Protect me, God, from the lies I tell myself

This journals my encounter with God and His Word today during my quiet time. See here to see how I spend my time with God; it may help you to keep your own quiet time.

Look: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” (2 Timothy 4:3)

Paul addressed these words to Timothy to explain why he had given the instructions that immediately precede them: “I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.” (2 Timothy 4:1-2)

The times that Paul describes--”when people will not put up with sound doctrine”--have arisen often in the history of Christ’s Church.

Today is no different.

For example, Joel Osteen promotes a “prosperity gospel,” teaching that if people have enough faith, they will become rich. It’s possible for faithful people to be wealthy, of course. Abraham, the earthly father of Biblical faith, had wealth. But the notion that a lack of wealth is a sign of little faith is a lie, a lie which Osteen is willing to sell you with the tickets he sells to attend his events around the country.

And then, there’s the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the body I left several years ago, who recently told an interviewer from the Chicago Sun-Times that if there is a hell, it's empty. No Christian should be anxious for a person to go to hell. In fact, our mission is to make disciples so that people can have God’s presence, salvation, and blessings now and for eternity. But Jesus is very clear throughout the gospels, as are the apostles: There is a hell and it is populated not only by Satan and his demons, but also by those who refuse to trust the God revealed in Christ with their sins and their lives.

Pernicious lies like these never lose their appeal to people. I think that’s so for several reasons:

1. Lies like those told by Osteen make people feel more in control and more self-righteous. If people have wealth, they can tell themselves that this is a sign of their righteousness. Such beliefs existed in Biblical times and Jesus condemned them. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God,” Jesus says in Mark 10:25. Jesus understands that wealth can delude us with the idea that we are self-sufficient and wealth can become our god. The advocates of the prosperity gospel find passages like this inconvenient. I’ve been told about Christians who truly think that if people in poverty had more faith, they wouldn’t be poor. That is a self-aggrandizing lie.

2. Lies like those told by the ELCA bishop make God seem like a liar when He tells us in His word, repeatedly, that there is condemnation for those who refuse to trust in Christ. In John 3:16-18, for example, Jesus says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” And Jesus isn’t shy about speaking of hell as the place of condemnation filled with unbelieving people (Luke 16:19-31). Nor is Jesus shy in speaking of eternity with God as the reward for simple repentance and faith in Him. To the thief on the cross, dying alongside Him, Jesus said, “...today, you will be with Me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

Listen: It’s easy to see the lies that other people readily accept.

But, Lord, are there lies to which I am susceptible? As I reflect, there is one big lie that I find myself needing to guard against.

It’s this: The idea that since I’m a Christian, anything I take into my head to do must be OK. That is a big lie!

Although I would never consciously frame things in this way, the thinking here is: “I’m saved by Jesus from sin and death. So, if I decide to do so-and-so, it must be all right. After all, Jesus knows how much I love him. He’ll give me a break.”

This lie exemplifies what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” It’s an expression of that “buddy God” lie. Cheap grace is what we tell ourselves God gives to us in order to wrestle with the reality and consequences of our sinfulness and our sinful actions.

This is why the Lutheran practice of “daily repentance and renewal” is so important. Otherwise, like a “lost sheep,” we rationalize our ways farther and farther away from Christ and the life only He can give.

The reality of my sin is something with which I must daily wrestle. And I need to be open to remain silent before God and His Word to show me where I have gone wrong.

Psalm 139:23-24 teaches believers to pray: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Paul engages in daily repentance and renewal when he talks about his daily struggle with the reality of his own sin and his utter dependence on God’s grace, given in Christ, to save him from himself (Romans 7:21-25).

Another subtle lie against which I want to remain vigilant is, I imagine, quite alluring for many Christians when they see things like earthquakes in Mexico or hurricanes in Florida, Texas, Cuba, Puerto Rico, St. Croix, St. John, St. Thomas, and elsewhere. The lie people not in affected areas might be open to accepting is, “This hasn’t happened to me. Therefore, I must be blessed and favored by God, while those facing these catastrophes are not.”

Jesus specifically called out people prone to accept such lies when, referencing disastrous events that must have happened shortly before He spoke to a crowd. Luke 13:1-5 says: “Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, ‘Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.’”
Unforeseen disasters happen in this world. They happen to the righteous and unrighteous alike (Matthew 5:45).

And, as Dave, a disciple who is part of the congregation I serve as pastor, mentioned to me the other day: “Disasters come all the time to people.” He went on to mention things like heart attacks. We could also name traffic accidents, cancer diagnoses, deaths.

To believe that because particular disasters haven’t struck us yet, we’re exempt by reason of righteousness, isn’t just a delusion, it’s a lie.

Respond: Protect me today, God, from my impulse to believe my lies, the world lies, or Satan’s lies rather than Your truth, revealed definitively in Christ and in Your Word. Help me to hear You clearly throughout my day and help me to call on You constantly so that when I start to wander, I return to You. Help me to remember always the truth:

“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)

I place my life is in Your hands, and not mine.

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Living Water is a congregation of the North American Lutheran Church (NALC).

Forgiven and Forgiving: Living in Jesus' Kingdom (AUDIO)

Here.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church. This message was shared during this past Sunday's worship services.]

Saved for a Life Lived On Purpose

I begin most days in quiet time with God. To see how I approach this time, see here. Below is my journal for today's quiet time.

Look: “He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. (2 Timothy 1:9)

If Paul were a televangelist, I suppose you’d expect him to write here that we have been saved and called to live with God for eternity, focusing more on the sweet-by-and-by beyond death.

But that’s not what Paul writes. He says that God in Christ “has saved and called us to a holy life.” It’s an accomplished fact. Right now in this messy world.

The follower of Jesus is saved for and called to a different way of living in this life. Believers in Jesus aren’t waiting for their own resurrections to start living like people who have been called and saved by the God of the universe. They can do it right now.

Listen: That the implications for everyday life in this world is what Paul has in mind here is underscored by what he writes in verse 7: “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.”

God doesn’t give the Holy Spirit to believers just so that they can have goose-bumpy experiences with the wild and uncontrollable Holy Spirit. God’s not a junkie whose aim is to sell us a dose of Holy Spirit-religion, our fix until the next time we need to feel something.

The God we meet in Jesus Christ is uncontrollable by human beings, even wild as perceived on this side of the resurrection. He is the Lion and the Lamb (Revelation 5:5-6). Lewis has it right when several characters in The Chronicles of Narnia say of Aslan, the Christ-figure in his books, “He’s not a tame lion. But he’s good.” But God does not set us free to be Jesus addicts.

To all with faith in Jesus and through our Baptism, He gives us the Holy Spirit, Who bears down on the chaos of our lives (Genesis 1:1) of jumbled motives and self-serving actions to make us new (2 Corinthians 5:17), set free from the tyranny of sin and our selfish motives. As we attend to Christ faithfully, we can no longer be tossed to and fro by the latest craze, impulse, religious fad, or need to feel “relevant” (Ephesians 4:14).

Instead, we hold steady, filled with the strength of God for living.

The Holy Spirit empowers us with the boldness to live out our trust in Jesus by giving us “power, love, and self-discipline.”

He saves us to live holy lives, lives set apart for God’s purposes for our lives, according to the blueprint He set for us when He formed us in the womb.

I find that when I’m seeking to live in tune with the Holy Spirit, in submission to Christ and the will of God, I become more myself, not less. Jesus died and rose to save me for just this: to be myself, not the person my sin-darkened heart and mind sometimes imagine that I should be. I become more straightforward, less ambiguous, less complicated. Not simplistic, simple. Self-disciplined, more dependent on my Creator and therefore more the bold, powerful, loving, and self-disciplined child of God I am meant to be. Liberated to be my true self.

This isn’t passivity. I don’t stop dreaming or having ambitions. But my dreams and ambitions are set on being the me God sets me free to be.

Respond: Lord, You know how I wander from You and want to be my own god and become disappointed by dreams that come from my ego, from Satan, and from the world, rather than following the path of freedom to be all that I am made to be in Christ. Help me to live like a new creation and not an old Adam, mired in sin.Today, help me to live like a disciple of Jesus. Amen

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

Forgiven and Forgiving: Life in Jesus' Kingdom

[This is the message that was shared during both worship services with the people of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Matthew 18:21-35
At the end of last Sunday’s gospel lesson, Jesus describes how people living in His Kingdom, the people of His Church, are to resolve things when we believe we have been sinned against.

As today’s gospel lesson begins, we can almost read Peter’s mind as he asks Jesus, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” (Matthew 18:21)

“I’m willing to forgive someone who’s doing me wrong,” Peter seems to be saying. “But. Lord, if they keep sinning against me, when do I get to stop forgiving?”

Jesus tells Peter how many times he is to forgive a fellow believer: “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22).

Some translations render Jesus’ words as “seven times seven.” Others put it, “seventy times seven.” Various ancient copies of Matthew’s gospel can support any of those translations. But we can’t get hung up here and miss Jesus’ point.

In Jewish thought, seven is the perfect number. It was, according to Genesis, the number of days in the first week of God’s creation and it was on the seventh day that God rested from His labor. Seven is the number of completion and eternity.

So, how often are we to forgive our fellow believers, our sisters and brothers who by their confession of the crucified and risen Jesus, live in the Kingdom of heaven? Jesus says always.

Completely.

Totally.

Eternally.

Repeatedly.

Continuously.

While Peter stands there, undoubtedly slack-jawed and wondering why he would forgive anyone continuously and how he he could possibly do it, Jesus tells what has become one of his most famous parables. He begins: “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like…” Whenever Jesus uses phrasing like this, it’s a signal that the entire fictional illustration He’s about to share tells you what life in His kingdom is like. This is how things work among God’s people, the Church, Jesus is telling us.

Jesus says: “...the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand [The word here in the Greek in which Matthew wrote his gospel is murion, from which we get the English word, myriad...ten thousand] bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled [In fact, the word in the Greek is a form of the verb, aphiemi, literally, released, the word most commonly used in the New Testament for forgave. The king forgave, released the servant from the man who owed the king so much…] the debt and let him go.” [Matthew 18:23-27]

The first thing we learn from the parable about the kingdom of heaven is that it’s where Jesus’ disciples are set free, released! 

By the power of Jesus’ death on the cross, when He offered up His innocent body and blood in payment for the massive debt we owe to God for our sin, our debt is canceled. All who trust in Jesus and what He did for us on the cross, are set free of all we owe God for the ways our lives have violated His holiness:

• all the gossip and misuse of God’s name, 
• all the dishonesty and covetousness, 
• all the adultery and failure to worship God instead of ourselves or our kids or the world, 
• all the financial sleight of hand. 

We are set free to be the people God made us to be! As we sing in the traditional liturgy: “Worthy is Christ, the Lamb who was slain, whose blood set us free to be people of God.”

And when we come together on Sunday mornings, confessing our sins, because of what Jesus did for us and your faith in Jesus, you can believe that when I say, “As a called and ordained minister of the Church of Christ, and by His authority, I therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins,” or words like these, it's all true!

“As far as the east is from the west, so far has [God] removed our transgressions from us!” (Psalm 103:12)

Christians needn't say, "I hope that  I’m forgiven.” You are forgiven because Jesus died and rose to bring His forgiveness to all who trust in Him. That’s the first thing the kingdom of heaven is like for those who believe!

Jesus goes on with His parable in verse 28: ““But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

The second thing we learn from Jesus' parable about the kingdom of heaven, the Church, is: It’s the dominion of God in which disciples of Jesus forgive others as we’ve been forgiven.

After teaching us to pray, elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” Jesus says: “...if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6:14-15)

If, after being assured of God’s absolution--His forgiveness of our sins--during worship on Sunday morning, we harbor grudges or hold things against others, refusing to release them from the debts they owe us, God will clap the chains and manacles back on our lives. Our lives will come back under an eternal death sentence. We will lose our forgiveness. We’ll lose our freedom.

The servant forgiven so much by the king in Jesus’ parable should have been so grateful for his freedom that he readily forgave the man who owed him so little. Instead, he used his freedom as a license to play God over his fellow servant. No matter how often we go to worship, or how many Bible verses we memorize, hurricane victims we help, or mission trips we go on, unless we forgive others as Christ desires to forgive us, we will not be forgiven. We’ll still be imprisoned in our sin.

It’s possible that after Jesus told this parable, Peter was as slack-jawed as he he’d been before Jesus told it. And maybe we find this teaching intimidating. I know that I do!

But the call and command of Jesus in this parable are simple and, if we take them seriously, liberating and life-giving.

Think of what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross and what the Father accomplished for us when He raised Jesus from the dead, think of all of that, as a massive, eternal blank check imparting never-depleted riches of forgiveness and new life to all who turn from sin and trust in, believe in, surrender their lives to, Jesus.

God never tires of forgiving those who genuinely repent and believe in Him. He forgives in perfect seventy-seven times fashion.

In turn, Jesus frees us from the burden of keeping score. He frees us from having to figure out who owes us for hurting us.

Jesus frees us to treat others with the same grace, mercy, and forgiveness He has given to us.

He frees us to get on with the true living of life: loving God, loving neighbor, making disciples.

By the grace of God given in Christ, we are forgiven.

By that same grace, we can forgive others.

Seventy times seven, in utter eternal perfection.

That’s what life in the kingdom of heaven is like, here on earth and in eternity.

Amen

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

Even through the storms, God speaks to us

A man walked into the church building during staff meeting this morning. I asked, "May I help you?" "Are you taking donations for disaster relief?" he wondered. I said that, in fact, we were forwarding offerings to our denomination's disaster relief efforts. He asked how to make out the check and did so on the spot.

Later on, a Living Water member currently shut in by recent surgery called and asked if I would drop by in the afternoon. She and her husband wanted to give me a check for disaster relief.

This warmed my heart.

One of the deepest and least acknowledged needs of human beings is the need we all have to give. We were made for community and to care for others. That's how God made us, though that, of course, is often obscured by our sin. But when situations like the recent damaging hurricanes arise, all of us--believers and unbelievers alike--find God whispering His call for us to fulfill our humanity and give for the good of others. God is still speaking to us, if we will only listen.

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

A funny prayer request

I was out and about on Tuesday, wearing my clerical collar, when a guy spied me from across the parking lot. "Hey!" he hollered. "Pray for the Buckeyes!" I told him it might be better just to tell the receivers to get open for J.T. Barrett's passes.

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

Who's the Greatest?

[This message was shared yesterday during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 18:1-20
One of the stories we often tell in our family revolves around an incident that happened when our kids were about ten and seven. We’d visited family in Columbus and stopped at Lane Avenue Shopping Center there before heading back to Cincinnati, where we lived at the time. We climbed into the car and were pulling out, when we heard a kind of whimpering yell. It was Philip, the oldest, who wasn’t yet in the car. We stopped and Phil jumped in.

Now, why exactly did we stop to get him?

I mean, we’d successfully collected 50% of our kids and, with Phil being ten years old, he was costing us a lot of money.

He wasn’t generating any income; so, he was a net drag on the family finances.

And besides, it was a hassle taking him to this event and that activity.

Phil hadn’t attained any great achievements, led any governments or armies, hadn’t made his first billion-dollars. He was nobody, really.

So, why did we bother bringing him back into the car?

We stopped because every member of a family, from the child awaiting birth in its mother’s womb to the infirm parent no longer able to take care of themselves, matters.

No matter how seemingly unimportant a family member may be in the eyes of the world, every one of them is important.

Many New Testament scholars believe that the gospel of Matthew is built around five major collections of sayings by Jesus. Some see these five sections corresponding to the first five books of the Old Testament, called the Pentateuch, also called the torah, a word roughly meaning, instruction on the way of life, the way of life with God.

That characterization, the way of life with God, certainly applies to the fourth section of Matthew’s gospel, which begins with the verses that make up today’s gospel lesson, Matthew 18:1-20.

In this section, Jesus talks about how the people in His family, His kingdom, His Church, are to behave toward one another.

The key to understanding this entire passage is to be found in the first five verses. Understand these five verses and the subsequent fifteen fall into place. So, today, we’re only going to address those five verses.

It all begins with the disciples asking Jesus a question: “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” (Matthew 18:1)

These kinds of questions are important to us in the world, mostly because we’d prefer being the ones calling the shots, preferably without any accountability, thank you very much. We like the idea of being the top dog.

At the first church I served as pastor, we had a five-week long summer school for kids in the third through eighth grades focusing on the Bible and Catechism. We had 85 students. For recess during the last week one year, I set up a kickball tournament. When I announced that we would play the tournament March Madness-style, only with the losing teams advancing, one boy, who would later play college football, asked, “How will we know which is the best team?” When I told him that we wouldn’t know, he offered a quietly disappointed, “Oh.”

So, these questions of who’s most important, who’s the best, who has the most, who’s on top, seem to be important to us from a young age.

When Jesus was asked who was most important in His kingdom, He could have said God or the patriarchs or Moses.

But Jesus wants His disciples, including you and me, to see where true greatness resides in His eternal kingdom. So, Jesus offers a tangible illustration. Verse 2: “He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’”

We mustn’t miss Jesus’ point here. Jesus is not saying that children are innocent, sweet, or trusting and that we should imitate them. As one scholar says, Jesus is not talking about children’s character traits. Like King David, writing in Psalm 51, we know that every child conceived by human parents is born in sin.

What Jesus is pointing to in this child is their status.

In that society, male children were held to be worthy only when they had matured to manhood, but not before; female children were never regarded as worthy.

Children occupied the lowest rung of society. In many ways, it can be argued, they still do.

Jesus is saying that if we who claim to be His disciples want to be the greatest in His kingdom, we must be willing to accept the lowest place, to sit at the kids’ table, to be the servant of all His other servants.

And Jesus also says that true greatness in His kingdom is further exhibited by those who welcome the people nobody else will welcome, to offer them the love of God that others shy away from sharing with them.

Jesus’ kingdom isn’t like the kingdoms of the world.

In Jesus’ kingdom, the greatest are those who lift others up, not themselves.

In Jesus’ kingdom, the greatest are those who see that when they serve those regarded as lowly and unimportant by the world, they really serve Him.

And, this includes the lowly people sitting next to you in worship this morning!

In commending this way of life to us, Jesus isn’t asking us to live any differently than He Himself lived (and died and rose) when He was on the earth. A touchstone passage of Scripture for disciples is Philippians 2:5-11, where Paul echoes the words of Jesus we consider today. This passage, like Jesus’ words in today’s lesson, are meant for disciples of Jesus and take up the question of how you and I are supposed to treat each other as disciples. The passage is worthy of reading in its entirety together. So, read it aloud with me, please:

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Listen: As Jesus’ disciples, we can risk being one another’s servants, humbling ourselves before one another in order to build each other up, because we know that all who turn from sin and believe in the crucified and risen Jesus, are citizens of the kingdom of heaven for all eternity.

Every person who believes in Jesus already has an exalted place in the kingdom of heaven, so we don’t need to push ourselves forward.

This is why Jesus tells us elsewhere: “...those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12).

If we persevere in following Jesus, even when it may be damaging to our reputations or livelihoods in this world, we live and die in the certainty that we are going to reign with Jesus over His new creation for all eternity.

2 Timothy 2:11-12 tells Christian disciples: “If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us…”

We need to keep following Jesus in humility. And that means being humble not just toward Jesus, but also in our dealings with our fellow disciples!

Maybe the next time we run into each other before or after worship, or during our small groups or while helping at Upward, Tuesday tutoring, on a mission trip, or at Saint Vincent’s Gateway Men's Shelter, our first words to each other shouldn’t be, “How are you doing?” And it surely shouldn’t be, “Why do you keep messing up?” (Not the question of a disciple.) Maybe we should be asking each other, “What can I do for you today?”

The greatest in God’s kingdom are those who take the path of servanthood, walking right behind God in the flesh, Jesus, Who took the path of the cross and, for His faithful service to God and to the human race, was lifted up by His Father.

All who, as Jesus told us in last week’s gospel lesson, take up our crosses, owning our sins, and follow Him, trusting Him as our God and Savior, will also be lifted up to live with Him now and forever.

When you know you’re God’s child, you don’t have to play at being a big shot. In the eyes of God, you already are a big shot, especially when you humble yourself to serve others in Jesus’ name. Amen

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

Robert Jenson, eminent Lutheran theologian, has died

Robert Jenson, one of the eminent Lutheran theologians of the past forty years, died on September 5. Jenson was a practitioner of systematic theology, a branch of the theological enterprise which, as the name implies, attempts to systematically understand God's self-disclosure to Israel and, definitively, to the world in Jesus Christ. Jenson was, simultaneously, audacious and orthodox (the latter, a Greek compound word, ortho=right, doxy=glory, a generic term used of Christians who espouse the God of the Bible, rather than the preferred version of God of any given moment) Christian theologians of the past fifty years.

Rein Zeilstra, the author of an appreciation of Jenson writes:

Initially an activist, Jenson and his wife Blanche—to whom he was married for more than 60 years, and whom he credited as co-author of all his books, indeed, "genetrici theologiae meae omniae"—marched and protested and spoke in the 1960s against the Vietnam War and for civil rights for African-Americans. His politics was forever altered, however, in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. As he wrote later, he assumed that those who had marched alongside him and his fellow Christians would draw a logical connection from protection of the vulnerable in Vietnam and the oppressed in America to the defenseless in the womb; but that was not to be. Ever after, his politics was divided, and without representation in American governance: as he said in a recent interview, he found he could vote for neither Republicans nor Democrats, for one worshiped an idol called "the free market" and the other worshiped an idol called "autonomous choice," and both idols were inimical to a Christian vision of the common good.

In 1997 and 1999, ostensibly as the crown and conclusion to 70 years' work in the theological academy, Jenson published his two-volume Systematic Theology, arguably the most read, renowned, and perhaps even controversial systematic proposal in the last three decades. There his lifelong interests came together in concise, readable, propulsive form: the triune God, the incarnate Jesus, the theological tradition, the nihilism of modernity, the hope of the gospel, and the work of the Spirit in the unitary church of the creeds. Even if you find yourself disagreeing with every word of it, it is worth your time. As my brother once told me, he wasn't sure what he thought about the book when he finished the last page, but more important, he felt compelled to get on his knees and worship the Trinity. Surely that is the final goal of every theological system; surely nothing could make Jenson more pleased.

Amen

Read the entire post by Zeilstra.

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

The mysteries of God

My quiet time with God today answered some questions and raised even more to which I can't yet see any answers. Life with God is like that. If you ever get to the point when you think you've got God all figured out, you're probably playing God rather than following God.

Sometimes God is, as the late Rich Mullins said, "hard to get." There are mysteries about Him and life with Him that will endure as long as we live in this earth. Among the greatest of these mysteries is how He loves me and sticks with me and, most amazingly, understands me at precisely those moments when I feel most alone, isolated, and afraid. Even when I don't get God, He gets me. And that's tremendously comforting and empowering.

[Below is Mullins' demo of the song, Hard to Get. He was unable to go to the studio with the tune before he died. But I love the simplicity of this version.]



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

A walk to the Bronx with Andy Mineo and Lecrae

Andy Mineo and Lecrae are two of my favorite contemporary musical artists. They both rap. They are both Christians.

Here, while recommending a new book, Mineo tells about an incident that he and Lecrae were recently both involved in and then, witnesses to, while walking through a New York City neighborhood.

Please listen to the whole thing. You will be blessed.

And please choose to listen to it at all, even if it gets uncomfortable. He says some very important things.

My views on engaging in sexual intimacy outside of heterosexual marriage are well-known by those who know me. I've made them clear here.

I hope that my belief that Christians are called to love and try to understand all people is equally well known.

Jesus says that we are to love our neighbors, no exceptions.

Jesus says that we're also to speak God's truth. And, in Ephesians, we're told to speak the truth of God in love.

We can do both of those things--love our neighbor and speak the truth, as long as we own our own imperfections and our own need of Jesus forgiveness for our sins.

Anyone who is truly grateful that they have been saved by grace through faith in Christ alone will be powerfully motivated to never look down their nose is on anyone.

Like Luther, we Christians can own the fact that we are all beggars, that we are all in need of grace because we cannot save ourselves.

I love what Andy Mineo has to say here. I love the sensitivity he shows to all kinds of people here, including police officers thrust into difficult situations without knowing the context.

Please listen to what this extraordinary young man has to say. I thank God for him and for Lecrae and the ways in which they are showing the implications of the good news of Jesus Christ to all kinds of people.


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

"Take up your cross and follow Me"

Matthew 16:21-28
[This message was shared during the worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, on September 3, 2017.]

Our gospel lesson for today, Matthew 16:21-28, begins in this way: “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

We Christians have read and heard those words (or words like them) so many times in our lives that we may hardly notice them. Or give them a second thought. But when Jesus spoke them to His original hearers, the twelve apostles, their effect must have been not just jarring, but volcanic!

A few moments before, we read in Matthew, Peter had confessed his faith in Jesus as God’s anointed King, the Messiah or the Christ, as well as God in the flesh, which is what the phrase "the Son of the Living God" means. Peter was saying that Jesus was the Son of God, the very reflection and embodiment of God Himself!

Jesus had commended Peter’s confession, which He said, had come to Peter not from human beings, but from God Himself, the way our faith always does (1 Corinthians 12:3).

And Jesus said that it was on this strong confession made by Peter that “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades [or hell] will not overcome it” (Matthew 16:18).

Peter’s confession of Jesus and Jesus’ affirmation of it must have been an incredible moment for the twelve. For centuries, their people, the people of God, had been waiting for the Messiah promised by God. And here was Jesus confirming what Peter (and probably many of the other disciples) had come to believe. The wait was over. The Messiah, Who would make all things right, had arrived.

The problem was that in the four-hundred-some years since God had given the last book of the Old Testament to His people and the moment of Peter’s confession, an enormous gap between what God means by making all things right for us and what God’s people meant by making all things right had developed.

This gap was caused by the failure to understand on the part of God’s peoplewhat their real problem was.

God’s people had come to see their problem as the Romans. And before that, the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Each had been foreign conquerors. The problem, as God’s people had come to see it then, was these foreigners who had come and taken over their country.

God said that His people’s basic problem wasn’t the people who had conquered them through the centuries. It was that they had forgotten Who their God was.

They worshiped idols.

They worshiped the things of this world.

And because they did, they perpetrated grave injustices against each other and the strangers that were among them, violations of God’s holiness that God had adamantly and repeatedly forbade many times in His Word. It was because of all of this sin that God had allowed His people to be conquered.

To God’s people, including the disciples, the biggest problem they had was all of those other people who made their lives miserable. But God knew that the real problem wasn’t with all those other people.

And the only way that God could make all things right for His people and the whole world was not to give them a strongman king, the people’s version of a Messiah, the Messiah they wanted, who would boot out the foreign conquerors. Why? Because even if the strongman king was successful in routing the Romans and filling the people’s fevered desire for fat pocketbooks, the success of such a king would still only leave God’s people dead in their sin.

The only way that God could make all things right for His people and the world was to send a Messiah Who would deal with the sin into which every one of us--Jew and Gentile--is born.

Our greatest enemy in the world isn’t someone else: It’s not our spouse, our family, our boss, our government, or any of those “other people.” It’s not even the devil, although he hates us and wants us eternally separated from God.

Our greatest enemy is us. It’s us--you and me--who need to be dealt with. We and our sin must be conquered before they kill us off for all eternity.

But this isn’t something we like to hear or wrestle with. Who wants to be forced into saying, “It’s my fault”? Most of the time, those words stick in our throats.

Peter was just like us in that way. Verse 22 tells us that Peter is horrified at the idea of the One he had just confessed as Messiah going to Jerusalem, to be rejected and crucified. Matthew says that Peter rebuked Jesus. “That will never happen to You, Lord,” Peter says to Jesus, telling Jesus, the One he had just confessed to be God that Jesus was wrong. Peter was telling Jesus how to be the Messiah. He was giving Jesus "God lessons"!

In fact, as my son Philip pointed out to me last night, the word used to describe Peter's words to Jesus--rebuked--was in the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament with which Jesus would have been familiar only used of superiors upbraiding or chastising people beneath them in class or authority. Peter is treating the One he has confessed as God and Messiah like an underling!

Look what happens next, starting at Matthew 16:23. “Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.’”

Jesus calls Peter, Satan! The very name means enemy or adversary. At this moment, Jesus is calling Peter an enemy of God! This is a serious matter.

To try to stand in the way of God and the will and purpose of God makes a person an enemy of God. So, when Jesus uttered this condemnation of Peter, you can imagine how mystified Peter must have felt.

Do we stand in the way of God and His will for our lives?

Are there times when we try to turn Jesus into the king of our dreams, the king who will even go along with us when we’re being selfish or hurtful?

Are there times when we expect Jesus to overlook our sins while we stand in judgment over others for theirs?

Are there times when we insist that the problems in our marriages, our families, or our lives are exclusively the fault of others and not us?

Absent repentance and trust in Christ, if our answer to any of those questions is yes, then Jesus’ words of rebuke and their intrinsic call to repentance and renewed trust in Him, first leveled at Peter apply to you and me too. I know that Jesus' call applies to me many times, too.

But there is good news! King Jesus has come to set us free and make us right. 

Look at what He says, starting at verse 24: “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.’”

Jesus could have been the king that Peter, the other disciples, and God’s people in Judea wanted. He had the power to do it.

When Jesus was later arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, He said that He had at His disposal “twelve legions of angels,” 60,000 angelic soldiers ready at the direction of Jesus. He could have been a warrior king.

When Satan met Jesus in the wilderness, it was to be precisely this kind of king that he tried tempting Jesus into being. Satan knew that if Jesus relied on raw power, coercive force, to make Himself king, Jesus would have been as guilty of sin as Adam and Eve had been when, in their desire to “be like God,” they ate the fruit God told them not to eat.

And had Jesus been this kind of king, He wouldn’t have been trustingly relying on His Father and His plan, but on violent force.

Our lives could never have been made eternally right had Jesus gone that route.

We could never have been set eternally free from sin and death. Jesus had to go to the cross to take our punishment for sin so that, in rising, He could set free all who turn from sin, that is repent, and surrender trustingly in Him, that is believe in Him.

In the way Jesus chose, He could be King, not of a worldly nation, all of which eventually fail and fall from the weight of their arrogance, sin, and injustice, but the King of a new creation.

Jesus didn’t enter the world to conquer all the armies of the world while leaving everyone in this world dead and separated from God. Jesus came to conquer us with His love and so, give us life that never ends.

The only way for us to appropriate the victory won for us by Jesus on the cross and from the empty tomb is to first, take up our cross--meaning, to acknowledge, in Pogo’s famous words, “We have seen the enemy and he is us.” We need to own the fact that we need a Savior, Someone Who will save us from our sins and ourselves and to save us to be all that God intended for us to be. 

And we need secondly, to follow Jesus. Even when it’s inconvenient. Even when it’s the last thing we want to do. Even when it’s less than popular. Even when it costs us money, time, or our lives.

Taking up our crosses and following Jesus. We Lutherans have always called this a lifestyle of “daily repentance and renewal.” This is the content of the faith in Jesus that Peter, just a few verses before our gospel lesson, confessed: a faith that believes in Jesus as the King that makes all things right, the God Who opens up infinitely more than “we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20) to all who dare to surrender to Him.

And how can we know this is true?

That’s the question from the disciples that Jesus seems to anticipate in the last verse of our lesson.

“Truly I tell you,” He says. “some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Is that true?

Did the disciples see the coming of Jesus’ kingdom?

I mean, didn’t Jesus teach us to pray, “Thy kingdom come”?

The first disciples did see the kingdom of God come when Jesus rose from the dead, “the firstborn of the dead” as the New Testament calls Jesus (Colossians 1:18; Revelation 1:5) and the “pioneer and perfecter of faith” as He’s called in Hebrews 12:2. The disciples saw the kingdom of God when they saw the King after He had died and risen.

And we see--we experience--this kingdom when we too, take up our cross and follow Jesus.

May that be how we live.

How we die.

And, by the grace God bears for all who trust in Christ, may it also be how we will all rise again.

Amen

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

What is Abundance?

Most days, I have a quiet time with God, a time when I consider God's Word and ask Him to reveal the truth He wants me to see in it for that particular day. To see how I approach quiet time, read here.

Look: “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” (2 Corinthians 9:6-8)

Paul continues here to write to the relatively wealthy Gentile congregation in Corinth about an offering they had once pledged to give for the relief of Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. The latter were impoverished and struggling.

On first blush, one might think that what Paul writes in chapter 9 of 2 Corinthians supports the “prosperity gospel,” which is no gospel but a heresy and is popular these days. NOT AT ALL.

Paul is NOT saying, as the proponents of the heresy say, that if you give a lot, God will make you wealthy. Jesus gave and He wasn’t wealthy. Paul gave and he wasn’t wealthy. Peter gave up what was likely a lucrative business in order to follow Jesus. So did Matthew.

Following Jesus, believing in Jesus, is no guarantee of wealth. The God we meet in Jesus makes no deals for His mercy or His grace. Both are things that He gives to us.

So what is the promise of God to “cheerful givers” (in the Greek in which Paul composed this letter, the phrase is “hilarious giver) that Paul offers here?

Listen: The pertinent passage is verse 8. Paul says: “And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”

The verse is bracketed by abundantly and abound. This English rendering from Paul’s Greek is accurate. In both instances, the root word is περισσεύω, perisseuo, meaning literally, according to Strong’s concordance, to be over and above, to exceed the ordinary.

The double use of that term, appearing near the beginning and near the end of the verse forms what the scholars call an inclusio (or inclusion). It tells us, if it wasn’t clear enough on the face of it, that the verse deals with the subject of abundance.

The verse gives God’s understanding, the Bible’s understanding of abundance, though.

This understanding of abundance doesn’t mean that you won’t sweat out paying the mortgage some months.

It doesn’t mean that you’ll have the nicest car or bling.

It doesn’t mean that care and struggle with finances will necessarily go away.

Some believers in the God we know in Jesus will be entrusted with wealth. Abraham was wealthy. So were Joseph of Arimathea and Lydia of Thyatira. But some have been poor. Joseph and Mary were poor. So were others already named, including God in the flesh Himself, Jesus.

Some believers in the God we know in Jesus are gifted with a capacity for generating greater wealth or have inherited it.

But with greater wealth comes greater obligations (Matthew 25:24-27).

It also present greater spiritual danger. When Jesus encountered a wealthy man who asked what “good thing” he needed to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus saw straight through the man. (The question itself was all wrong. The rich man wanted to know what he good work he needed to do to gain eternal life. But no good work, not even making big donations, will gain eternal life for us. We are saved by God’s grace through our faith in, our trusting surrender to, Jesus alone.)

Jesus understood that this man’s wealth was his idol. Wealth was a spiritual danger to him. Wealth deluded him into thinking that he had control of everything, even his own salvation. The rich man did many right things, but in his heart, he worshiped money, not God. Radical surgery was necessary.

When Jesus told the man that the only way he could get free of the idol he worshiped and get with God, was to sell off everything he owned, give the proceeds to the poor, and follow Him, the rich man walked away sorrowful. He was sorrowful because he knew that he would never have eternal life; his money was too important to him, more important than God.

This gave rise to Jesus telling the disciples: “I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:16-24)

Wealth might not be the idol or impediment for everyone that it was for that man. But Jesus’ words are a solemn warning against taking anything as our god but the one true God revealed to all the world in Jesus Himself. He’s the only One Who can give us life with God.

This kind of talk is anathema to the advocates of the “prosperity gospel.” They think that following Jesus is a matter of making deals with God: They will follow Jesus and He will put them on easy street. No financial worries. No sickness or disease. No hard times. But one look at the faithful Christians we have known in life will tell you that such immature heresies are all cow pie!

Jesus never promises that following Him will ease the financial strains--or any other stains--of this life. “In this world you will have trouble,” He says truthfully. “But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

And Paul warns Christians elsewhere: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19)

That’s why what Paul says in this verse is so important. He tells those who have made up their minds to give cheerfully, not under compulsion, but as a joyful response to the undeserved grace God gives to those who turn from sin and follow Jesus:

“And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”

To be blessed abundantly by God because we divest our idolatrous attachment to money doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to be wealthy. But it does mean two other things:

“...that in all things at all times 

1. We will have all that we need. This is what Jesus calls “our daily bread,” what we need. 

2. We will abound in every good work. In other words, when we give to cause of God in the world, when we PUT GOD FIRST--loving God, loving our neighbors, making disciples, God will magnify our giving and living so that it glorifies God and points others to Christ.

We will have what we need. And what we give, whatever we give--our time, possessions, money, service--will contribute the growth of God’s kingdom. We will be empowered to use our lives and all of our gifts for the purposes for which God gave us life in the first place and for which He gives new, everlasting life through Jesus to all who trust in Christ. THIS IS WHAT IT MEANS TO LIVE AN ABUNDANT CHRISTIAN LIFE.

How do I know that this is what Paul has in mind when he wrote this verse?

In the previous chapter, when he begins this appeal to the Corinthian Christians to follow through on their public pledge to help the Jerusalem Christians, Paul mentions an incident when ancient Israel, having been freed from slavery in Egypt and heading for the promised land that God would show them, was in the wilderness. They had no food. But God daily provided them with something called manna, an edible substance like bread.

Exodus 16:1-36 tells about this incident. When God provided it, He told Moses that the people were to collect the manna when it appeared on six days of the week. On the sixth day, they would be enabled to collect more than they needed for that day, double the usual amount, in fact; the people were to prepare all of the manna to eat and not collect on the seventh day, the sabbath, a day of rest. They were all to collect the same amount, an omer. When they measured what everyone had collected, from the oldest to the youngest, “Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.”

(Some got greedy for the world’s version of “abundance” and went out collecting the manna on the seventh day. They trusted this stuff that they could see, touch, and eat, more than they trusted God. Even though God was the One Who had given it to them!)

Paul references this entire incident in 2 Corinthians 8, writing to a church that may be thinking that if they give away money, there will be less abundance for them:

“At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, as it is written: ‘The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.’” (2 Corinthians 8:14-15)

Paul’s picture of abundance then, is the same as that of Jesus, Who taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

I love how Martin Luther explains this petition of the Lord’s Prayer in The Small Catechism:

God indeed gives daily bread to all, even unbelievers, without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that he would help us to recognize this so that we would receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.

And then, Luther tackles the question of what is meant by daily bread:

Daily bread includes everything required to meet our earthly needs, such as food, drink, clothing, home, property, employment, necessities; devout parents, children, and communities; honest and faithful authorities, good government, seasonable weather, peace, health, an orderly society, a good reputation, true friends and neighbors, and the like.

In Biblical terms ABUNDANCE=DAILY BREAD.

And where it’s lacking, it isn’t due to a deficiency in God’s creation, but a deficiency in His creatures, His human creatures, the ones intended to be Creation’s caretakers, the ones made in the image of God whose fall into sin impacted the entire Creation over which it was to have dominion.

It’s the condition of sin with which the whole human race is afflicted at birth and from which only Christ can free us--and then only fully in eternity--that lay behind so many people getting their daily bread from God.

Famine and starvation, for example, are problems rooted in human sin. If those who have shared with those who haven’t more completely, including sharing technologies, no one on earth would go hungry.

Wars are the result of the human unwillingness to give a little.

It should also be evident that even many natural disasters are either the result of or are exacerbated by human sin. Climate change, which made the recent horrors brought to Texas by Hurricane Harvey worse, all the result of the hellish pursuit of more and of conspicuous consumption. Bad weather itself results from human sin, since the whole universe has been screwed up by the fall of the species who were meant to take care of it.  

In Romans 8:22, Paul writes that, “...the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time,” awaiting the final consummation of God’s plans in Christ. Christ will return, the old creation will be no more and the new creation--of which those who follow Jesus in this imperfect world are the “early adopters” who will populate the new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17)--will be brought in its fullness for all who have loved Christ’s appearing (2 Timothy 4:8).

Whether I am wealthy, poor, or of the middle class, I must not be dazzled by the finite wealth of this dying world!

I must use whatever wealth I possess not just for my own daily bread, but with gratitude to God for Christ’s cross and empty tomb and all the promises I have as I follow Him, learn to give. This is how the abundant life is lived.

Respond: Lord, in Your Word, You declare, “...my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8). And sometimes, as one of Your departed saints, Rich Mullins, wrote, You are “hard to get.” But, Lord, help me to live the abundant life You have in mind for me and all of Your people, a life of usefulness and gratitude, of giving what I can from whatever means I have. Help me to be grateful for my daily bread and not to covet what others have. And where others lack daily bread, help me to do what I can to see that they have it. In Jesus’ name.

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

Reading

"If you ever get down about American culture, you might like to remember that there are still more public libraries in this country than there are Starbucks." (David McCullough, this morning at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., aired on CSPAN.)

That is a comforting thought. Reading, widely, is a bulwark of American democracy. The only people who can keep democracy are those who read.

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

A good warning from Carolyn Arends...

...about how we can turn our pursuit of a spiritual life, a life with God, into the pursuit of being in control.

It’s astonishing how quickly a hunger and thirst for righteousness can distort into something like spiritual ambition. It’s sobering how often spiritual disciplines can be downgraded—from practices of friendship with the triune God into techniques for self-improvement. And it’s painful to discover a longing for a rightly ordered life might just be a spiritualization of the prideful desire to have it all together.

Read the whole thing.

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

Just a thought

Good leaders have soft hearts, open minds, and tough skins.

In This Moment

Most days, I begin my day in quiet time with God. To see how I approach these special times, go here. Here's what I journaled from today's quiet time:

Look: “...Last year you were the first not only to give but also to have the desire to do so. Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means. For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have.” (2 Corinthians 8:10-12)

Economic calamity had come to the Christians living in Jerusalem. One year before Paul wrote the letter from which the verses above come, the Christians in Corinth to whom he’s writing had expressed the desire to provide their fellow Christians with some relief. But they hadn’t followed through. Paul urges them to do so, using the example of the impoverished Macedonian Christians as examples and prods; the Macedonians had, despite being poor, begged Paul for the chance to help those in Jerusalem.

Then, Paul seems to say, “Look, if you Corinthian Christians feel that you don’t have enough to make the kinds of offerings you want to make or once intended to make, don’t let that stop you from giving. God regards gifts acceptable according to the giver’s capacity for giving.”

Listen: This has broader application to more than giving financially in response to what Jesus Christ has done for me. It applies to my whole life as Jesus’ disciple.

I tend to look for the perfect time to share Christ, to ask people if they would like to pray, to help someone, to call a friend or family member.

In other words, I put off being a faithful Christian until I can find the right time to do it. I do this as though whatever I do has to be perfect: the perfect offering, the perfect invitation, the perfect prayer, the perfect meeting, the perfect telephone call. In this, as in so much in life, the biggest cause of procrastination is perfectionism.

The Corinthians, instead of giving as they said they wanted, procrastinated. Was it because they regretted the offer they’d made of offerings? Was it because they had overestimated their capacity to give? We don’t know. But Paul says, “...if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one doesn’t have.”

I’ve told many people this before, but it’s true: God will never hold us accountable for not using the gifts and blessings He didn’t give to us; God only holds us accountable for failing to use the gifts and blessings that He has given to us.

If I’m not a millionaire and I’m waiting to be generous until I am, I will never be generous. I’ll do nothing useful with my money. Instead, I should be generous with what I have.

If I don’t have the particular gift of evangelism, I still can share Christ with someone else in my own way.

If I feel called to pray with someone and ignore the call, that’s what I will be held accountable for.

If I feel that the time and conditions have to be perfect for me to do what God has called me to do, I’m too focused on my times, my conditions, on what I lack. I’m more focused on me than I am on God.

That isn’t faithful. God calls me to be faithful with whatever time, whatever money, whatever relationships, whatever knowledge, whatever experiences, I have at any given time.

My call is to be faithful to God, trusting in His capacity to make more of what I bring to any call or situation than what I possess on my own. This is the God Who created the universe from nothing (ex nihilo, as the theologians put it). So, He is perfectly capable of making something good of my little capacity if I will just trustingly do what He calls me to do.

I need to quit putting off being faithful in this moment and under these circumstances.

This reminds me of a favorite quote: “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” This isn’t saying we should do shabby work or give God our leftovers. It’s saying that the best time to be faithful to God isn’t in some perfect future that will never arrive on this earth, but right now.

That, I think, is Paul’s message to the Corinthian Christians and to me. I’m accountable to God now. I have the opportunity to serve God and to serve others now. And whatever I’m able and feel called to do right now will be acceptable to God.

Respond: God, free of me unreasonable expectations of myself. Let me live in the comforting, empowering reality of Your grace given through Christ right now. And help me not to put off what faithfulness I can live out today until a tomorrow which may never come. Whether it’s my time, money, talents, spiritual gifts, or opportunities, even if I see them as negligible or insignificant, help me not to squander the chance to use them for Your glory today. In Jesus’ name I pray.

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

How we can help the victims of Hurricane Harvey

For the disciples of Jesus who make up Living Water Lutheran Church (and anyone else who might be interested):

How can we help the victims of Hurricane Harvey?

The North American Lutheran Church (NALC) disaster response team is already on the job. A shipment of items from our denomination’s went from our Caldwell, Ohio warehouse yesterday. Items included were flood buckets, cleaning supplies, bottled water, and other emergency supplies.

If you would like to donate money to the NALC disaster relief efforts or make a flood bucket or provide other items, go here to learn how you can connect online.

If you’d rather donate money through Living Water, we will be receiving special offerings for Harvey Relief during worship for the next two Sundays, September 3 and September 10. Make checks payable to Living Water Lutheran Church and write NALC Disaster Relief or NALC Harvey Relief on the MEMO line.

Most important of all, please pray for the victims of this historically severe storm. Ask God to bring them safety, relief, and encouragement. Pray for the safety and inspiration of rescue teams. Pray similarly for those neighbors in Texas who are joining first responders and others in rescuing people from waters that continue to rise. And please pray that God will use this event to draw people to the God we know in Jesus Christ. He is our only true refuge and help. Thanks and God bless you!

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

An Anniversary Forgotten

The media are full of Princess Diana stories in anticipation of the twentieth anniversary of her death, which occurs on August 31. I understand that the Royals make for big ratings, lots of internet hits, and ad revenue.

But I'd like to point out that five days after Diana died in 1997, so did a woman who had a sustained and positive impact on the life of the world, who was more than a symbol, but someone who fought to save lives, whether those of the dying beggars of Calcutta or children not yet born, and whose struggle to remain faithful to God makes her a true hero: Mother Teresa.

I know that she wasn't wealthy or young, didn't wear expensive designer clothes, and hadn't been through a spectacular divorce from the future figurehead king of a country. But it seems to me that Mother Teresa's death and life are worthy of at least as much attention and remembrance as are being given to Diana.

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

My Dad, the Romantic

I spoke on the phone with my dad on Monday night. He mentioned that he was watching 'You've Got Mail,' which is one of my favorite movies. As we were talking, dad said things like, "Oh, here's the scene where the elevator gets stuck." And we would talk about the scene.

A bit later, after I'd did an online order for film for dad to use during his upcoming honor flight, he said, "Here's the part where she's got a cold and he comes to visit her at her apartment." "Yeah," I said, "and she's baffled because she can't imagine how he can be a nice guy." "Right."

We talked about how 'You've Got Mail' was a kind of remake of 'Shop Around the Corner,' the 1940 film with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. Dad said, "That one's not as good as this one. It was good for its time. But I like this one better."*

I said something about how much I enjoyed the music and dad said, "Oh, yeah, it's good, really good." That wowed me a bit because it features music by the late Harry Nilsson, who's always been one of my favorites and more of my generation.

We talked some more and, as I prepared to sign off, I apologized for interrupting the movie. "That's OK, Bub," he said, "I practically know it by heart." I thought: I do too.

I had no idea my dad loved that movie as much as I do. In the grand scheme of things, it's just a little surprise, but a nice one. Here I thought I was the only man in the world who liked what some might call chick flicks, romances. My dad does too...he's a romantic, like me. My old man, he's OK.

*One point of disagreement I have with my dad is about the relative merits of the two films. I love them both and couldn't choose which one I like more.

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

Using Your Spiritual Gift

[This message was shared during both worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio yesterday.]

Romans 11:33-12:8

What do you think of when you hear the term, spiritual gifts?

As a pastor, I’ve sometimes had conversations like this with Christians. “I wish I knew what my spiritual gift was; I don't think I have one” they say, usually at the door from the sanctuary after I've preached about spiritual gifts.

“You know,” I tell them, “the New Testament says that all baptized believers in Jesus have at least one spiritual gift. You’re a baptized believer in Jesus, right?”

“Yes,” they say, “but I don’t think that I have a spiritual gift. Maybe I’m not a good enough Christian.”

And usually before I can continue the conversation, they’re gone.

Now, I have a sneaking suspicion that at least some of the people with whom I’ve had that conversation over the years were really dodging something.

Most church members in today’s world have little interest in being disciples. In fact, some appear to have a deathly allergy to following Jesus with day-in, day-out devotion.

Discipleship entails something people hate these days: commitment.

The only clubs we’re apt to join are retail warehouses like Sam’s Club or Costco.

We shy away from commitments to employees, employers, marriage partners, family members, friends, neighbors, or the Church.

I suspect then that many Christians who claim not to have a spiritual gift, even though God’s Word insists that they do, are basically saying, “I only want Jesus as heavenly fire insurance; the flames of hell don’t appeal to me. But I don’t want to get involved with the Church or finding my spiritual gifts. If I did that, it might change the way I live my life. And, really, my life is way too busy right now for me to add the complication of discipleship or being accountable to God or the Church for whatever spiritual gift God may or may not have given to me. I don’t have a spiritual gift. Now, I’m off for lunch and the game.”

In today’s Gospel lesson, Peter confessed that Jesus was and is the Son of God--that phrase meaning that Jesus is God--and the long-awaited Messiah, God’s anointed King. In subsequent verses of Matthew and in the other gospels, we see that Simon Peter, whose nickname of Peter, petros, given to him by Jesus, means Rock, was about as dumb as a rock when it came to understanding all that his confession of Jesus meant.

But as clueless as Peter was before Jesus died and rose, do you imagine for one moment that he thought that faith in Jesus didn’t mean changing the way he lived and thought? 

To follow Jesus as a disciple is to submit to a process of continual change. 

And, if we honestly survey our lives, we must readily confess that there are lots of changes to be made! 

Every Christian needs, at some time, to deal with an important question: If Jesus died and rose to give all who turn from sin and believe in Him new life, how do we dare not put our whole lives at His disposal to heed His call as His disciples?

All Christians are called to believe in Jesus, to live in daily repentance and renewal, to seek, in the power of God’s Holy Spirit, to love God and to love neighbor and to make disciples.

But the spiritual gifts our second lesson addresses today are God’s imprint on your life as a disciple. Spiritual gifts are the topic of the middle part of today’s second lesson.

Take a look, please, at Romans 12:3-8.

“For by the grace given me I say to every one of you,” Paul writes in verse 3. “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.”

Disciples saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ are enabled to look at themselves with clear-eyed judgment. They don’t affect a false humility. And they don’t see themselves through the prism of self-righteousness, either. God helps us to see ourselves as we are: Sinners saved by grace, loved by God, still evidencing imperfection, but given a particular design for serving in God’s kingdom as saved and confident children of God.

Whatever the maturity of our faith, Paul is saying, God will help us to see exactly what we need to see when it comes to our role in His Church at any given time.

Read on, please: “For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”

Listen: Christianity has nothing to do with the rugged individualism our culture so often celebrates.

It’s not us against the world.

It’s not even God and us against the world.

For the Christian, it’s we believers in Jesus in the world, together, praying for each other, encouraging each other, being accountable to each other, growing together, each of us parts of one single body, the Body of Christ.

The Church is not meant to be an association of individuals who show up for weekly Sunday worship 1.3-times a month (the current average attendance record of North American Christians); the Church is a mosaic God is fashioning into a single, eternal organism with one purpose--to be and make disciples--by reaching up to God, reaching into one another, reaching out to others to make disciples and serve neighbor.

Each of we believers in Christ belong to God and to each other.

When any of us who are part of Christ’s Church neglect the unique role God has given to us in the congregational fellowship, that fellowship is less than what God intends for it to be, for its members and for the world He calls us to reach for Him.

When each of us who are part of the Church fulfill our unique roles as the Body of Christ, the Church is whole, able to be and do all that God has called us to be and do, both as individuals and as the Church.

To put it simply: We need each other. When we hold back from using our gifts for the good of the Church and its witness to the world, the Church itself isn't fully alive to all that God calls it to be.

When we’re all in, we’re all alive.

Verse 6: “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.” In other words, every Christian has a spiritual gift.

Paul goes on to talk about seven spiritual gifts, “If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.”

Do you know what Paul is saying in a nutshell? You have at least one spiritual gift from God, use it. To paraphrase Nike, “Just do it!”

“But what’s my gift?” you might be wanting to scream right now. Let me give you a few “field-tested” ways of finding your gifts.

First, try to participate in a ministry of the congregation. If it works, it might express some aspect of your spiritual giftedness. If it doesn’t, move on to try something else.

Some of you have heard me tell how at the church I served in Cincinnati, I got behind a local chapter of Habitat for Humanity in a big way. I encouraged our folks to help build a home in New Richmond. I felt that I needed to lead by example. So, I showed up, along with about fifteen of our folks each Saturday morning to help out.

Finally, one Saturday, a member of our congregation, Steve, pulled me aside and said, very lovingly, “Look, Mark, we all have our gifts. This isn’t yours. Please don’t come back or you’re liable to get yourself or someone else killed.” I knew that construction work didn't express any spiritual gift I had.

Second, and this was exemplified in my interaction with Steve, listen to the feedback of other committed Christians.

“Do I have the gift of leadership?” a man asked a pastor. “The easiest way to make a determination on that,” the pastor said, “is to turn around and see if anyone’s following.” The man said that no one seemed to follow him and was a bit disappointed.

That’s understandable; we all like to think of ourselves as the general not the buck private. But our spiritual gifts don’t make us any more or less important to God or the Church; they simply give us the tools to do the specific calls God gives to us within the Church.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:24: “...God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it…”

I think that we’re all going to be surprised when we believers in Jesus arrive at the heavenly banquet after we’ve risen from the dead to see how many unassuming people with gifts like servanthood are sitting at the dais, while the preachers who strove to exercise gifts like teaching, leadership, and shepherding are sitting in the very back, just inside the door.

All who believe in Jesus will be there of course, saved by God’s amazing grace. But, as Jesus says “...the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Matthew 20:16)

So, to find your gift, first, participate in a ministry and find out if it fits and second, listen to what other Christians tell you. Third, pray and really ponder God’s Word.

I began to suspect I had the gift of teaching when, as I considered the words of Bible, I found myself standing up, pacing around, struggling to find ways to teach others what God was teaching me in His Word.

I never wanted to be a pastor. Never. In fact, when I was growing up, my grandfather, to whom I was close, always warned me to stay away from pastors. "They're all lazy," he told me. "They work one day a week and then want to take your money for it." He told me about pastors he'd known who he said had basically run easy money-making rackets, but really didn't care about God or people.

So, I really didn't want to be a pastor. I had other plans.

But, increasingly, I sensed God telling me--and mature Christians were confirming--“This is My gift to you. This is your calling. This is what I made you for. This is your obligation to Me and to the Church.”

I tried to say, “No.” But God would not let me go.

When I finally bowed to God’s will and recognized the gift that He was giving to me for the good of Christ’s Church, I felt a great burden lifted from me. I told a friend, who was also wrestling with his place in God's kingdom, “It’s like a boulder’s been taken from my shoulder.” I felt that way even though I was working two jobs in order to go to school and support our household. I remember one night being in the stock room of Sears, where I'd taken a part-time job and just praying, "Thank You, God" for finally showing me how He wanted me to use my gifts to His glory!

Look: It isn’t just preachers who are given gifts or calls from God. As a baptized believer in Christ, you’re part of Christ’s body, the Church. You have an indispensable gift and calling from God. God has given you your gifts and your life experiences to be used by God in the ministries of the Church in this time, in this place, in this congregation. Truly, if you don't exercise your spiritual gifts, the special calling God has just for you will not get done. And that would be tragic!

So, please, if you feel that don’t have a gift or have never sought to find it, begin praying today that God will help you find your gift. Risk failure by trying a ministry in which you’ve not been involved before. Listen to the wisdom of fellow Christians. Pray and ponder God’s Word.

Your spiritual gift given to you by God, for the good of the Church and the glory of God, is just waiting to be unwrapped. Amen

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