sadly, after the shooting stopped, Wilson turned a deaf ear to the calls for civil rights from the veterans of the war he had sent them to fight.

Some of the heroes who made up the the Harlem Hellfighters, the 15th New York National Guard Regiment, were, after fighting to make the world safe for democracy, on returning home to this nation, forcibly subjected to racism, segregation, and, in several tragic incidents, murder by frenzied white crowds. The federal government, under Wilson's leadership, countenanced lynchings of black citizens by whites, North and South, threatened by blacks seeking equal treatment under the law.

It had been the hope of African Americans across the country that the bravery in service of liberty exhibited by American black men during the war would legitimize their people's place in the United States and lead to fair treatment. Instead, a white suppression of African-American citizens took place which, in many ways, still exists to this day.

As an American and a Christian, that makes me both sad and angry.

[To learn more about the First World War and its aftermath, watch the excellent series The Great War, from PBS.]

Today's 11:11, July 20, 2017

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first and second human beings, respectively, to walk on the surface of the Moon. They were two-thirds of the three-person Apollo 11 crew. While Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the Moon's surface in the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), astronaut Michael Collins orbited the Moon in the Command Module (CM), which would eventually take the crew back to Earth.

Armstrong was a native of Wapakoneta, Ohio and is part of a distinguished line of Buckeye State aviators, including Dayton's Orville and Wilbur Wright, the inventors of powered flight. Others include John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, fighter pilot, and test pilot; Columbus native Eddie Rickebacker, the United States' flying ace of World War I and one-time president of Eastern Airlines; and Columbus West High graduate Donn Eisele, who flew on Apollo 8.

After retiring from the space program, Armstrong was a professor of engineering at the University of Cincinnati.

The American space program and the Moon landing still inspire me and I still hope that one day that I can travel in space.

Today's 11:11, July 19, 2017

In Matthew 18:15-20, Jesus talks about how Christian disciples in His Church are to reconcile if and when they have sinned against each other:

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”

No one is more realistic about the reality of human sin than the sinless Son of God, Jesus. And no one  else offers the path to reconciliation with God and among human beings that Jesus offers to all who follow Him.

Help me be an un-self-conscious servant

This is a reflection on my quiet time with God today. For an explanation of how I approach my time with God see here.

If the model you find there, taught to us by Navigators, doesn't work for you, I encourage you to find some way that you can get away with God, read and ponder His Word, and pray at least five days a week. It can be transforming to spend time regularly, not just in worship on Sunday, which is an essential part of Christian faith, but also on our own, quietly, attentively. I try to maintain quiet time about five days a week.

Look: “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’” (Luke 17:10)

Luke 17 begins with a warning from Jesus: “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. So watch yourselves.” (Luke 17:1-3)

These are frightening words. They warn believers in Jesus not to be the instruments by which others are tempted into sin. In my life, I can look back on times when I have been exactly that.

Jesus’ words call for me to genuinely repent, leaning on the grace that God only gives to those who turn from sin and turn to Jesus as their only hope. Without Jesus, I am without hope for forgiveness or for life with God beyond death. It’s terrifying to contemplate!

Jesus also tells me to watch myself. In other words, I need to honestly assess my thoughts, actions, and motives. I need to seek the help of the Holy Spirit to see the truth about myself, so that I can repent. I need the help of the Holy Spirit to run away from temptation and sin. Watching myself means being willing to hear what God, with His perfect insight, tells me about myself in His Word. If I’m open to God, God will grow my faith and my character. Then, I will want to forgive those who sin against me, as Jesus commands in this chapter.

But very often, I’m like the twelve apostles who, in response to Jesus’ words in Luke 17:1-3, say: “Increase our faith!” If God would just magically increase our faith, we wouldn’t be susceptible to temptations, we wouldn’t be disloyal to God and so, tempt others into sin. If God would give me a bigger faith, it would be easy for me to forgive. At least, that’s what the disciples seem to think. And, honestly, it’s what I often think. I’ll catch myself in a sin and think, “Why did God let me do that? God should have given me bigger faith.” My first impulse is to blame God, instead of myself.

Jesus tells the apostles that the issue isn’t the size of their faith. A little faith (about the size of a mustard seed) in a big, gracious God is all that’s needed (Luke 17:6).

Besides, Jesus seems to say in vv. 7-10, concern over the size of our faith grows out of our sinful self-absorption. Faith, whatever its size, is a gift from God. It’s a gift that opens our hearts, minds, and wills to doing what God wants to do through us. No matter the size of our faith, or its depth, God can use the opening to Him created by our faith to enter our lives, prayers, actions, and thoughts and do great things. “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). “Get your minds off of yourselves,” Jesus is telling us, “and just walk in whatever faith you have at the moment.” “Walk away from sin and walk toward Me,” He’s telling us, “and I’ll take care of the rest.”

This approach will steer us away from getting full of ourselves when, by the power of God working through our faith in Christ, we do something good. Like faithful servants, if attention is called to some good we’ve done, we can say: “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.”

In fact, Jesus seems to say that as we seek to walk in fellowship with Jesus each day, we will lose our self-consciousness. In the judgment scene Jesus portrays in Matthew 25:31-46, the “sheep,” the faithful, have no idea what King Jesus is talking about when He lauds them for visiting imprisoned believers, offering water or food to the thirsty or hungry, clothing the naked, and so on. “When did we [do any of those things]?” they wonder (Matthew 25:44).

Listen: As I walk more closely with Jesus, I am bound to hear more clearly as He warns me about the temptations I may present to others, the faultiness of my own character and behaviors, and the susceptibility of those who seek to be faithful to self-rigtheousness or dismissive of the seriousness of my own sin. Just yesterday, I said something cutting about another person which presented an invitation to others to join in. It took me a while to realize what I had done. Now, I regret it and repent for it. I contacted several people to whom I had made the comment to apologize for my sin. I need to be open to God both to avoid a recurrence of such sins (and many others) and to know when to seek God’s forgiveness in Christ’s name. “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father--Jesus Christ, the Righteous One” (1 John 2:1).

I cannot presume that when I approach the Father in Jesus’ name that God will excuse my sin, but that He will forgive my sin. God is gracious to the repentant! (Thank You, God, for that!)

Respond: God, help me to focus on following Christ without reference to others’ applause or notice.

Help me to be so focused on following Christ that You can freely work through me.

Help me to resist temptation and grant, God, that today I will not be an instrument of temptation to sin for others.

Help me to simply do what You tell me to do: love You, love neighbor, be a disciple, make disciples.

In Jesus’ name I pray. 

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

Today's 11:11, July 18, 2017

Random stuff for 11:11pm.

Trusting in Christ Alone

God got my attention during my quiet time with Him yesterday. I read Luke, chapter 13, and two verses leapt off the page at me. No mystery in that: "...the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12).

Here's a little information on how I keep quiet time.

Here's my journal entry from yesterday:

Look: “‘Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will reply, “I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!”’” (Luke 13:26-27)

Jesus is asked, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?” (v. 23). Jesus ignores the issue of numbers of people saved. He basically tells people, “Tend to your knitting.”

Our “knitting” is to “make every effort to enter through the narrow door” (v. 24). Jesus is that narrow door. Jesus says in John 10:9: “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent,” Jesus says in John 6:29.

In other words, our “work” is to trust in Jesus. He is the narrow way by whom we can be saved.

Jesus says at the judgment that there will be people who say, “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” They’ll be saying effectively, “We were in worship when Your name was proclaimed. We drank the wine of Holy Communion and ate the bread.”

“Yes,” Jesus is saying, “you may in fact have done those pious religious things. But I don’t know you.” There’s a difference between hanging around when the Word about Jesus is spoken and consuming the elements because it’s time to go up for Communion, on the one hand, and following Jesus, on the other.

The Small Catechism asks, “When is a person worthy to receive the Sacrament?” The answer: “Fasting and other outward disciplines are indeed good preparation, but people are truly worthy and well prepared who believe these words, ‘Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.’ But those who do not believe these words or who doubt them are unworthy and unprepared, for the words, ‘for you’ require truly believing hearts.”

Simply going through the motions, as the synagogue leader who condemned Jesus for doing an act of love--healing a woman afflicted by Satan on the sabbath day--did, is not belief in the God revealed in His Son, Jesus.

The question is whether we believe in Jesus rather than in our behaviors, be they going to church, receiving the Sacrament, or healing a person on “the right day.” Christians should worship regularly. They should receive Christ’s body and blood for the forgiveness of sins as often as they can. 

But those who follow Jesus aren’t just saved from something (condemnation), we are also saved for something: A life lived differently from the way it would otherwise be lived because we have been saved by Jesus, a life whose primary object isn't my personal fulfillment or enjoyment, but God's glory. (This, honestly, makes me uncomfortable.)

Jesus says in Matthew 3:8 (New Living Translation): “Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God.” People who have entered by the narrow way of faith in Jesus “bear the fruit of repentance.”

This is why it’s so important for me to turn to Jesus each day. My default mode dictates trusting in things like the world, myself, and my good works, all things that I can see right now, to validate my existence or to save me from myself--my sins, my death, my darkness. Under this way of thinking I become the subject of my salvation rather than the object of God’s salvation, given through Christ. 

I must learn that even my own salvation is not about me! 

“For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law” (Romans 3:28). “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:8-10) And Jesus says in John 5:24: “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.”

Those who don’t trust in Jesus have no relationship with Jesus. Those who breezily “accept” the proclamation of their forgiveness and promise of forgiveness that comes from the body and blood of Jesus, given in, with, and under the bread and the wine, going through the religious motions without surrendering trust in Christ, have no relationship with Christ. They are not saved. Those who trust in Jesus, including entrusting their sin and sinful desires, who trust Jesus to wage war against their sins and trustingly renounce sin to embrace Christ, are saved. They enter via the narrow door.

Listen: You show me in this Word, Lord, the subtle ways in which I allow sin to have its way with me. I excuse my sin, effectively saying, “I’m only human.”

Your grace is all I need for life; I simply need to trust in Christ for Your grace to forgive my sins, save from death, and save me to live.

But I can’t thoughtlessly drag my sin into Your presence and expect You to bless me when I fail to listen to Your call to repent and to avoid temptation, which is to say Your call to trust in You.

When I depend on self-righteousness, self-indulgence, or any other worldly thing to save me from my sense of guilt, inadequacy, or disconnectedness, I’m following the wide streets of the world. You are Who I need. You alone!

Respond: Today, Lord, help me to resist temptation. Help me to follow and trust in Christ alone. In His name I pray. Amen

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

What is the Magnitsky Act?

The Russian lawyer and former Soviet counterintelligence agent who had the now famous meeting with Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort about repealing the Magnitsky Act. That law, passed and signed in 2012, denies entrance into the United States of human rights violators. In retaliation, the Russian government began barring the adoption of Russian children by prospective American parents. This presents good background information.

At Rest in Christ

Matthew 11:25-30
A few years ago, my dad was hospitalized following emergency surgery. My sisters and I took turns staying overnight with dad during his stay. One night, when I was going to be with dad, Ann dropped me off, but stayed a bit and was talking with one of my sisters. In the meantime, dad and I talked.

My sister told Ann, “I’m so glad that Dad has Bub [that’s what everyone in my family calls me]. He knows things about Dad’s life that none of the rest of us do.” I think that’s true. Sons, maybe especially first-born sons, have special relationships with their dads. They have inside information on their fathers. They get things about their dads and can share things about their dads maybe nobody else can.

Jesus spoke of Himself and we confess Him to be the Son of God the Father. In fact, in speaking of the first Person of the Trinity, the “creator of heaven and earth,” as His Father, Jesus was speaking of God in ways that were hardly known among God’s people, the Jews.

Jesus had an intimacy with God the Father that others noticed. And when Jesus taught those who believed in Him as the Messiah and Lord, God the Son, how to pray, He taught us to address His Father as “our Father.” Jesus shows us that, despite our sins, God the Father wants us.

Jesus, to put it simply, shows us the Father.

If we’re willing to see Him.

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus talks about who can see the Father through Him, those who can’t, and what belongs to those who do.

Our lesson begins with Jesus allowing us to eavesdrop on His praying, His intimate conversation with the Father: “At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.’” (Matthew 11:25-26)

It’s important to be careful here. Jesus isn’t here commending stupidity. He isn’t railing against learning, scholarship, or degrees.

Remember that the person the risen Jesus would later designate as apostle to the Gentiles, Paul, was among the most scholarly and learned men of his time.

Decades before, God chose to reveal Jesus’ birth to people we sometimes call “wise men,” because of their scholarship.

I think that God fully endorses it when parents tell their kids, “God gave you a brain; use it!”

When Jesus thanks the Father that the truth about Jesus as the way to life with God had been revealed to “little children” rather than to the “wise and learned,” He’s drawing a contrast between two different kinds of people.

The “wise and the learned” are people who are so wise and learned in their own eyes that they think they’re better than others. They close their eyes to the truth that sets before them. They’re like the people of Jesus’ day who saw Jesus feed crowds with a few scraps of food, raise people from the dead, cast out leprosy and demons, and still refused to believe that Jesus was God on earth.

Today, they’re people who write off answers to prayers offered in Jesus’ name; write off believers transformed by the love and grace of God; write off the faithful strengthened by God’s life-giving world. They say it’s all coincidence. Or rooted in feelings rather than facts. They ask for proof, even when surrounded by proof.

Little children, as Jesus puts it, aren’t people who are innocent or sinless. Whoever met a child who wanted a toy that belonged to another child knows that little children aren’t sinless.

But little children are open. They’re willing to acknowledge the truth of what stands before them.

It’s to “little children,” Jesus says, people who are open and willing to trust, who see Jesus for Who He is and through Him, see God the Father.

One of the things I say to atheists who wonder how I could be a former atheist who now believes, is that I came to faith after seeing Jesus in the lives of the people of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Columbus. By seeing them, I became willing to believe. The Holy Spirit took that willingness and is still weaving it into faith in Christ.

That’s why it’s important for the adults of Living Water to be involved in our youth and children’s ministries; kids need to catch your faith from you.

It’s why it’s important when you receive an invitation to be part of one of our discipleship small groups that you say yes; gathered around His Word, our faith is deepened and stirred in these intimate platoons of believers.

The Holy Spirit will give faith to anyone who is willing to have faith!

And faith is important business. Since we are saved from sin, death, and futility by our faith in Jesus Christ alone, we need, no matter how learned we become, no matter how many degrees we earn, no matter how accomplished we are, to have the openness of little children to see what God shows us in Jesus.

It’s to people like this that Jesus chooses to reveal all of “these things.” Look at what Jesus says next (He’s shifted now from praying to teaching others about the Father to Whom He’s just been praying): “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Matthew 11:27-29)

A number of years ago, in the heyday of blogging, I became acquainted, just via the Internet, with a woman who described herself as a Jewish/Buddhist/atheist. She was a writer and we both occasionally contributed articles to the same group blog. She wrote an email one Saturday and I dashed off a quick reply, explaining that I needed to spend some time working on my sermon. “I’m not sure I know what God wants me to say yet,” I explained. She wrote back: “HA! You actually believe that God inspires what you preach on Sundays, that it’s the Word of God.” I wrote back later and said, “I pray that what I preach on Sundays is the word of God. I’m sure that it is when I get out of the way and let God speak His Word through me.”

She wasn’t convinced. I think that she was too “wise and learned,” too unavailable to the possibility of belief to believe.

Jesus doesn’t call us to check our brains in at the baptismal font.

But He does call us to cede control of our lives--brains, bodies, spirits, wallets, relationships, and every other part of our lives--to Him and to trust in Him. He wants to liberate our brains, bodies, spirits, wallets, relationships, and every other part of our lives from their imprisonment to sin and death, set us free to become all that God has made us to be.

When we lay ourselves open to the God we meet in Jesus through childlike faith, we see just how incredible the God revealed in Jesus really is!

When we see Jesus, God the Son, and through Him, God the Father, we’re ready to respond to the invitation that Jesus makes at the end of our lesson. “Come to me, [Jesus says] all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Only Jesus could claim to be God in the flesh and, at the same time, call Himself "humble" and do so credibly. Jesus voluntarily divested Himself of the advantages of His deity in order to serve and to die for us. That adds believability to His invitation.

And when Jesus addresses those who are “weary and burdened,” promising “rest,” do you picture Him speaking to you? I think that we human beings are almost born “weary and burdened.”

• By things like trying to be in control in a world in which, literally, anything can happen. 
• By trying to be worthy in a world where, it seems, there are lots of people who want to tear us down or push us down. 
• By trying to get everything figured out. 

If you haven’t noticed, all of these things that we try to do-- seizing control, demonstrating our worthiness, figuring everything out--employing all of our wisdom, intelligence, and shrewdness, is futile if we do any of it on our own.

One of the passages we’re memorizing for our discipleship groups is Proverbs 3:5-6, which tells us: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding; in all your ways, submit to Him and He will make your paths straight.” This isn’t fatalism; it’s faith. It isn’t passivity; it’s filling up on the power for living that only the God we meet in Jesus can give.

There is rest in that even when everything in our lives goes crazy. A woman I knew had just lost her husband. It was a tremendous loss. They had loved each other very much. Everyone commented on how calm this newly-widowed woman was. I know that she had her tears, when the pain of her grief was unbearable. But I too saw that calm. She was at peace, at rest in the Lord.

Those consumed with their own wisdom, who think that they must be in control, may never see Jesus--even when they read His Word, are touched by the fellowship of Christ’s Church, or receive the sacraments. Their minds, hearts, and wills are closed.

But when we come to Jesus with a childlike willingness to see and to believe, when we are open to Him, we see God. And in seeing Him, we rest, knowing that no one and nothing can ever separate us from God our Father. I pray that childlike openness and that supernatural rest for you today and always. Amen

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