The Places God Shows Up (AUDIO)

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

The Places God Shows Up

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio on Sunday, July 8, 2018.]

2 Corinthians 12:2-10

A friend of mine worked in a foundry where engine blocks for many makes and models of cars and trucks were made. He worked on a  production line. He used to tell me about a guy on his line who got on everyone’s nerves. He was one of those annoying Christians who, no matter what, had all his (and everyone else's) problems solved. According to my friend, a guy might say, “Man, it was so hot last night, I couldn’t sleep.” Mr. Super Christian would say, “Yeah, before I got saved, I couldn’t sleep.” Another might say, “My kid came in after curfew last night…” Or, “My wife is on me about new carpet…” Or, “I’ve had a bellyache all day…” Mr. Super Christian would charge into every such opening, telling his co-workers, “My kids used to come in after their curfew before I got saved..My wife used to get on me about needing new carpet before I got saved...I used to get bellyaches before I got saved.” He portrayed his life as completely problem-free because he had Jesus in it.

Look, a problem-free, pain-free life would be super. But in this world, it doesn’t exist, not even if you’re a Christian.

In our second Bible lesson for today, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, the apostle Paul, the first-century evangelist, is dealing with Christians who are skeptical about the power of the Jesus and the good news of new life for all who repent and believe in Jesus--the Gospel--that Paul proclaims. 

Instead of the real Gospel or the real Jesus, they want preachers who’ll assure them that following Jesus will mean that their lives in this world will be problem-free.

In fact, shortly before Paul wrote to the Corinthian Christians, they’d been wowed by preachers who told them that if the crucified and risen Jesus was really working in their lives, they would be problem-free. They would have success, victories, and no illness. Paul sarcastically labeled these happy talk preachers, super-apostles.

Now, it is true that Christ gives His Church, among other ministries, the power to bring God’s help to people, including, as we talked about last week, healing. But no physical healing lasts indefinitely. This world is imperfect and that’s true whether you’re a Christian or not.

“So, in the face of these realities, where is the power of God and what good is your gospel?” the Corinthians demand of Paul. Their questions are pointed because, unlike the preachers who had wowed them, Paul was a less than impressive preacher. Sometimes, he could be downright boring. he didn't have a private jet or a rags to riched story. Far from it. To support himself as an itinerant preacher, Paul had to scratch out a living as a tentmaker. He wasn’t what the world would call a success. His Christian resume included being arrested and flogged, shipwrecked and beaten, mocked, chased out of several towns, and jailed. The skeptics in the Corinth church labeled him a loser. But this loser Paul has a message for those who question the authenticity of his message about Jesus Christ and question his authority to share it.

Wary of being a braggart, Paul uses the third person to describe a personal experience he’d had years earlier. Verse 2: “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows—was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.” 

Paul had an amazing experience of heaven. But, he says, that experience, awesome as it was, did not prove Jesus’ power over sin and death and it didn’t prove Paul’s authority to tell others about Jesus. God's power, Paul shows us today, is most readily seen in two other ways that the super-apostles never would have dreamed of: The first way is in God's grace. The second way is in our weakness.

Grace, you know, is God’s charity, God’s act and offer of acceptance to those who willing to repent and willing to entrust their entire lives to Jesus Christ alone. Grace doesn’t paper over or ignore our sins. It forgives them and offers a new and everlasting way of living, with Jesus by our sides. God doesn’t wait for us to be perfect before we have this life with Him. As Paul puts it in Romans 5:8: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Life with God is a free gift for all who have faith in Christ. That's grace.

The super-apostles who had wowed the Corinthian Christians said, basically, “If there’s something wrong in your life—some illness, adversity, heartbreak, poverty, or struggle—it proves that you’re faithless.” They said that Paul’s troubles proved that he was faithless. 

People say things like this today. They don’t understand grace! Having the grace of God that comes only from Jesus Christ in our lives doesn’t mean that our lives will be perfect; it means, rather, that we will still have God’s grace even when things are not perfect! Even when we’re not perfect!

In verse 7 of our lesson, Paul says, “...in order to keep me from becoming conceited [by all the amazing things God had shown to him and done through him], I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.”  

We have no idea what Paul's thorn in the flesh was. It may have been an illness, an incessant temptation, a psychological disturbance, a relationship problem, a lack of money. But, whatever it was, three times, Paul says, he had asked God in prayer to remove the thorn. And three times God’s answer came back (verse 9), “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

God refused to bring Paul the relief Paul sought, telling Paul that His grace was all thr apostle really needed. God refused to remove the thorn so that Paul would remember that. Everybody here this morning knows what it is to experience thorns in the flesh. Everybody. 

They’re the problems and heartaches that bedevil us and seem never to go completely away. 

They drive us to our knees and there, before God, we learn that all of the things we thought we needed—health, wealth, connections, the big house, the respect of others, happiness, good times—are nice, but they're not what we need the most. 

What we need the most is the life-giving grace of God given through Jesus Christ. God's tough, incessant, faithful grace is the first thing that proves the power of Jesus Christ.

This leads to the second thing that proves the power of Jesus Christ: our weakness. Listen: God gives those humble enough to admit their weakness the strength they need for living.  

You were with a loved one as they were dying and you knew that on your own, you couldn’t do all that you needed to do, but, with God’s help, you did it. 

You had to undergo one more round of medical treatments, one more battery of tests, and you knew that you just couldn’t take it, but with Jesus by your side, you did. 

In order to graduate or be certified, you had to pass a class for which you knew you had no talent or ability and, after prayer in Jesus’ Name, God helped you study and to learn what you needed to learn to pass. 

To pay your bills, you had to work double shifts for which you knew you didn’t have the energy, yet God’s Spirit-filled you with the needed energy. 

In each case, you called out to the God we know in Jesus Christ and confessed, “Lord, I’m too weak to face it.” And in each case, God told you, “I know you’re too weak. But My power belongs only to those wise enough and faithful enough to know they need it."

This was exactly what Paul experienced when he had asked God to remove his unidentified thorn in the flesh. “I’m not taking this adversity away,” God told Paul. “I’m not going to take you around it. I’m going to take you through it. You’ll have to learn to lean on My power more and more each day, and not on your own.” 

Why did God tell Paul this? Why does God sometimes tell us the very same thing? Because, God says in verse 9: “...my power is made perfect in weakness.”

God’s power is seen only in people who admit that they’re powerless without Jesus Christ. When we own our weakness and seek Christ’s help, we can face anything. We acknowledge our weakness, our emptiness, and the God we know in Christ fills us up with His power and His grace. In the name of Jesus, God powers us up. Paul writes in verse 10: “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” [emphasis mine]

Through Jesus Christ, God demonstrates His power by giving grace to the needy—and that’s all of us—and strength to the weak—that, too, is all of us. 

If you’re feeling weak or powerless today, that’s a great sign! 

It means you’re seeing life on this earth clearly. You’re able to give up on relying on yourself and able to depend on Jesus Christ alone. Contrary to a popular saying, the Lord does not help those who help themselves; He helps those who admit that they need the Lord’s help. 

Call out to the God we meet in the crucified and risen Jesus and let God the Holy Spirit fill you with strength you can’t generate on your own.

Life in this world does not always make sense nor does God promise us that it will be easy. But, God’s Word assures us, we can do all things through Him as He strengthens us (Philippians 4:3). 

Our strong God stands at the ready to give us grace and strength in all circumstances. If we will let go of our skepticism (along with our fears, our need for control, and our skepticism) and let Him take over, God will see us through everything in His power...and do so all the way to eternity. Amen

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

The Power That Can Only Be Experienced by the Weak

[This was prepared for delivery during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, earlier this morning. But then, I forgot to bring the sermon with me and had to wing it.]

2 Corinthians 12:2-10
You and I will be telling stories about the hurricane-force winds and resultant Power Outage of 2012 for a long time to come. After our power came back for the second time on Thursday, Ann and I reminded each other not to get too used to the comfort; the power could go again.

That skepticism or wariness is warranted. Human beings and human technology aren't all-powerful. Our best laid plans and most thorough preparations can--and often are--upended by life.

But I wonder: Do we ever entertain similar skepticism or wariness about the power of Jesus Christ?

Skepticism about Jesus’ power and the good it does in the lives of those who believe in Jesus is nothing new, even sometimes among those who know Jesus well.

In our gospel lesson for today, Mark 6:1-13, Jesus, Who in the previous five chapters of Mark’s gospel is recorded to have done many miracles and signs, could do no deeds of power because of the skepticism and unbelief of the people in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth.

And underscoring this theme, all four of the gospels say that after Jesus, God in the flesh, had died on the cross, His closest followers doubted that God had the power to do what Jesus had said He would: raise Jesus from the dead so that all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus can have eternal life with God.

Even today, although Christ’s resurrection is an accomplished fact, people who bear Christ’s Name go through times when they doubt Christ’s power.

In our second Bible lesson, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, the apostle Paul, the first century evangelist, is dealing with Christians who are skeptical about Christ’s power, hankering for what I call happy-talk preachers who promise that following Jesus will mean that their lives in this world will be peaches and cream.

You see, shortly before Paul wrote to the Christian community in the Greek city of Corinth, the Corinthian church had been wowed by some preachers who convinced them that if the power of the God made known to the world through Jesus was really working in them, then their lives would be problem-free. They would have success, victories, and no illness.

Now, it is true that Christ gives His Church, among other ministries, the power to bring God’s help to people, including, sometimes, healing.

But no physical healing lasts indefinitely. This world is imperfect and, unless you and I are among those Christians living on earth when Jesus returns, death will come to us all. There’s no way around that.

“So, where is the power of God and what good is the power of God in your preaching?” the Corinthians asked Paul.

Their questions were pointed because, unlike the preachers who had wowed them, Paul was a less than impressive figure. By this time, about 56AD, Paul was deep into his forties or early fifties, slight, balding, a poor and rambling speaker who scratched together what little income he made by making tents.

His career as a Christian preacher wasn’t notable for what the world would call successes. In the course of his work, he’d been arrested and flogged, shipwrecked and beaten, mocked, chased out of several towns, and jailed. Most people in that time would probably have looked at Paul and seen a big “L” for “loser” on his forehead.

But by the time we get to the point in the letter to the Corinthian Christians that makes up our second lesson, this loser Paul has a message for these people who question the authenticity of his message about Jesus Christ and his authority to share it.

Wary of being a braggart, Paul starts out by using the third person to tell about a personal experience he’d had of the power of God fourteen years earlier.

Paul says, “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a one was caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows— 4 how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words.”

Paul had an experience of heaven that the preachers who had impressed the Corinthian Christians might not have been able to even imagine.

But, Paul says, that experience, as awesome as it was, did not prove Jesus’ power over sin and death and it didn’t prove Paul’s authority to tell others about Jesus.

God's power, Paul shows us, is most readily seen in ways the world might not call flashy, but in two other ways.

The first is in God's grace.

The second is in our weakness.

Grace is God’s charity, God’s willingness to accept the repentant who entrust their sins and their entire lives to Christ. Grace doesn’t paper over or ignore our sins. But it welcomes those who are willing to turn from sin and believe in Christ into eternal fellowship with God.

God doesn’t wait for us to be perfect before we have life with Him. Life with Him is a free gift for all who have faith in Christ.

The super apostles who had wowed the Corinthian Christians said that, “If there’s something wrong in your life—some illness, adversity, heartbreak, poverty, or struggle—it proves that you’re faithless.”

You still hear people saying things like this today. Some of them have TV shows and multimillion dollar ministries and books on the best seller lists. They don’t understand grace!

Having the grace of God that comes only from Jesus Christ in our lives doesn’t mean that our lives will be perfect; it means, rather, that we will still have God’s grace even when things aren’t perfect!

In verse 7 of our lesson (take a look at it), Paul says that to keep him from being too elated by his heavenly vision, God had allowed Satan to afflict Paul with a “thorn in the flesh.”

We have no idea what Paul's thorn in the flesh was. It may have been an illness, an incessant temptation, a psychological disturbance, a relationship problem, a lack of money. We don’t know.

But three times, Paul says, he had asked God in prayer to remove the thorn. And three times the answer came back (look, Paul records it in verse 9), “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” God refused to bring Paul the relief Paul sought, telling Paul that His grace was all Paul really needed.

Everybody here this morning knows what it is to experience thorns in the flesh. They’re the problems and heartaches that bedevil us and seem never to go completely away. They drive us to our knees and there, before God, we learn that all of the things we thought we needed—health, money, connections, the big house, the respect of others—are nice, but they're not what we need the most.

What we really need is the life-giving grace of God given through Jesus Christ. God's tough, incessant, faithful grace is the first thing that proves the power of Jesus Christ.

This leads to the second thing that proves the power of Jesus Christ: our weakness.

Listen: God gives those humble enough to admit their weakness the strength they need for living.

Many of you know exactly what I’m talking about.

You were with a loved one as they were dying and you knew that on your own, you couldn’t do all that you needed to do, but, with God’s help, you did it.

You had to undergo one more round of medical treatments, one more battery of tests, and you knew that you just couldn’t take it, but with Jesus by your side, you did.

In order to graduate or be certified, you had to pass a class for which you knew you had no talent or ability and, after prayer in Jesus’ Name, God helped you study and to learn what you needed to learn to pass.

To pay your bills, you had to work double shifts for which you knew you didn’t have the energy, yet God’s Spirit filled you with the needed energy.

In each case, you called out to the God we know in Jesus Christ and confessed, “Lord, I can’t.” And in each case, God told you, “I know that you can’t. But I can! Lean on me."

God has more than enough grace to help us and it only comes to those weak enough to admit that they need the crucified and risen Jesus.

This was exactly what Paul experienced when he had asked God to remove the unidentified thorn in his flesh. “I’m not taking this adversity away,” God told Paul. “You’re going to have to go through it, leaning on my grace.”

Why?

Because, God says in verse 9: “...My grace is made perfect in weakness.”

God’s power is experienced only by people who admit that they’re powerless without Jesus Christ.

We’re powerless when, by ourselves, we try to make sound decisions, make our relationships work, be happy, deal with our sins, or face life and death.

But when we own our weakness and seek Christ’s help, we can face anything.

God’s power surges into us.

That’s what Paul means when he writes in verse 10: “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

“I didn’t know if I could ever be happy again,” a woman told me years after her husband had died. There were dark days, pain interspersed with lifeless numbness. But there were things to be done—children to be raised, bills to be paid, errands to be run. “I was sure that I just couldn’t do it,” she said. But in the midst of it all, she prayed and learned what Paul underscores in today’s lesson.

Through Jesus Christ, God demonstrates His power by giving grace to the needy—and that’s all of us—and strength to the weak—that, too, is all of us.

If you’re feeling weak or powerless today, that’s a great sign!

It means you’re seeing life clearly.

You’re ready to give up on relying on yourself and start depending on Jesus Christ alone.

The Lord does not help those who help themselves; the Lord helps those who admit that they need the Lord’s help.

Call out to the God we meet in the crucified and risen Jesus and let God the Holy Spirit fill you with strength you can’t generate on your own.

Life in this world will not always make sense nor does God promise us that it will be easy. But He does promise to help us do all things when we place the full weight of our lives on the shoulders of Jesus Christ alone! Our strong God stands at the ready to give you grace and strength in all circumstances.

Unlike AEP, God’s power never gives out. And, if you let Him, God will see you through whatever you may face, all the way to eternity. Amen

God Can See Us Through (from the Cutting Room Floor)

From this preacher's "cutting room," a paragraph that didn't make it into tomorrow's sermon on 2 Corinthians 12:2-10:

One of my favorite incidents in the Bible is that involving Gideon, a simple farmer God called to lead His people, Israel, in war against a people called the Midianites who were harassing Israel. 

Gideon had no experience as a soldier. But God called Gideon anyway. 

Then, God told Gideon to recruit an army. He did, a force of 32,000 meant to go up against Midianites 135,000 experienced fighting men. 

But look at what God tells Gideon to do next in Judges 7. 

In verse 2, God tells Gideon that he has too many soldiers. Gideon needs to demobilize his forces. 

In verse 3, God orders Gideon to say that whoever is afraid of going into battle (who wouldn't be?) should go back where it’s safe, to Mount Gilead. That left 22,000 troops. 

But then God says, that’s still too many to fight the 135,000 Midianites. So, God creates a strange test, detailed in verses 5 and 6, whittling Gideon’s force down to 300 men! 

Look at what God says in verse 7: “By the three hundred...I will save you, and deliver the Midianites into your hand. Let all the other people go, every man to their place.” 

Gideon and the people of Israel learned what Paul learned some 1200 years later, when God didn’t take away his "thorn in the flesh," a suffering that did not go away: Our power is finite and impotent; but God’s grace is always sufficient. God can see us through no matter what the circumstances of our lives!

Where God's Power is Seen

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

2 Corinthians 12:2-10
One of my seminary professors, Ron Hals, used to wonder whether, if he had lived during the time of Jesus, he might not have been as skeptical as Jesus’ enemies (and Jesus's friends) could be.

“I can just imagine,” he would tell us, “seeing Jesus perform a miracle like restoring sight to a blind man or raising Lazarus from the dead and then saying, ‘Do it again...Slower.’”

Dr. Hals was saying that had he lived in first century Palestine, he might have questioned Jesus’ power. And had he seen Jesus crucified, he might well have wondered what good Jesus’ power was if Jesus couldn’t elude suffering with that power.

Skepticism about Jesus’ power and the good it does in the lives of those who believe in Jesus is nothing new. In our second Bible lesson, the apostle Paul, the first century evangelist, some of whose writings comprise a big chunk of the New Testament, is dealing with Christians who are skeptical about these very things.

Apparently, shortly before Paul wrote to these Christians, members of the church in the Greek city of Corinth, had been wowed by some preachers who had convinced them that if the power of the God made known to the world through Jesus was really in them, then their lives would be problem-free. They would have success, victories, and no illness.

Now, it is true that Christ gives His Church, among other ministries, the power to bring God’s help to people, including healing for all kinds. That’s among the reasons why, here at Saint Matthew, we pray for people’s healing during worship, have healing services, and are starting our parish health ministry. In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus sent out the twelve apostles two by two, and gave them the power to heal in His Name.

But no healing in this world lasts indefinitely; even after Jesus brought His friend Lazarus back from the dead, Lazarus still died again. This world and you and I are imperfect and death comes to all who are part of this world. There’s no way around that.

“So, where is the power of God and what good is the power of God in your preaching?” the Corinthians asked Paul.

Their questions were pointed because, unlike the preachers who had wowed them, Paul was a less than impressive figure. By this time deep into his forties or early fifties, elderly in that world, slight, balding, a poor and rambling speaker who scratched together what little income he made by patching together tents, Paul’s career as a Christian preacher wasn’t notable for its successes. In the course of his work, he’d been arrested and flogged, shipwrecked and beaten, mocked, chased out of several towns, and jailed. How far through the call process do you think a preacher like Paul would make it in most churches? Not far, I’ll bet. Most people would look at him and see a big “L” for “loser” on his forehead.

But by the time we get to the point in the letter to the Corinthian Christians that makes up our second lesson for today, this loser has a thing or two to say to these people who question the authenticity of his message about Jesus Christ and his authority to share it.

Maybe wary of being a braggart, Paul uses the third person to tell about a personal experience he’d had fourteen years earlier, but, so far as we know, had never shared before. “I know a person in Christ,” he says, “who…was caught up in the third heaven [this is what early Christians called paradise, where the risen and ascended Jesus lives]…and [Paul goes on, this person] heard things…that no mortal is permitted to repeat…”

Paul had experienced a vision of heaven that the preachers who had impressed the Corinthian Christians might not even have been able to imagine.

But, Paul says--and this is the most important thing about our lesson from Second Corinthians--that experience, as awesome as it was, did not prove Jesus’ power over sin and death and it didn’t prove Paul’s authority to tell others about Jesus. Something else did. In fact, two something elses proved those things. God's power is most readily seen in two ways.

The first is in God's grace.

The second is in our weakness.

A conference of theologians was being held in Great Britain. They’d been debating the question of what was the central teaching of the Christian faith. Apparently by coincidence, C.S. Lewis, the novelist and teacher who had once been an atheist and then a champion of Christian belief, happened on the conference. When Lewis learned that they were debating what was the most important teaching of Christianity, he said, “That’s easy: Grace.” Grace is God’s charity, God’s acceptance us we are.

The super apostles who had wowed the Corinthian Christians said that, “If there’s something wrong in your life—some illness, adversity, heartbreak, poverty, or struggle—it proves that you’re faithless.”

You still hear people saying things like this today. A faithful pastor friend of mine watched, as within months, his wife was diagnosed with a debilitating disease and his daughter was found to suffer from Down Syndrome. At a church convention shortly thereafter, he asked for prayers. During a break, a man approached him and said, “I am praying that you will repent because you must have done something terribly wrong for God to send these punishments to you.” I wish the apostle Paul had been around when that ignorant man approached my friend. Paul would have given him a smackdown!

In our lesson, Paul says that to keep him from being too elated by his heavenly vision, God had allowed Satan to afflict him with some sort of “thorn in the flesh.” We have no idea what it was. It may have been an illness, an incessant temptation, a psychological disturbance, a relationship problem, a lack of money. We don’t know. Three times, Paul says, he had asked God for relief. And three times the answer came back, “My grace—my charitable love, forgiveness, presence, and acceptance—are sufficient.”

Everybody here this morning knows what it is to experience thorns in the flesh. They’re the problems and heartaches that bedevil us and seem never to go completely away. They drive us to our knees and there, before God, we learn that all of the things we thought we needed to make life complete—health, money, connections, the big house, the respect of others—are nice, but they're not what we need the most. What we really need is the grace of God given to all through Jesus Christ. God's grace is the first thing that proves the power of Jesus Christ.

The second thing that proves the power of Jesus Christ is our weakness. Two weeks ago tonight, sixteen of us from Saint Matthew, who were on our mission trip in Nashville, gathered for our nightly devotions. From our handbook for the week, Sam asked this question of us, “What changes about a person when the Spirit of the Lord is on them?” I immediately thought of those times when I’ve sensed that God, the Holy Spirit, the Power and Presence of God the Father and God the Son, Jesus, has been with me, and my answer to that question was clear: I know God is with me when I can do what I can’t do.

Many, if not most, of you know exactly what I’m talking about...

You had to be with a loved one over months as they died and you knew that on your own, you couldn’t do what you needed to do.

Or, you had to undergo one more round of medical treatments, one more battery of tests, and you knew that you just couldn’t take it.

Or, in order to graduate or be certified, you had to pass a class for which you knew you had no talent or ability.

Or, to make the mortgage payment and provide your kids with a nice Christmas, you had to work double shifts for which you knew you didn’t have the strength.

In each case, you called out to the God we know in Jesus Christ and confessed, “Lord, I can’t.” And in each case, God told you, “I know that you can’t. But I can! Lean on me."

This was exactly what Paul experienced when he had asked God to remove the unidentified thorn in his flesh. “I’m not taking this adversity away,” God told Paul. “You’re going to have to go through it, leaning on my grace.” Why? Because, God says, “power is made perfect in weakness.”

God’s power is experienced only by people who admit that they’re powerless without Jesus Christ. We’re powerless when, by ourselves, we try to make sound decisions, make our relationships work, be happy, deal with our sins, or face life and death. But when we own our weakness and seek Christ’s help, we can face anything. God’s power surges into us. “Whenever I am weak,” Paul says, “I am strong.”

“I didn’t know if I could ever be happy again,” a woman told me years after her husband had died. There were dark days, pain interspersed with lifeless numbness. All the while, there were things to be done—children to be raised, bills to be paid, errands to be run. “I was sure that I just couldn’t do it,” she said. But in the midst of it all, she learned what Paul underscores in today’s lesson. Through Jesus Christ, God demonstrates His power by giving grace to the needy—and that’s all of us—and strength to the weak—that, too, is all of us.

If you’re feeling weak or powerless today, that’s good. It means you’re seeing life clearly. Don’t give up hope. Our strong God stands at the ready to give you grace and strength. God will see you through!

Tweets on This Sunday's Bible Lessons

A quick explanation, from Wikipedia:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to other users - known as followers - who have subscribed to them.

Below are tweets I posted this afternoon regarding this coming Sunday's Bible lessons. I hope they help folks get ready for worship. I may post more substantive stuff later.

Ezekiel 2:5: We're called to be faithful to God, leave the results up to God.

2 Cor. 12:2-10: Only when I'm weak that my delusions of self-sufficiency are laid waste. God's power can worthwhile things in and thru us.

Mark 6:1: Jesus' worlds come together.

Mark 6:2: People attribute "power" and "wisdom" to Jesus, attributes associated with God. But they don't know where [they come] from.

Mark 6:3: "took offense at." Jesus couldn't expect acclamation any more than Ezekiel...or us.

Mark 6:4: An expert is anyone with a pointer from forty miles away.

Mark 6:4: The "who do you think you are?" factor prevents prophets from being accepted. Per 2 Cor. 12, the prophet would say, "I'm nobody."

Mark 6:5: Faithlessness prevents the working of God's power. God never forces faith.

Mark 6:6: Jesus could have sung, "Amazing Doubt." But why was Jesus amazed?

Mark 6:6: Did Jesus' amazement stem from feeling that His past in Nazareth authenticated His present claims?

Mark 6:6, 10: Jesus always refrained from beating His head against walls.

Mark 6:7: No doubt, the disciples' ascribed authority was as limited by faithlessness as Jesus' underived authority.

Mark 6:8: Travel light. What does that say to our materialism?

Mark 6:12-13: The disciples did the same ministries that Jesus did (John 12:12-14).

You can join Twitter, which is free, here. This is where my tweets show up. (I'm going to try to regular do little micro-blogs there on the Bible lessons each week.) If you'd like to follow my tweeting, you can sign up to follow at the latter site.