Help Me, God, Not to Forget You!

This is the journal entry for my quiet time with God this morning. To see how I approach quiet time, which I learned from the Navigators, see here.

Look: “And he said to them, ‘Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?’ And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them.” (Luke 2:49-50, ESV)

When Jesus was twelve, He went with His extended family from Nazareth to Jerusalem for the Passover. This was a yearly pilgrimage.

The Passover ended, the Nazareth contingent packed up and headed for home. But Mary and Joseph, having assumed that Jesus was with other members of their family, discovered one day into the trip that Jesus wasn’t among them. The went back to Jerusalem, where they spent three days looking before they stumbled on Him in the temple.

There’s a note of chastisement in Mary’s words to Jesus at the moment she and Joseph find Jesus: “Son, why have you treated us so? [she asks] Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” (Luke 2:48)

Mary’s concern is understandable. But her concern for Jesus quickly gives way to concern for herself (and for Joseph). Jesus, she says, has caused the two of them “great distress.”

Jesus’ response foreshadows the one He would have to the distress the disciples exhibited when they were caught in a storm on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus asleep in the stern: “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” He asks the fishermen. (Mark 4:40)

The twelve-year-old Jesus is mystified that Mary and Joseph would have spent so much time frantically looking for Him when it should have been obvious to them where He would be: in His Father’s house, the house of God the Father.

But it wasn’t obvious to Mary and Joseph: “And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them.”

I read those words and am tempted to laugh at Joseph and Mary. I mean, they were both told fairly emphatically by the witness of angels and circumstances and the Word of Old Testament Scripture that their Child wasn’t really their Child: He was God in the flesh, the Messiah, the Christ.

Yet, they seem to have completely forgotten Who Jesus was or their role in the drama of God saving all who trust in Jesus as their Savior and King. Mary had once exalted God for regarding her as worthy to play her small part in God’s salvation plan, bearing and nurturing from infancy God the Son as He made His journey from manger to cross to empty tomb (Luke 1:46-55).

But, in the course of twelve years, she seems to have come to see Jesus as her kid, like all the other children to whom she’d given birth. The others came about by the usual means. But this Child, she seems to have forgotten, was conceived in her womb by the Holy Spirit before she had ever had sex.

Listen: When you get involved in everyday life, it gets easy to forget God.

We take our blessings for granted.

We take our role in God’s plans and God’s kingdom for granted.

We turn ourselves into the subjects of our lives’ stories, forgetting that we’re objects loved by the One Who gives us life, gives us life made eternally new and makes this earthly life worth living.

We get caught up in ourselves and our daily to-do lists.

I find myself easily drifting into this mindset and the resulting behavior all the time.

After I had the heart attack seven years ago, it was clear that God had intervened to spare me.

“You shouldn’t even be here,” more than one cardiac care nurse told me.

“I can’t explain why you had the heart attack and I can’t explain why you survived it,” my able cardiologist told me.

“You must still be here for a reason,” my GP told me.

“Yes,” I thought. “They’re right. I’m just me. But there must be a reason God has spared my life.”

So, I set out to get into the best physical shape of my life. I ate right and lost weight.

I resumed my role as a pastor with a renewed sense of call and devotion to being a faithful minister of Word and Sacrament with a passion for reaching those who don’t know life with God with the good news of eternal renewal and freedom from sin and death for all who believe in the crucified and risen Jesus.

But some days, I forget.

I eat too much.

I eat too much of what I shouldn’t eat.

I fail to pray for or use opportunities to share the gospel with the spiritually disconnected people I encounter every day.

I get lulled into spending less time in God’s Word and less time in prayer in Jesus’ name than I need to if I really want to bear good fruit for the God I know in Jesus, if I want my life to glorify the God Who saved me in a cardiac cath lab and more importantly, saved me on a cross..

I waste minutes and hours and I waste the salvaged body that God has given to me for His purposes, by pursuing trivial ends.

Yet I know for sure that it's only in pursuing God’s purpose for my life that I lead a purposeful existence.

It’s way too easy for me to get distracted, which I’m sure breaks God’s heart and delights the devil.

But God also understands my (our) penchant for forgetfulness about Him. It’s why He commanded ancient Israel to constantly remind themselves of Who they were and Whose they were. Speaking of His Torah, His commands, God told Israel: “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:6-8)

Ancient Israel was told to constantly remind themselves and each other of God’s undeserved grace: how God had made Him His own people, a light to the nations, not because of the people’s goodness, but because of God’s goodness; how God had delivered the people from 430 years of slavery in Egypt not because of their goodness, but because of God’s goodness; how God intended to use His people to bring His saving good news--in Jesus--to all the world; how God stood (and stands) by those who believe when they (we) go through dark, painful, or tragic times; and how God, out of concern for the well-being of His people, had given them the Torah, the law, the way, His commandments, to show them the best way to live their lives in grateful response to His undeserved grace.

The Old Testament shows the sorry history of how ancient Israel forgot God until it lost its land and, once more, became wanderers without a home.  

Respond: Help me, Lord, not to forget. Help me to remember this day how much you love me, how much you have done for me, how much you love all my neighbors, and how you have deputized me as your baptized disciple to share the good news of new life for all who turn from sin and surrender to Jesus.

Give me the chance to share Your gospel with a spiritually disconnected person today.

Help me to take the time to pray for the needs of the whole world and get my focus off of me, onto You and Your purposes.

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Psychopath Capital of America?

Ryan Murphy, a Southern Methodist University economist, recently set out to determine which state, (including Washington, D.C. as a fifty-first locale) is the "psychopath capital of America."

His study used what is called "the big five" major personality traits as evidenced in people's actions.

According to Dictionary.com, a psychopath is "a person with a psychopathic personality, which manifests as amoral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn from experience, etc."

Murphy's study says that Washington, D.C. is America's most psychopathic place. One of the big reasons for this, per an article from Politico, is that the denser a population (denser as in more people per square mile, not denser as in thick-headed), the more psychopaths there tend to be. It's a simple matter of demographic odds.

But, Politico also points out that wherever there are more people deemed "successful," inevitably there will also be a higher number of people with psychopathic tendencies...you know, the kind of person who would walk all over their grandmother to get what they want.

D.C. must have a lot of grandmother-stompers, because Murphy's study says that it has twice the psychopathic rating as the next two states on the list, Connecticut, and California, combined.

Before any of us who live in flyover country start bragging about how nice we are, it should be pointed out that there's a tie for fifth in psychopathy between two states, New York and Wyoming.

The five least psychopathic states, according to Murphy, are West Virginia, Vermont, Tennessee, North Carolina and New Mexico.

I don't know if I buy all of this, although as a pastor through the years, I've observed that different communities have different prevailing personality traits and worldviews. Whether that bears a relationship to psychopathy, I wouldn't know.

But, speaking for myself, I like Washington, D.C., Connecticut, and California. And I love New York. Some of the friendliest and kindest people I've ever known were from these states. I've never been to Wyoming and spent little time in New Jersey, which also made the top five. But I'm sure that there are nice people there too.

But the Murphy study will give some people the fodder they need to criticize places and people they don't like.

By the way, Ohio is ranked the country's 21st. most psychopathic state, while Michigan comes in at 26th. Maybe Murphy's study is onto something. (Only a joke.)

To see, Murphy's paper, go here.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. I am a sinner saved by grace. I'm trying not to be a psychopath.]

We Can't. God Can!

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

Mark 4:35-41

In today’s Gospel lesson (and really in all our Bible lessons for today as well), Jesus confronts us with a simple question: Do we want Him or do we want to be comfortable? Do we want the God we meet in Jesus Christ or do we want easy trouble-free lives?

Some of the religious hucksters on TV sell a brand of Christianity that tells us if we believe in Jesus and stay positive, we’ll be flush with cash, healthy, and successful. The problem, of course, is that Jesus never promises any of this to those who follow Him. 

Jesus does promise wonderful things. 

He promises that when we repent and believe, we will be part of the Kingdom of God. 

He promises that when we trust in Him as the only Son of God and the only way to reconciliation to God, we will have everlasting life with God. 

Believers in Jesus know that we have the presence and guidance of God with us in this life. He will give weary souls rest. He will be with His people always, even to the close of the age. 

Christ’s people have the hope of the life for which we are made--a life which at present we can only see as through a mirror dimly, a resurrected life in which tears are dried, bodies restored, work is meaningful, and joy is complete.

But not once does the God we know in Jesus Christ promise that following Him will make us comfortable in this world. 

Not once does he say that turning from our favorite sins to follow Him will go without a hitch. 

Not once does He say that decisions will be easy. 

Not once does He say problems will go away. 

Not once does He say that the life of discipleship--of following Him, of sacrificing ourselves and our own comfort out of love and worship for God and out of love for neighbors will be easy. 

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

Our first lesson for today comes to us from the Old Testament book of Job. It’s thought to be the oldest book in the Bible. In it, Job, a man who strives to follow God, who repents not only for his own sins, but also those of his children, is struck down by some of the horrors that this world can bring. All his property and livestock are destroyed. All his children are killed. He is stricken with a horrible disease. Job had worshiped God and played by the rules. But in one fell swoop, his world was decimated. Following God had not brought Job a comfortable life.

Job's friends try to tell him that had he been more faithful, these bad things wouldn’t have come to him. He insists he doesn’t deserve his suffering and angrily challenges God to explain Himself. At the end of the book, God chastises Job’s so-called friends. 

Faith in God isn’t a pass to easy street and Job’s distress wasn’t caused by Job being sinful. 

But, as we can see from our first lesson, neither does God explain Job’s suffering. Job suffered in spite of being a follower of God because we live in a fallen world in which bad things happen even to faithful people.

In our second lesson, written in about 55 AD, the apostle Paul recounts some of the sufferings he underwent because he followed and proclaimed the crucified and risen Jesus. Paul said that he and his ministry team commended themselves to people in the church at Corinth precisely because they had endured calamities for the sake of their faith in the God we know through Jesus. He then catalogs some of the horrible experiences he’d been through.

Believers in Jesus are called to keep following Jesus even when it’s inconvenient, painful, challenging, uncomfortable. 

When Christ commands sacrifice. 

When being faithful disciples of Jesus threatens our reputations, our financial security, our lives. 

Jesus calls us to choose between a life with Him, on the one hand, and a comfortable life, on the other.

He does this emphatically in our Gospel lesson, Mark 4:35-41. The incident narrated here comes right after Jesus gives a series of parables describing what the Kingdom of God, the kingdom He is going to die and rise to bring into being, is like. 

It all begins with a command from Jesus: “That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, ‘Let us go over to the other side.’ Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him.” 

Of course, when Jesus issued His command to the disciples, they probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Most of them were experienced fishermen accustomed to sailing the Galilean waters at night, as He was now commanding them to do at sundown. “Easy peasy,” they may have thought...only in Aramaic. 

Following Jesus may often seem easy peasy, a simple thing, comfortable. But we don’t know what storms may lay ahead.

You know what happens next. Verse 37: “A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?’”

We Christians ask a version of that question every time adversity strikes, every time Jesus calls us to do hard things we’d rather not do, uncomfortable things: confront a fellow believer with a hard truth; forgive someone who has hurt us; give sacrificially. “Lord,” we wonder, “don’t you care if we drown? Don’t you care if we lose our comfort? Don't you care if what you're calling me to do could result in killing my reputation, killing my investment portfolio, kill my health, kill me? Can’t you ask me to do something easier than surrender my whole life to You?” 

Jesus' answer to these questions, quite frankly, is, “No.” 

The God Who tells us that "whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it," the God Who went to a cross to bear our sins cares more about fitting our character for eternity than about our comfort in this death-bound world. 

He cares more about our learning to follow Him faithfully than He does about our ease. Our ease can come in eternity. For now, our call is to follow even in the darkest, most difficult times.

But Jesus doesn't leave us to wallow in the darkness of this world without hope.

Verse 39: “He [Jesus] got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’”

When storms come, we wonder how we can survive. We forget that nothing can separate those who trust in Jesus Christ from the love God gives through Jesus Christ. Nothing.

A young woman, a member of our church in Cincinnati, Karen, was dying. She and her husband had two young children. She gave her testimony of faith during worship one Sunday. This was in 1999. She talked about all the things she hoped to be able to see in this world: her children grown, the new millennium. She knew that she might not see any of these earthly hopes come into being. And it saddened her. She tried to understand. (I remember her telling me once as her battle with two forms of cancer went from bad to worse, "I just can't seem to catch a break.") 

Yet she also told us that she was confident that the Lord Who was leading her through her darkest valley would not only lead her to Himself, but also lead her children. She said that she knew that Christ's Church in which her children were baptized would faithfully share Christ with them, forge their characters by the power of the Holy Spirit, and help them to know the eternity of hope we have in Jesus Christ.

When she died, she left a number of us with notes. In the one she wrote for me, she detailed some of her desires for her funeral service. But I can also recite by heart how she ended the note: "Please tell people, Mark, that just because I have died it doesn't mean that their prayers didn't 'work.' Life is so much more than having a whole and healthy body here." Jesus carried her through the storms and assured her of life, peace, and wholeness beyond the gates of death.

After Jesus had sternly spoken to the disciples, they contemplated in awe-filled fear, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey Him?” 

The answer to those questions can be found all through the Scriptures. But I mention just two places in the Old Testament. 

• In Psalm 104:7, the psalmist confesses of God, “...at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight…” 
• Genesis 1:1 tells us that God the Holy Spirit moved over the waters of primordial chaos and brought into being peace, order, and life. 

The One Who calmed the storm that so frightened the experienced fishermen sailing with Jesus that night was and is God Himself.

Storms, challenges come and go in this life. Jesus will sometimes ask us to do things, to endure things, to sacrifice things, and to trust only in Him, none of which, in our own power, we are capable of doing. 

But, listen: Whenever we can’t, God can. 

And after the storm, the God we know in Jesus Christ still stands. And so do all who put their faith in Him. They’re the ones who prove to be more concerned with following Jesus than with being comfortable. I pray each day that God will forge me to be one of their number.

What storms are you going through today? 

What is Jesus asking you to do that you don’t believe can be done? 

Is there a comfortable sin for which you need to repent? 

Has a spirit of fear, or bitterness, of self-worship or self-loathing hijacked your life and carried you away from Jesus? 

Follow Jesus and let the One Who can still our storms see you through and set you free to be the joyous child of God you are meant to be. 

Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Call to a Reckless Life (AUDIO)

Here.

You'll notice that I diverged onto what I hope was a set of relevant tangents in the delivery of the prepared message. People tell me, "I love it when you go on tangents."

Hopefuly, they're Holy Spirit-inspired ones.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Call to Recklessness

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

Mark 4:26-34

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells two parables or stories about “the kingdom of God.” We’re going to focus today just on the first of these two parables of the kingdom.

The kingdom of God exists wherever the Holy Spirit empowers a person to believe in Jesus Christ as the only way to life with God and so, repents of sin and surrenders their whole life to Christ.

But we live in a fallen, sinful world. Sin exists within us and around us, which is why it’s so important for Christians to confess our sins, ask God’s help to resist the temptation to sin, and put our lives in the hands of Jesus every day. People tell me, “I don’t know if I’m good enough to go to heaven.” “That’s not the issue,” I tell them. “Jesus is good enough to get you and me and everyone who believes in Him into heaven.” 

And He’s good enough, perfect enough, sinless enough, to get us into His kingdom not just when we die, but right now as we trust in Him. 

Yet, given that sin has our world and often we ourselves by the throat, we may sometimes question whether the kingdom of God is present or if the world hasn't been completely overrun by evil.

In both parables today, Jesus encourages us not to give in to despair! 

The citizen of God’s kingdom has an eternity of hope. Evil is rampant in our world. Disrespect for God’s Name, thievery and murder of all kinds, injustice to the poor, sexual intimacy outside of marriage, reputation-damaging gossip, materialism, and all sorts of other sins fill our world, even the Church. Yet, the kingdom of God is still among us, still growing, and still able to usher into eternity with God anyone who dares to break with the world, repent of sin, and surrender to Jesus Christ.

Look please at Mark 4:26-29. Jesus says: “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.” 

Here, Jesus introduces us to a reckless farmer. He scatters seed. He doesn’t bother with things like watering, hoeing to remove weeds, or laying on manure. He scatters the seed and goes through his daily life. This man’s only job, apparently, is to scatter the seed and wait and presumably, pray.

Folks, that’s our job as Christians, too. 

The seed of God’s kingdom in this particular parable is our word--our witness--about the gospel. The gospel is God’s good news, which Jesus talks about in John 3:16: “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.” That’s the Gospel! 

Every person born to life on this planet is ticketed for separation from God and for hell. But because God loves us so much and wants us so much, He gave Jesus up to death on the cross. Everyone who believes in Him--everyone who trustingly gives their sins over to Jesus and entrusts their lives to Him--has what every human being was made for, eternal life with God. This happens through Jesus and only through Jesus. That is the good news of God’s kingdom. That’s the Gospel!

Today, Jesus scatters this good news through you and me, the people of His Church. We Christians are the farmers whose job it is to scatter the seed, telling others the good news about Jesus. 

Yet it seems that as we Christians interact with our spiritually-disconnected friends or fellow believers, we find it easier to scatter anything and everything but the gospel. 

That has tragic consequences. As we Christians fail to tell others the good news about Jesus, the world is walking away from God. 

And as we ourselves root our lives in money, status, and the pursuit of pleasure, much of the Church is walking away from God.

In Acts 1:8, the crucified and risen Jesus, just before He ascended into heaven, told His Church, you and me: “...you will be my witnesses...” 

If you’re a baptized believer in Jesus Christ, you are one of His witnesses, called to scatter the seed of the Gospel. 

But what if we fail to ever tell others about the Gospel? 

Imagine for a second that you’re a spectator at a murder trial, anxious to hear testimony and form your own opinion of the case based on the testimony of witnesses. What would happen if all the witnesses who could be enlightening or helpful, instead talked about the weather, their vacations, how desperately the Reds need pitching, or what they saw on Fox or MSNBC the night before, but never said a word about the case at hand. This is what would happen: You would be unable to make an informed decision. 

If we Christians, who have been called to be witnesses for Christ, fail to tell others about Christ, they are unable to make a judgment about whether to receive the new life in God’s kingdom that Jesus offers.

The stakes are high! Heaven or hell for all the people we may interact with in our lives depends on whether we Christians will be faithful witnesses for Christ or not! 

Look at what Jesus says in Mark 4:29, at the end of the first parable: “As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.” 

The “He” here is not the farmer who scatters the seed in the first few verses of the parable. Look, please, at Joel 3:13. The words from this Old Testament prophet’s book lay behind Jesus’ words to us today. It says: “Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, trample the grapes, for the winepress is full and the vats overflow—so great is their wickedness!” 

Both this passage from Joel and the words of Jesus in Mark 4:29, are about the ultimate judgment that will come to this world. The world will hurtle along from one evil day to the next. Those who refuse to repent and believe in Jesus will keep on sinning unrepentantly and never blink an eye. According to Jesus, there will even be unrepentant sinners in the Church, people who tell themselves and those who love them and challenge them, “I’m a good person. I do my best each day.” 

Listen: Our best won’t save us from ourselves and our sins. Only Jesus can do that. Suddenly, Jesus says, the days of the world moving from one evil day to the next will end. Then God will wield His sickle. Only the seeds that have borne grain--only those who believe in Jesus Christ--will rise again. This is why you and I, if we have compassion for other human beings, must get over our fears and ask the Holy Spirit to daily present us with opportunities to scatter the seed of the gospel.

But how do we find ways to scatter the seed of the gospel so that others can come to eternal life with God? Here are a few steps you can take toward being a faithful witness for Christ.

First: Maintain intimacy with Christ. Use what we Lutherans call "the means of grace," the routes God takes to fill us with faith, to give you a closer walk with Jesus Christ. These include worship, Holy Communion, and God's Word, in which we need to immerse ourselves. They also include quiet time spent in prayer, conversation with the Lord rooted in His Word. A Living Water disciple told me recently, “Quiet time has become a wonderful part of my life.” Through each of these means, Christ draws us closer to Himself and fills us with Himself! We can’t share what we don’t have. We can’t share a relationship with Christ unless we ourselves have it to give. As we cultivate intimacy with Christ, we will have good news to share with others!

Second: Live in daily repentance and renewal. Repentance is changing our minds about our sins and turning to God for the forgiveness He offers through Christ. When others see the evidence that we are imperfect people who seek each day to orient our lives to the will of God, it will enhance the credibility of our witness for Christ. People will want the Savior we follow.

Third: Be intentional about forming friendships with spiritually-disconnected people. Jesus was always reaching out to unbelieving people. Be sure as you form such friendships, you maintain strong friendships with God and with fellow believers with whom you study Scripture, pray, and maintain accountability. Without this anchor of faith and love, you could be lured away from Christ yourself.

Fourth: Remember your own story. It’s the true story of how Christ daily impacts your life that will give you the “street cred” to scatter the seeds of the gospel among the people you know and meet.

Fifth: Be kind. Romans 2:4 says that the kindness of God is given in order to lead us (and others) to repentance. Start with kindness. God has been kind to us! Although we deserve death and condemnation, He has patiently given us time to become acquainted with His Son, repent for our sins, and believe in Jesus. I’ve never understood how people who know that they have been saved by God through faith in Christ, and not by their own goodness, could dare to be unkind to others. Being kind means being kind to people we don’t know and patient with our disbelieving friends. We need to give them the time and space to experience God's love so that God can give growth and maturity to the seeds we scatter, so that they can believe in Jesus and grow as His children too.

When the kingdom of God that Jesus came into the world to bring takes hold in a person’s life, it brings comfort, hope, and peace in the midst of even the most difficult moments in this life and unfettered peace in eternity after we, like our Lord Jesus, have risen from the dead and are in the presence of our Father. May God use us to share His kingdom--to recklessly scatter the seeds of the Gospel--with everyone we know. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]