Showing posts with label Ole Hallesby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ole Hallesby. Show all posts
Friday, June 26, 2020
Monday, May 21, 2018
Free!
[This was shared yesterday, Pentecost Sunday, during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Acts 2:1-21
I remember listening to a devoted follower of Jesus say how upset he was with himself because it had been three whole weeks since he had last shared the good news--the gospel--of new and everlasting life for all who believe in Jesus with a spiritually-disconnected person. Three weeks. I prayed, “God, make me more like that. Help me to live past my fears so that I have that same passion for people who, absent a faith relationship with Jesus, will go to hell.”
Acts 2:1-21
Today brings us to the third great festival of the Church Year. There’s Christmas, then Easter, and now Pentecost. Of course, Christmas and Easter get all the publicity...and those two festivals attract the crowds. Pentecost is the most ignored of the Church’s most important festivals.
Why is that?
Maybe it’s because the Holy Spirit, the One Whose coming fifty days after Jesus rose from the dead Pentecost celebrates, doesn’t really call attention to Himself.
There's probably another reason. Painters and cartoonists may show God the Father as a white-bearded old man. And Jesus has been the focal point of endless artistic renderings for the past two-thousand years. But the Spirit, even though the Bible says He has a personality--Jesus calls Him a Counselor, a Comforter, an Advocate--is hard for us to picture.
There's probably another reason. Painters and cartoonists may show God the Father as a white-bearded old man. And Jesus has been the focal point of endless artistic renderings for the past two-thousand years. But the Spirit, even though the Bible says He has a personality--Jesus calls Him a Counselor, a Comforter, an Advocate--is hard for us to picture.
The Holy Spirit, of course, is sometimes shown as a dove. That’s because Luke’s Gospel, for example, tells us that when Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit came to Him in the bodily form of a dove, a bird that the ancient Jews thought of as pure.
Sometimes the Spirit is shown as fire. This is appropriate not only because in our lesson from Acts today, the Holy Spirit rested on 120 praying followers of Jesus like tongues of fire, but also because of some properties that fire shares with the Holy Spirit. Fire enlightens, destroys, and purifies. So does the Spirit of God, depending on our needs at the time: He can show us the way to Christ. He can decimate our excuses and rationalizations for sin, kill off our old selves so that our new selves can rise, as happens in Holy Baptism and every time we repent in Jesus’ name. He can also purge us of sin and free us from temptations to sins that would contaminate us and separate us from God.
And sometimes, the Spirit is seen as Wind. This too, is appropriate. The word translated as spirit from the Old Testament Hebrew is ruach, a word that also means wind or breath. It’s God’s ruach--His Wind or Spirit--that moves over the waters in Genesis to create the world. It’s also God’s ruach that God breathes into dust to make the first human being.
In the Greek of the New Testament, the word pneuma has the same multiple meanings as ruach. Pneuma can also mean wind, breath, or spirit.
But the problem with trying to picture something like wind or breath is that, as Jesus told the old Jewish teacher Nicodemus, you may hear the sound of the Spirit—and on the first Pentecost, the Spirit must have sounded like a tornado filling the house where the first disciples had been praying--but you can’t really see Him.
You can only see evidence of His presence in the lives of those who trust in Christ as their God and King.
Maybe the Spirit’s insusceptibility to being pictured is why we attach so little importance to Pentecost. Maybe too, it’s easier to understand what Jesus does for us than it is to understand what the Spirit does for us. At Christmas, we understand that Jesus, God the Son, took on the burden of being human. At Easter, we understand that after offering up His sinless life as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, Christ rose to give life to all who turn from sin and follow Him.
But what exactly does the Holy Spirit do for us?
A lot of things.
But I want to talk about just two things the Spirit does for us today, as seen in our first lesson, which comes from Acts 2.
First, the Holy Spirit gives us the courage to live past our fears. Before the events recounted in our lesson, 120 followers--disciples--of Jesus had gathered in a room to, just as Jesus had ordered them to do, wait and pray for the power of God to come upon them.
When the Holy Spirit showed up “like the blowing of a violent wind,” they did something they probably couldn’t have imagined doing moments before: They went out onto the hostile streets of Jerusalem and told anyone who would listen about God's mighty deeds. They conveyed the message that all who call on the Name of the Lord will be saved.
The Spirit gives courage to people who pray. This is important to realize. It seems that the number one fear of Lutheran Christians is doing precisely what the Holy Spirit empowered the first disciples to do on the first Pentecost: Share the good news that all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ have life with God that never ends. “I could never do that,” we say.
Listen: When Ann and I find a new restaurant we like, we have no hesitation about telling friends about the place. We describe the food, the service, the prices. I bet that you’ve done the same thing. Why is it easier for us to talk about a restaurant that will, at most, feed us one meal at a time...for a price...than it is for us to talk about Jesus, the living Bread from heaven, Who is the only One Who can give us eternity? You know the reason: We let our fears, not Jesus, to control our thoughts, our feelings, our actions.
Listen: When Ann and I find a new restaurant we like, we have no hesitation about telling friends about the place. We describe the food, the service, the prices. I bet that you’ve done the same thing. Why is it easier for us to talk about a restaurant that will, at most, feed us one meal at a time...for a price...than it is for us to talk about Jesus, the living Bread from heaven, Who is the only One Who can give us eternity? You know the reason: We let our fears, not Jesus, to control our thoughts, our feelings, our actions.
I remember listening to a devoted follower of Jesus say how upset he was with himself because it had been three whole weeks since he had last shared the good news--the gospel--of new and everlasting life for all who believe in Jesus with a spiritually-disconnected person. Three weeks. I prayed, “God, make me more like that. Help me to live past my fears so that I have that same passion for people who, absent a faith relationship with Jesus, will go to hell.”
The Holy Spirit also gives us a reason for living. Often, elderly people will ask me, “Why hasn’t God taken me yet? What am I still doing here?” These people think that because they’re less physically capable than they once were, their lives are less worthy of living. Children can also grow frustrated by the limitations of their youth. And the chronically ill think that their lives have less value because of what they can't do.
But you and I have value not because of what we do, but because of who we are.
When we stand before the judgment seat of God in eternity, God won’t ask us, “What did you accomplish?” Instead, God will ask, “Were you a believer in the Lord Jesus? Were you a repentant sinner? Were you a grateful disciple? Did you live in constant fellowship with Jesus?”
This last question is critical, because it’s only those who live in constant fellowship with Jesus--not with their fears, not with their preferences--but with Jesus, Who will be empowered to live for Jesus and share Jesus with others, no matter what limitations may dog them. Their lives will have power because they live only in the power of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
One of my favorite passages of Scripture appears in Matthew 25. In it, Jesus describes how He will judge people at the end of the world. He turns to the people He describes as His sheep and tells them, in essence, "Because you clothed Me when I was naked, visited me when I was in prison, fed me when I was hungry, and so on, enter into the joy of eternity with Me."
But their reaction says everything. In essence, they tell Jesus, "We don't remember doing any of that stuff!"
Listen: You cannot be saved from yourself, saved from sin, death, darkness, or futility by anything you do. None of us could ever do enough--or be good enough--to get into eternity with God. Ephesians 2:8-10 says that we are saved only by God's grace, God's charity, given to those who dare to trust in Jesus. So, nobody has any right to brag. All we are are people in whom Jesus lives and Jesus does His good work. You see, even the good I do doesn't come from me; it comes from Jesus. All I'm to do is trust in Him and get out of His way!
So, Jesus' commendation of the "sheep" in His portrayal of the judgment in Matthew 25 shows us that we aren't judged for what we, in our own strength, are able to do. We're only judged on whether we have entrusted our lives to Jesus and so, without our even realizing it, become instruments through whom, Christ does His loving, life-giving work in the world!
Many of you have read Ole Hallesby's classic book, Prayer. The story he tells near the end of the book is something I come back to again and again. There was, in Hallesby's home village in rural Norway, a man who was practically an invalid from birth. He could do little work. As he aged, he became bedfast and had to be cared for by several women from the village. Though he had been limited in his mobility, his funeral was the most well-attended in Hallesby's village. Why? Because he had done what he could in response to Jesus' love and grace: He prayed. People would come from miles around to ask him to pray for family members, friends, or themselves and to receive his wise Biblical counsel. On his daily prayer list were babies and children he never met. That man's life had a deeper purpose and meaning although he seemingly could do nothing: By his surrender to Jesus, God gave him purpose.
Jesus is the eternal-life-giving dynamo; if we are connected to Him, if we trust in Him, if we are surrendered to Him, He will give us purposeful lives, no matter what our age or condition. We who are being saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ will always have a purpose, always have a reason for living:
To give God glory and to point others to the God we know in Jesus.
The first followers of Christ must have wondered after Jesus ascended into heaven why they were still around. In Jesus, they’d glimpsed eternity and they wanted to be with Him. But here they were, stuck on a planet filled with people who would rather worship themselves, possessions, power, prominence, or their country, or their political party, rather than the God Who made them and died and rose for them. They were stuck living a life in which they would have to struggle and possibly suffer...because they believed in the crucified and risen Jesus.
But when the Holy Spirit came, He gave Jesus’ praying followers a reason for living this as fully as they could. In short, the Holy Spirit gave them a vocation.
All followers of Jesus have the same vocation, whatever jobs they do, even if they can no longer do a scrap of work.
Some of you have heard me speak before of our friends Sig and Chris. They came to this country from Germany in the early-1960s. Sig was an engineer and Chris was a pediatric intensive care nurse. But above all, they were ambassadors for Christ! When Sig was dying, he was a patient at a hospital in Cincinnati. His room was a holy place, bathed in prayer, filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit. When Sig would occasionally regain some semblance of consciousness, he would ask that Scripture or writings by his favorite writer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, be read to him. People who weren't even believers asked if they could spend time in that room, so palpable was the presence of God. Even as he lay dying, you see, Sig had a purpose for living. He had a vocation. He honored God and showed Christ to others even in his dying.
The Holy Spirit doesn’t get a lot of attention. The Spirit takes a backseat in the Trinity, content with being Jesus’ megaphone as Jesus speaks new life to us, content with silently supporting us as we call out to Jesus, follow Him, and share Him with others. The Spirit never calls attention to Himself. But He showers us with gifts, including the courage to live past our fears and a reason for living, a vocation of pointing others to Christ, serving them in Jesus’ Name and inviting others to follow Christ, a vocation that lasts our whole lives.
Today, I wish to all of you, a very happy Pentecost! May you keep in constant, prayerful contact with the Holy Spirit so that you will have the courage to live past your fears and a reason for living life every day you remain on this earth. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Monday, February 12, 2018
Listen!
[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday.]
Mark 9:2-9
Throughout this Epiphany season, which ends today, our gospel lessons have been about epiphanies, moments when Who Jesus really is took on clarity.
All of these narratives of Jesus’ earthly life have shown us the truth that Jesus was not just a man and was more than just a great teacher, but also was and is God in the flesh, our King, Whose mission still is to bring God’s kingdom to all who trust in Him.
None of the epiphanies we’ve looked at have allowed us to see this more clearly than what happens in today’s gospel lesson, Mark 9:2-9. Let’s take a look at it together and then consider what it might mean for us today.
It starts: “And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves….” (Mark 9:2).
Six days after what? Well, just a few verses before, Mark tells us that Peter confessed his belief that Jesus was God’s long-awaited Anointed One (Messiah in the Hebrew, Christ in the Greek) and that Jesus told Peter that he was right.
The apostles’ euphoria over being alive when the Messiah was revealed was instantly smothered when Jesus explained the method by which their Messiah brings His kingdom. Mark says that Jesus told them, “...the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31).
And if that weren’t enough of a downer, He says: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’ (Mark 8:34).
Imagine how disappointed the apostles must have felt at this moment. They had been following Jesus and seen amazing things. They knew His power: They’d seen Him cast out demons, feed thousands of people with just a few scraps of food, heal lepers, and even raise the dead.
They must have thought that with all of that power, their Messiah could undertake a simple procession into Jerusalem, vanquish the Romans, establish God’s reign over Israel, and, in the bargain, give them cushy positions in His government. Easy-peasy.
But Jesus tells them that sin is Israel’s (and humanity’s) greatest enemy, that the only way the kingdom of God could be brought to Israel (and to you and me, though the apostles at the time would have had no thought that Yahweh, Israel’s God, cared much for us) was for the Messiah Himself, perfect and sinless, to offer Himself on a cross, taking the condemnation of death we deserve so that He then could share with us the eternal life He of which He took hold on Easter Sunday.
Not only that, Jesus said if we are to have any part of His kingdom or of eternity with God, we must take up our crosses--we must own the reality of our sins, our mortality, and our need of a Savior--and humbly follow Jesus.
The way into God’s kingdom for you and me begins with death to ourselves, to our priorities, to our desires, and to our pretensions of being in control.
The apostles must have felt confused and disappointed. They were experiencing something C.S. Lewis talked about. “The truth [God’s truth] will set you free,” Lewis wrote, “but first it will make you miserable.”
We cannot have Jesus as our Savior and King if we persist in thinking that there’s nothing so bad about us that needs saving, nothing from which we can’t save ourselves, or no situation so desperate that we can’t conquer.
If we persist in believing these lies, we will be miserable, either in the present or in eternity or in both.
If we let go of them, we will see the kingdom of God, in this imperfect world and in the perfect world to come.
While the apostles were feeling miserable, Mark tells us that Jesus took Peter, James, and John with Him up to a mountaintop and “he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus.” (Mark 9:2-4)
This was glory.
This was power.
Here was Jesus with Israel’s great law-giver Moses and Israel’s greatest prophet Elijah. The law and the prophets had pointed Israel to the coming of the Messiah and now the law and the prophets were confirming that Jesus is that Messiah, that King!
This was a great epiphany revealing Jesus as both God and human.
Imagine now the elation felt by the three apostles there on that mountain!
Two of them were tongue-tied. One of them, Peter, should have been. But he couldn’t help himself.
Verse 5: “And Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi [Teacher], it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ For he did not know what to say, for they were terrified.”
Peter could think of nothing but bottling up the moment in tents or booths so that he could keep hold of it.
But Jesus hadn’t brought the three apostles to that mountaintop to give them goosebumps. He brought them to that mountaintop to give them the truth: The truth from God that we are sinners, and that though “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), the power of sin and death over us can be erased by the infinitely greater Power, Jesus “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). All who believe in Him “will not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16) in the Kingdom of God. In the face of sin, death, and darkness, no holy booths or goosebump-inducing feeling or place can save us. Jesus is our only sanctuary!
That seems to be the message from the Voice in heaven, the voice of God the Father, to Peter in response to his impulsive proposal. Verse 7: “And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, ‘This is my beloved Son; listen to him.’”
“Hush, Peter,” the Voice seems to say. “Now is not the time for speaking. Now is the time for listening. When the Word made flesh, My beloved Son, is speaking to you, whether in words or deeds, you can’t hear Him if you’re yammering. Listen to Him!”
One of the great problems in the contemporary Church is that we do a lot more talking than listening. We impulsively offer up our feelings, our opinions, our preferences for how the Church and the world should operate. We even make decisions, when what we should be doing is listening for what the God in Jesus Christ is telling us.
And to be able to speak the authentic Word of God, we need to spend time, like Jesus did, in quiet places reflecting on Scripture and praying with the expectation that Christ will speak to us.
We need to spend time with Jesus and other believers, reading and reflecting on God’s Word like Peter, James, and John did on the mount of transfiguration.
We cannot speak God’s truth to each other or to the world, we can’t authentically tell others the saving good news that all who repent and surrender to Jesus Christ are given new, eternal lives in God’s kingdom, unless we take the time each day to listen to God.
Verse 8 says that after the Father had given this message to Peter, James, and John, “they no longer saw anyone with them but Jesus only.” Peter, James, and John must have kneeled before Jesus in stunned silence. Moses and Elijah had pointed to Jesus, but they weren’t equal to Jesus. Neither is any preacher, guru, president, parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, or friend. Jesus alone is King. And if we have any desire to experience the kind of life for which God made us, a life of love and fulfillment even in the midst of this uncertain, fallen world, we will only find it in Jesus. Only Jesus!
Then comes the final and maybe, strangest, verse in Mark’s narration for today, verse 9: “And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”
In the midst of the apostles' misery over Jesus’ talk about His own cross and about the cross all who would be His disciple must bear, Jesus had taken Peter, James, and John to the top of a mountain. He had shown them the glory of His kingdom, a glory that is only experienced by those who take up their crosses and surrender to Him. The world wouldn’t be ready to hear about this glory until they had seen that the way to God goes through the crucifixion and humbling of the self before Jesus our King. Until then, the disciples were to keep following and to keep listening to Jesus.
On this side of Jesus' death and resurrection, we're free and commissioned by Jesus to tell the world about Him. But we have the same call as the apostles, to keep following and listening to Jesus.
In a little book called Why I Am a Christian, Lutheran theologian Ole Hallesby talked about five ways that you and I can know Jesus, keep following Him, and listen to Him.
First, we can daily read the New Testament. We will meet Jesus there.
Second, we can pray in Jesus’ name. Jesus promises that when we pray in His name, God hears our prayers.
Third, we can ask God to show us how we may have displeased Him. Because Jesus is our Savior and Advocate, He will show us our sins so that we can repent and have our relationship with Him restored.
Fourth, we can receive Holy Communion every time it’s offered. Jesus gives Himself to us in this sacrament. We feed on His life, are drawn closer to Him, and receive forgiveness.
Fifth, we can spend time in fellowship with Jesus’ people, gathered around His Word.
If we will follow Jesus and listen to Jesus, we will see the glory of God even in the most mundane moments of our lives.
And we will realize that the moments we spend with Jesus are never mundane. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Mark 9:2-9
Throughout this Epiphany season, which ends today, our gospel lessons have been about epiphanies, moments when Who Jesus really is took on clarity.
All of these narratives of Jesus’ earthly life have shown us the truth that Jesus was not just a man and was more than just a great teacher, but also was and is God in the flesh, our King, Whose mission still is to bring God’s kingdom to all who trust in Him.
None of the epiphanies we’ve looked at have allowed us to see this more clearly than what happens in today’s gospel lesson, Mark 9:2-9. Let’s take a look at it together and then consider what it might mean for us today.
It starts: “And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves….” (Mark 9:2).
Six days after what? Well, just a few verses before, Mark tells us that Peter confessed his belief that Jesus was God’s long-awaited Anointed One (Messiah in the Hebrew, Christ in the Greek) and that Jesus told Peter that he was right.
The apostles’ euphoria over being alive when the Messiah was revealed was instantly smothered when Jesus explained the method by which their Messiah brings His kingdom. Mark says that Jesus told them, “...the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31).
And if that weren’t enough of a downer, He says: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’ (Mark 8:34).
Imagine how disappointed the apostles must have felt at this moment. They had been following Jesus and seen amazing things. They knew His power: They’d seen Him cast out demons, feed thousands of people with just a few scraps of food, heal lepers, and even raise the dead.
They must have thought that with all of that power, their Messiah could undertake a simple procession into Jerusalem, vanquish the Romans, establish God’s reign over Israel, and, in the bargain, give them cushy positions in His government. Easy-peasy.
But Jesus tells them that sin is Israel’s (and humanity’s) greatest enemy, that the only way the kingdom of God could be brought to Israel (and to you and me, though the apostles at the time would have had no thought that Yahweh, Israel’s God, cared much for us) was for the Messiah Himself, perfect and sinless, to offer Himself on a cross, taking the condemnation of death we deserve so that He then could share with us the eternal life He of which He took hold on Easter Sunday.
Not only that, Jesus said if we are to have any part of His kingdom or of eternity with God, we must take up our crosses--we must own the reality of our sins, our mortality, and our need of a Savior--and humbly follow Jesus.
The way into God’s kingdom for you and me begins with death to ourselves, to our priorities, to our desires, and to our pretensions of being in control.
The apostles must have felt confused and disappointed. They were experiencing something C.S. Lewis talked about. “The truth [God’s truth] will set you free,” Lewis wrote, “but first it will make you miserable.”
We cannot have Jesus as our Savior and King if we persist in thinking that there’s nothing so bad about us that needs saving, nothing from which we can’t save ourselves, or no situation so desperate that we can’t conquer.
If we persist in believing these lies, we will be miserable, either in the present or in eternity or in both.
If we let go of them, we will see the kingdom of God, in this imperfect world and in the perfect world to come.
While the apostles were feeling miserable, Mark tells us that Jesus took Peter, James, and John with Him up to a mountaintop and “he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus.” (Mark 9:2-4)
This was glory.
This was power.
Here was Jesus with Israel’s great law-giver Moses and Israel’s greatest prophet Elijah. The law and the prophets had pointed Israel to the coming of the Messiah and now the law and the prophets were confirming that Jesus is that Messiah, that King!
This was a great epiphany revealing Jesus as both God and human.
Imagine now the elation felt by the three apostles there on that mountain!
Two of them were tongue-tied. One of them, Peter, should have been. But he couldn’t help himself.
Verse 5: “And Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi [Teacher], it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ For he did not know what to say, for they were terrified.”
Peter could think of nothing but bottling up the moment in tents or booths so that he could keep hold of it.
But Jesus hadn’t brought the three apostles to that mountaintop to give them goosebumps. He brought them to that mountaintop to give them the truth: The truth from God that we are sinners, and that though “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), the power of sin and death over us can be erased by the infinitely greater Power, Jesus “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). All who believe in Him “will not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16) in the Kingdom of God. In the face of sin, death, and darkness, no holy booths or goosebump-inducing feeling or place can save us. Jesus is our only sanctuary!
That seems to be the message from the Voice in heaven, the voice of God the Father, to Peter in response to his impulsive proposal. Verse 7: “And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, ‘This is my beloved Son; listen to him.’”
“Hush, Peter,” the Voice seems to say. “Now is not the time for speaking. Now is the time for listening. When the Word made flesh, My beloved Son, is speaking to you, whether in words or deeds, you can’t hear Him if you’re yammering. Listen to Him!”
One of the great problems in the contemporary Church is that we do a lot more talking than listening. We impulsively offer up our feelings, our opinions, our preferences for how the Church and the world should operate. We even make decisions, when what we should be doing is listening for what the God in Jesus Christ is telling us.
And to be able to speak the authentic Word of God, we need to spend time, like Jesus did, in quiet places reflecting on Scripture and praying with the expectation that Christ will speak to us.
We need to spend time with Jesus and other believers, reading and reflecting on God’s Word like Peter, James, and John did on the mount of transfiguration.
We cannot speak God’s truth to each other or to the world, we can’t authentically tell others the saving good news that all who repent and surrender to Jesus Christ are given new, eternal lives in God’s kingdom, unless we take the time each day to listen to God.
Verse 8 says that after the Father had given this message to Peter, James, and John, “they no longer saw anyone with them but Jesus only.” Peter, James, and John must have kneeled before Jesus in stunned silence. Moses and Elijah had pointed to Jesus, but they weren’t equal to Jesus. Neither is any preacher, guru, president, parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, or friend. Jesus alone is King. And if we have any desire to experience the kind of life for which God made us, a life of love and fulfillment even in the midst of this uncertain, fallen world, we will only find it in Jesus. Only Jesus!
Then comes the final and maybe, strangest, verse in Mark’s narration for today, verse 9: “And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”
In the midst of the apostles' misery over Jesus’ talk about His own cross and about the cross all who would be His disciple must bear, Jesus had taken Peter, James, and John to the top of a mountain. He had shown them the glory of His kingdom, a glory that is only experienced by those who take up their crosses and surrender to Him. The world wouldn’t be ready to hear about this glory until they had seen that the way to God goes through the crucifixion and humbling of the self before Jesus our King. Until then, the disciples were to keep following and to keep listening to Jesus.
On this side of Jesus' death and resurrection, we're free and commissioned by Jesus to tell the world about Him. But we have the same call as the apostles, to keep following and listening to Jesus.
In a little book called Why I Am a Christian, Lutheran theologian Ole Hallesby talked about five ways that you and I can know Jesus, keep following Him, and listen to Him.
First, we can daily read the New Testament. We will meet Jesus there.
Second, we can pray in Jesus’ name. Jesus promises that when we pray in His name, God hears our prayers.
Third, we can ask God to show us how we may have displeased Him. Because Jesus is our Savior and Advocate, He will show us our sins so that we can repent and have our relationship with Him restored.
Fourth, we can receive Holy Communion every time it’s offered. Jesus gives Himself to us in this sacrament. We feed on His life, are drawn closer to Him, and receive forgiveness.
Fifth, we can spend time in fellowship with Jesus’ people, gathered around His Word.
If we will follow Jesus and listen to Jesus, we will see the glory of God even in the most mundane moments of our lives.
And we will realize that the moments we spend with Jesus are never mundane. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Sunday, February 04, 2018
Set Free to Play Our Parts
[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]
Mark 1:29-39
On a recent episode of NPR’s Fresh Air, John Leland, a reporter for The New York Times, talked about his book, Happiness is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old. He was asked, “So what are some of the examples of ageism that you see around you that really irritate you the most?” His answer: “I think that every person over a certain age can tell you that they hate being called sweetie or hun or dear…”
Boy, is he right!
As someone in my sixties, I loathe it when a restaurant server or a grocery clerk calls me, “Honey.”
Any person over sixty who gets called “honey” by anyone other than mothers, sweethearts, spouses or friends ought to be able to call the violator out.
When the words honey, hon, sweetie, or dear are used in this way, they reflect a view that the person being addressed is not quite fully an adult, not quite with it.
No one deserves to be treated in this way even if physical infirmities have limited their abilities to do all that they once took for granted.
When you grow older, you still have a place.
You still have a part to play.
You still deserve to be treated like an adult human being.
You still deserve respect and dignity.
I bring all of this up because of one verse in today’s gospel lesson, on which I want to focus, Mark 1:31. It says: “So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.”
Jesus has entered the home of the brothers Simon and Andrew. Also living there is Simon’s mother-in-law. Because of her age and relationship to her son-in-law, she has been the matriarch of the household, the one who took charge of caring for visitors.
Hers was an elaborated role, one formulated by centuries of custom and habit. For her to be unable to fulfill her duties would have been a sign that her prime had passed. This fate would have been a brutal event for the old woman.
When Jesus arrives, He finds her ill, unable to perform her role in life. Maybe her daughter-in-law told her something like, “That’s OK, honey. You just lie down. I’ll take care of it, dear. Don’t worry yourself over it, sweetie.” Even if the words had been offered solicitously and with the kindest of intentions, they would have felt like knives to the old lady’s heart. You can almost imagine her thinking: “I’m no longer needed. I can’t do anything. I’m a nobody. Why am I living?”
In fact, in the thirty-eight years since I started doing visits to nursing home residents and shut-ins, I’ve heard words like these many times.
As Christians, we know that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ and not by our works. We know that when Christ went to the cross for us, He verified our infinite value to God no matter what our capacity to do things.
Yet, when we’re no longer able to do things, we feel that pieces of us are dying off.
We wonder, “If I can’t do that or this, am I really me any more?”
The most devastating thing that a human being can think of themselves, no matter their age, is that their life is good for nothing.
Not only is it a devastating thought, it’s a lie!
Jesus underscores that truth by what He does for Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. Mark says: “...he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.”
Jesus restored the woman’s dignity, her place.
He demonstrated that every human life matters, that everybody matters to the God Who made them, the God Who shared their frailties, suffering, and death on the cross, the God Who rose to give new life and new purpose to each of us.
Simon’s mother-in-law was healed and she resumed her life of service.
There is a fundamental principle of the Christian life that we must not fail to notice here. Here it is:
Christ saves all who believe in Him not just for our sake, but also for the sake of those we are called to serve, love, and disciple.
It’s so important, I’m going to repeat that principle again:
Christ saves all who believe in Him not just for our sake, but also for the sake of those we are called to serve, love, and disciple.
This past week, I decided to spend some of my morning quiet time simply praising God for Who He is. Not thanking Him for what He’s done for me, although I do that. Not acknowledging answered prayers, though I do that. But simply praising God for Who He is: holy, wonderful, loving, powerful, perfect, gracious, unfathomably great. I’ve decided to use a few passages of Scripture in which God is praised to “prime the pump” for my own praise of God.
Yesterday, I considered a few verses in Revelation 5, addressed to Jesus, the Lamb of God Who takes away our sins: “Worthy are you...for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation…” (Revelation 5:9).
These words praise Jesus for making it possible for all who believe to be set free from sin and death by Jesus through their faith in Him.
But then we’re told of another reason that Christians of every tribe, language, people, and nation can praise Jesus: “...you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:10).
Jesus sets us free not just from our own sin and death, He also sets us free to play a role in His Kingdom.
Each of us.
Everyone who confesses Jesus as their Lord and Savior!
Jesus makes us His priests, people who serve both God and others, people who will lovingly reign over this earth as Adam and Eve were once intended to do. Jesus has given those who have been saved by God’s grace through their faith in Him the right and the power to live a life like His. (Think of that!)
Jesus once described what that life looks like: “...whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:26-28) We are never more like Jesus when we engage in useful, loving service!
On that day in Capernaum, Jesus set Simon’s mother-in-law free to fulfill her life’s calling, the calling of every disciple of Jesus. She was set free to be a servant, exercising rule over her portion of the Kingdom of God through service and love given in Jesus’ name.
“But, wait a minute,” you might say. “Are you saying that the old woman kept on functioning the way she always had ad infinitum? She never tired? Never aged or deteriorated?”
No. I’m not saying that.
No doubt there came a time when the old woman couldn’t run the household as she always had.
Just as there must have come a time when the wine that Jesus had made from water at Cana ran out. (And what a bummer that must have been!)
Just as Lazarus, who had been raised from the dead by Jesus eventually died. (And what an even bigger bummer that was!)
The disease of original sin courses through the veins of each of us and the wages of sin is still death.
But what Jesus did that day was a sign of His Kingdom.
In His Kingdom, there will come a time when there is no more aging, no more dying. We will keep serving and keep reigning with Jesus in His kingdom.
A time when God “will wipe every tear from [our] eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, [when] the old order of things [will have] passed away." (Revelation 21:4)
Every miracle Jesus ever performed was a sign of what life in His Kingdom beyond the gates of death would be like.
And every one of them was a call for those already made part of His kingdom by grace through faith to fulfill their purpose as Christ’s disciples, whatever our limitations.
Our call as Christ’s disciples was well expressed by John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”
My dad is eighty-eight years old. He can’t do everything he used to be able to do. But this past Thursday, he invited his kids over to the house for a dinner he spent the entire day preparing. There was roast pork, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, and dessert. My dad couldn’t do that every day. He was tuckered out on Thursday night. But he did what he could do that day.
Before we ate, we held hands in a circle and gave thanks to God for our dad, for each other, and for the meal that dad had prepared. And we asked God to use it for the purpose for which we all were made, a life of service in God’s kingdom.
And we can live this life of service, this life of discipleship, no matter our age or limitations.
These days, many of our Living Water children are raising money to help feed children in Haiti. They’re setting tables, dusting, vacuuming. Many are following their parents around the house asking what they can do so that they can do their part. They’re being disciples, serving to share Jesus.
Others find other ways to serve. In his book, Prayer, Ole Hallesby tells about a man from his home village in Norway, who had been significantly disabled from birth. Jörn became increasingly immobilized during his life and eventually, in the last years of his life, was bed-ridden.
But that didn’t stop Jörn from doing his life’s ministry: “...through the school of difficult experiences,” Hallesby explains, “[Jörn] learned the holy art of prayer.” He prayed “for his home community day and night.”
Over the course of time, Jörn came to be a man others in the community sought out for his counsel because they understood his closeness to God. They would come to him to ask for prayers for themselves and for others.
Often at night, near the end of his life when the nights were long and he couldn't sleep two elderly women who cared for him reported that he would pray for every man, woman, and child in the village by name, even the babies he would never see. And as he learned of people’s specific needs, he brought those needs to God.
Hallesby says that Jörn’s funeral was the largest ever held in his community, even though Jörn didn’t have a single relative in the area. Even people who cared nothing for God wept at his casket.
Why?
Because he served as God allowed him to serve in God’s kingdom.
Our call in response to God’s truly amazing grace given to us through Jesus, no matter our age or situation, is to do the same: God has set us free to serve just as He set Simon’s mother-in-law free.
May we all be the servants Jesus has set us free to be.
Amen!
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Mark 1:29-39
On a recent episode of NPR’s Fresh Air, John Leland, a reporter for The New York Times, talked about his book, Happiness is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old. He was asked, “So what are some of the examples of ageism that you see around you that really irritate you the most?” His answer: “I think that every person over a certain age can tell you that they hate being called sweetie or hun or dear…”
Boy, is he right!
As someone in my sixties, I loathe it when a restaurant server or a grocery clerk calls me, “Honey.”
Any person over sixty who gets called “honey” by anyone other than mothers, sweethearts, spouses or friends ought to be able to call the violator out.
When the words honey, hon, sweetie, or dear are used in this way, they reflect a view that the person being addressed is not quite fully an adult, not quite with it.
No one deserves to be treated in this way even if physical infirmities have limited their abilities to do all that they once took for granted.
When you grow older, you still have a place.
You still have a part to play.
You still deserve to be treated like an adult human being.
You still deserve respect and dignity.
I bring all of this up because of one verse in today’s gospel lesson, on which I want to focus, Mark 1:31. It says: “So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.”
Jesus has entered the home of the brothers Simon and Andrew. Also living there is Simon’s mother-in-law. Because of her age and relationship to her son-in-law, she has been the matriarch of the household, the one who took charge of caring for visitors.
Hers was an elaborated role, one formulated by centuries of custom and habit. For her to be unable to fulfill her duties would have been a sign that her prime had passed. This fate would have been a brutal event for the old woman.
When Jesus arrives, He finds her ill, unable to perform her role in life. Maybe her daughter-in-law told her something like, “That’s OK, honey. You just lie down. I’ll take care of it, dear. Don’t worry yourself over it, sweetie.” Even if the words had been offered solicitously and with the kindest of intentions, they would have felt like knives to the old lady’s heart. You can almost imagine her thinking: “I’m no longer needed. I can’t do anything. I’m a nobody. Why am I living?”
In fact, in the thirty-eight years since I started doing visits to nursing home residents and shut-ins, I’ve heard words like these many times.
As Christians, we know that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ and not by our works. We know that when Christ went to the cross for us, He verified our infinite value to God no matter what our capacity to do things.
Yet, when we’re no longer able to do things, we feel that pieces of us are dying off.
We wonder, “If I can’t do that or this, am I really me any more?”
The most devastating thing that a human being can think of themselves, no matter their age, is that their life is good for nothing.
Not only is it a devastating thought, it’s a lie!
Jesus underscores that truth by what He does for Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. Mark says: “...he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.”
Jesus restored the woman’s dignity, her place.
He demonstrated that every human life matters, that everybody matters to the God Who made them, the God Who shared their frailties, suffering, and death on the cross, the God Who rose to give new life and new purpose to each of us.
Simon’s mother-in-law was healed and she resumed her life of service.
There is a fundamental principle of the Christian life that we must not fail to notice here. Here it is:
Christ saves all who believe in Him not just for our sake, but also for the sake of those we are called to serve, love, and disciple.
It’s so important, I’m going to repeat that principle again:
Christ saves all who believe in Him not just for our sake, but also for the sake of those we are called to serve, love, and disciple.
This past week, I decided to spend some of my morning quiet time simply praising God for Who He is. Not thanking Him for what He’s done for me, although I do that. Not acknowledging answered prayers, though I do that. But simply praising God for Who He is: holy, wonderful, loving, powerful, perfect, gracious, unfathomably great. I’ve decided to use a few passages of Scripture in which God is praised to “prime the pump” for my own praise of God.
Yesterday, I considered a few verses in Revelation 5, addressed to Jesus, the Lamb of God Who takes away our sins: “Worthy are you...for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation…” (Revelation 5:9).
These words praise Jesus for making it possible for all who believe to be set free from sin and death by Jesus through their faith in Him.
But then we’re told of another reason that Christians of every tribe, language, people, and nation can praise Jesus: “...you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:10).
Jesus sets us free not just from our own sin and death, He also sets us free to play a role in His Kingdom.
Each of us.
Everyone who confesses Jesus as their Lord and Savior!
Jesus makes us His priests, people who serve both God and others, people who will lovingly reign over this earth as Adam and Eve were once intended to do. Jesus has given those who have been saved by God’s grace through their faith in Him the right and the power to live a life like His. (Think of that!)
Jesus once described what that life looks like: “...whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:26-28) We are never more like Jesus when we engage in useful, loving service!
On that day in Capernaum, Jesus set Simon’s mother-in-law free to fulfill her life’s calling, the calling of every disciple of Jesus. She was set free to be a servant, exercising rule over her portion of the Kingdom of God through service and love given in Jesus’ name.
“But, wait a minute,” you might say. “Are you saying that the old woman kept on functioning the way she always had ad infinitum? She never tired? Never aged or deteriorated?”
No. I’m not saying that.
No doubt there came a time when the old woman couldn’t run the household as she always had.
Just as there must have come a time when the wine that Jesus had made from water at Cana ran out. (And what a bummer that must have been!)
Just as Lazarus, who had been raised from the dead by Jesus eventually died. (And what an even bigger bummer that was!)
The disease of original sin courses through the veins of each of us and the wages of sin is still death.
But what Jesus did that day was a sign of His Kingdom.
In His Kingdom, there will come a time when there is no more aging, no more dying. We will keep serving and keep reigning with Jesus in His kingdom.
A time when God “will wipe every tear from [our] eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, [when] the old order of things [will have] passed away." (Revelation 21:4)
Every miracle Jesus ever performed was a sign of what life in His Kingdom beyond the gates of death would be like.
And every one of them was a call for those already made part of His kingdom by grace through faith to fulfill their purpose as Christ’s disciples, whatever our limitations.
Our call as Christ’s disciples was well expressed by John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”
My dad is eighty-eight years old. He can’t do everything he used to be able to do. But this past Thursday, he invited his kids over to the house for a dinner he spent the entire day preparing. There was roast pork, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, and dessert. My dad couldn’t do that every day. He was tuckered out on Thursday night. But he did what he could do that day.
Before we ate, we held hands in a circle and gave thanks to God for our dad, for each other, and for the meal that dad had prepared. And we asked God to use it for the purpose for which we all were made, a life of service in God’s kingdom.
And we can live this life of service, this life of discipleship, no matter our age or limitations.
These days, many of our Living Water children are raising money to help feed children in Haiti. They’re setting tables, dusting, vacuuming. Many are following their parents around the house asking what they can do so that they can do their part. They’re being disciples, serving to share Jesus.
Others find other ways to serve. In his book, Prayer, Ole Hallesby tells about a man from his home village in Norway, who had been significantly disabled from birth. Jörn became increasingly immobilized during his life and eventually, in the last years of his life, was bed-ridden.
But that didn’t stop Jörn from doing his life’s ministry: “...through the school of difficult experiences,” Hallesby explains, “[Jörn] learned the holy art of prayer.” He prayed “for his home community day and night.”
Over the course of time, Jörn came to be a man others in the community sought out for his counsel because they understood his closeness to God. They would come to him to ask for prayers for themselves and for others.
Often at night, near the end of his life when the nights were long and he couldn't sleep two elderly women who cared for him reported that he would pray for every man, woman, and child in the village by name, even the babies he would never see. And as he learned of people’s specific needs, he brought those needs to God.
Hallesby says that Jörn’s funeral was the largest ever held in his community, even though Jörn didn’t have a single relative in the area. Even people who cared nothing for God wept at his casket.
Why?
Because he served as God allowed him to serve in God’s kingdom.
Our call in response to God’s truly amazing grace given to us through Jesus, no matter our age or situation, is to do the same: God has set us free to serve just as He set Simon’s mother-in-law free.
May we all be the servants Jesus has set us free to be.
Amen!
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Sunday, July 26, 2015
When should you stop praying for something? [Spoiler: Almost never]
In his classic book on prayer, Ole Hallesby gives great advice on what and whether to keep praying about a desire of our heart. After all, if we've been praying for something for awhile and nothing seems to be happening, we might wonder, "Is what I'm asking for wrong? Has God already told me, 'No.'"? (And no can be an answer from God to our prayers.)
But if we love God and still desire the thing for which we've been praying, Hallesby suggests, we should keep praying, even if we've been praying about a particular subject for a long time. We should continue praying with a willingness to accept any answer God gives when it becomes clear to us and with one desire taking an even higher place than the thing for which we've been praying.
He says that we should tell God, in our own words and from the heart, "Grant this request only if it will bring You glory." Our one prevailing desire should be the glory of God.
One might pray: "This is what I'm seeking, God, for so-and-so or for myself. I could be wrong in asking for it. If I am, I trust You to show me. But for now, in case You're delaying a response in order to orchestrate events or to build my character or someone else's character, until we're ready to receive Your blessing, I keep offering this petition. Your will be done and, please, grant this petition if it will bring You glory."
And of course, such a petition, like all prayer petitions, needs to be offered in the name of Jesus, the only way to God's Father heart. Praying in Jesus' name is not a formula for "prayer success." Praying in Jesus' name is an authentic plea on the petitioner's part that what is prayed for will be consistent with the will and honor of God as revealed in Jesus.
I like Hallesby's advice. It's Biblical. Jesus commends persevering prayer. In Romans 8, Paul talks about how we don't really know how to pray as we ought, but we're called to trustingly commend our prayers to God, believing that the Holy Spirit can turn them into the God-honoring petitions that, in our spirits, we want to offer. And the Bible teaches that believers are to do all things to the glory of God, not their own.
Speaking personally, there are some prayer petitions I've experienced lifting up to God regularly for a decade or more, with no answer. In those petitioning years, sometimes I wondered if I should stop. Or, if my petitions were selfish. Or, if they were trite or deemed unnecessary by God. Or, if I was being immature in offering them. Or, if my petitions would somehow not bring God glory.
But believing that there was something God-honoring about them, I kept praying these petitions, all along submitting to God's will and asking God to grant them only if they brought Him glory.
When, after years of praying petitions like that--whether, as I say, for ourselves or for others doesn't matter--we finally experience God's positive answers, as I have, it's a humbling experience. You know you didn't accomplish the blessing that could come from God alone and you know that, in this granted petition, God is being glorified.
In other instances, I've gotten to the point where I was convinced that I needed to stop praying for some things, that God had said, "No" and I must accept that.
And in still other instances---inexplicable, tragic, and sad, people for whom I and others have fervently prayed, have died. The depths of sadness experienced by Christians who lose loved ones or friends after offering desperate prayers is a grief non-believers, with their resignation to the fates of this dying world, cannot understand. It represents one of the most haunting struggles of the Christian life, especially when someone we care about dies and our prayers didn't result in God bringing them healing in this world. We wonder why. Our faith can be shaken.
The only things that make such a tragedy bearable are (1) the promise of Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, to be with His people always in our time on earth, sustaining us, bringing other believers alongside us to bring Christ's love to us, AND (2) the promise of resurrection life in God's perfect kingdom for all who turn from sin and trust in Christ as their God and Savior.
All of the sadness of this world, all our grief in this world, I believe, will one day be explained in the world to come when we live in the direct presence of God.
More than that, we have the promise that God will dry the tears of our earthly griefs; mourning, death, and loss will be gone forever. We will more fully understand the wise words of the apostle Paul, when he says, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:13).
But as we continue to live on this earth, I think Hallesby's suggestion stands.
You should keep praying that petition that's on your heart.
If you seek to be a faithful follower of Jesus and it hits you to pray for something, there's a good chance you should keep praying for it.
God may answer the prayer in ways you can't imagine. After all, when we pray, we don't command God as to how He answers our requests; we submit to His sovereignty, to His will.
That's why Hallesby tells us that when we're not sure about our petition, but feel compelled to offer it anyway, we should tell God with authentic submission: "Grant this request only if it will bring You glory."
I'm definitely in the keep-on-praying camp.
Amen!
But if we love God and still desire the thing for which we've been praying, Hallesby suggests, we should keep praying, even if we've been praying about a particular subject for a long time. We should continue praying with a willingness to accept any answer God gives when it becomes clear to us and with one desire taking an even higher place than the thing for which we've been praying.
He says that we should tell God, in our own words and from the heart, "Grant this request only if it will bring You glory." Our one prevailing desire should be the glory of God.
One might pray: "This is what I'm seeking, God, for so-and-so or for myself. I could be wrong in asking for it. If I am, I trust You to show me. But for now, in case You're delaying a response in order to orchestrate events or to build my character or someone else's character, until we're ready to receive Your blessing, I keep offering this petition. Your will be done and, please, grant this petition if it will bring You glory."
And of course, such a petition, like all prayer petitions, needs to be offered in the name of Jesus, the only way to God's Father heart. Praying in Jesus' name is not a formula for "prayer success." Praying in Jesus' name is an authentic plea on the petitioner's part that what is prayed for will be consistent with the will and honor of God as revealed in Jesus.
I like Hallesby's advice. It's Biblical. Jesus commends persevering prayer. In Romans 8, Paul talks about how we don't really know how to pray as we ought, but we're called to trustingly commend our prayers to God, believing that the Holy Spirit can turn them into the God-honoring petitions that, in our spirits, we want to offer. And the Bible teaches that believers are to do all things to the glory of God, not their own.
Speaking personally, there are some prayer petitions I've experienced lifting up to God regularly for a decade or more, with no answer. In those petitioning years, sometimes I wondered if I should stop. Or, if my petitions were selfish. Or, if they were trite or deemed unnecessary by God. Or, if I was being immature in offering them. Or, if my petitions would somehow not bring God glory.
But believing that there was something God-honoring about them, I kept praying these petitions, all along submitting to God's will and asking God to grant them only if they brought Him glory.
When, after years of praying petitions like that--whether, as I say, for ourselves or for others doesn't matter--we finally experience God's positive answers, as I have, it's a humbling experience. You know you didn't accomplish the blessing that could come from God alone and you know that, in this granted petition, God is being glorified.
In other instances, I've gotten to the point where I was convinced that I needed to stop praying for some things, that God had said, "No" and I must accept that.
And in still other instances---inexplicable, tragic, and sad, people for whom I and others have fervently prayed, have died. The depths of sadness experienced by Christians who lose loved ones or friends after offering desperate prayers is a grief non-believers, with their resignation to the fates of this dying world, cannot understand. It represents one of the most haunting struggles of the Christian life, especially when someone we care about dies and our prayers didn't result in God bringing them healing in this world. We wonder why. Our faith can be shaken.
The only things that make such a tragedy bearable are (1) the promise of Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, to be with His people always in our time on earth, sustaining us, bringing other believers alongside us to bring Christ's love to us, AND (2) the promise of resurrection life in God's perfect kingdom for all who turn from sin and trust in Christ as their God and Savior.
All of the sadness of this world, all our grief in this world, I believe, will one day be explained in the world to come when we live in the direct presence of God.
More than that, we have the promise that God will dry the tears of our earthly griefs; mourning, death, and loss will be gone forever. We will more fully understand the wise words of the apostle Paul, when he says, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:13).
But as we continue to live on this earth, I think Hallesby's suggestion stands.
You should keep praying that petition that's on your heart.
If you seek to be a faithful follower of Jesus and it hits you to pray for something, there's a good chance you should keep praying for it.
God may answer the prayer in ways you can't imagine. After all, when we pray, we don't command God as to how He answers our requests; we submit to His sovereignty, to His will.
That's why Hallesby tells us that when we're not sure about our petition, but feel compelled to offer it anyway, we should tell God with authentic submission: "Grant this request only if it will bring You glory."
I'm definitely in the keep-on-praying camp.
Amen!
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Keep praying...
...and let God decide how to answer. Don't edit your communications with God. He sees what you're feeling and thinking anyway. Lift your concerns to him with abandon, honesty, and submissiveness.
Don't worry whether what you pray for is "important enough" for God's attention. If they're important to us, God simply wants us to invite Him into those situations that concern us.
Don't worry whether the request is "appropriate" or not. God will sort that out for us. In time, on His schedule, God will, as needed, correct and respond to the requests of those who seek Him.
In his classic on Prayer, Ole Hallesby writes:
Don't worry whether what you pray for is "important enough" for God's attention. If they're important to us, God simply wants us to invite Him into those situations that concern us.
Don't worry whether the request is "appropriate" or not. God will sort that out for us. In time, on His schedule, God will, as needed, correct and respond to the requests of those who seek Him.
In his classic on Prayer, Ole Hallesby writes:
...prayer is ordained for the purpose of glorifying the name of God. Therefore, whether you pray for big things or for little things, say to God, "If it will glorify Thy name, then grant my prayer and help me. But it it will not glorify Thy name, then let me remain in my predicament. And give me power to glorify Thy name in the situation in which I find myself."
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
Patience in Prayer
Although the little story at the beginning of today's installment of Our Daily Bread seems trite and unnecessary, the point is a good one.
By the way, I'm often asked by people, "What if I'm not certain that what I'm asking for in prayer is pleasing to God?" And, "When should I stop praying for something?" (In other words, "When should I accept that God has told me no and move on?")
In his book on prayer, Ole Hallesby gives great advice on the first question. If we're uncertain about the advisability of the thing for which we're praying, we should own our uncertainty and just tell God, in our own words and from the heart, "Grant this request only if it will bring You glory." God isn't a Ouija board we manipulate to get to where we want to go. He's not an ATM. To pray to the God we know in Jesus Christ is to submit to His will. But there is nothing wrong with asking...ever.
When I pray in this way, I also ask God to demonstrate so clearly that, if He is saying no to my request, even I can understand that I need to stop bringing that prayer to Him.
Until I have that clear sense, I don't stop praying. In Luke 18:1-8, Jesus tells a parable, the purpose of which was, Luke says, to tell His followers, "...that they should always pray and not give up."
When I pair this persistence in prayer with a persistent desire that God only answer the prayer positively if it will bring Him glory, I feel that I have God's permission to keep on praying.
And I do.
Read the whole thing.
[Also: Check out Ole Hallesby's Prayer. ]
Our prayers often revolve around asking God to hurry up and bless what we want to do. What if God’s answer to us is simply, “Be patient. Wait upon Me”? We can pray with David: “Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord. Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly” (Psalm 5:3).Patience in prayer is difficult. (Really, patience in anything is difficult, isn't it?) And no matter how many times I have seen God work in me and in circumstances for which I've prayed for long periods of time, I still find patience in prayer difficult. God seems to need to teach me the same lessons repeatedly, including this one about waiting for Him and His timing and His will. Thankfully, He's more patient than I am!
By the way, I'm often asked by people, "What if I'm not certain that what I'm asking for in prayer is pleasing to God?" And, "When should I stop praying for something?" (In other words, "When should I accept that God has told me no and move on?")
In his book on prayer, Ole Hallesby gives great advice on the first question. If we're uncertain about the advisability of the thing for which we're praying, we should own our uncertainty and just tell God, in our own words and from the heart, "Grant this request only if it will bring You glory." God isn't a Ouija board we manipulate to get to where we want to go. He's not an ATM. To pray to the God we know in Jesus Christ is to submit to His will. But there is nothing wrong with asking...ever.
When I pray in this way, I also ask God to demonstrate so clearly that, if He is saying no to my request, even I can understand that I need to stop bringing that prayer to Him.
Until I have that clear sense, I don't stop praying. In Luke 18:1-8, Jesus tells a parable, the purpose of which was, Luke says, to tell His followers, "...that they should always pray and not give up."
When I pair this persistence in prayer with a persistent desire that God only answer the prayer positively if it will bring Him glory, I feel that I have God's permission to keep on praying.
And I do.
Read the whole thing.
[Also: Check out Ole Hallesby's Prayer. ]
Sunday, June 02, 2013
The Centurion and What Amazes Jesus
[This was written to be shared with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio during Sunday worship today.]
Luke 7:1-10
Jesus did things that amazed a lot of people during His time on earth: turning water into wine, raising dead people to life, casting out demons, dying a death on the cross He didn’t deserve to pay the price for our sins, rising from the dead to give eternal life to all who repent for sin and surrender to Him. To this day, Jesus amazes: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch--undeserving, imperfect, sinful old bag of wind--like me.” That’s amazing!
But have you ever thought about what it would take to amaze Jesus?
Jesus is God in the flesh. He’s the author of amazing. The Bible says that in Jesus, “all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible...all things have been created through Him and for Him...[and] in Him all things hold together.” So, what would it take to amaze Jesus?
Interestingly, the Gospels, the Bible’s authoritative accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, tell us that Jesus was amazed two times during His earthly ministry.
The first time is recorded by two of the gospel writers, Matthew and Mark. Let’s take a look at Mark’s version of things, found in Mark 6:5-6. After beginning His public ministry--teaching and preaching, calling people to repent and believe the good news that He has come to bring God’s kingdom into our fallen world, and performing miracles, Jesus goes home to Nazareth. But Jesus’ fellow Nazarenes refused to trust in Him. “Hey,” they told each other, “we know this kid. He’s Mary’s boy. We know His brothers and sisters.”
Familiarity, you know, breeds contempt. The people of Nazareth thought they knew Jesus. But they clearly hadn’t gotten to know Jesus.
If they’d known Jesus, they would have known about His uniqueness. He had never been in trouble. He had never hurt anyone. He had never misused God’s Name, never gotten involved in sexual shenanigans, never had any shady business dealings. Jesus was sinless and had they reflected on that, they would have understood why their fellow Nazarene was out in the world pronouncing and demonstrating the arrival of the Kingdom of God.
When Jesus returned to Nazareth though, He didn’t find faith, but contempt. Look, please at what verses 5 and 6 tell us: “Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He marveled [Jesus was amazed!] because of their unbelief...”
I wonder if today, Jesus were to walk into this sanctuary, whether He would have cause to be amazed by our unbelief? Over our lifetimes, we’ve gotten to know Jesus. But is our knowledge of Jesus something that fires and inspires our faith in Him, our trust in Him, our dependence on Him, our love for Him, our acts of sacrifice and service in His Name? Or has it bred something like contempt?
I know that speaking for myself, I sometimes pray, giving my concerns to God, and then, as I rise from my knees, take them right back onto my own shoulders. Don’t I trust Jesus? Don’t I believe it when I pray, “Thy will be done”? Would Jesus marvel at my unbelief? This is why I turn to Christ again and again each day: Moved by His loving grace, anxious to let Him crucify the old Mark and give life to the Mark who will live with Him in eternity, I repent and grasp hold of Christ’s grace any time I can!
There is also unbelief, a functional atheism, among some Christians today who comfortably sit in their pews on Sunday mornings and go through the motions of faith, but never repent for sin, never trust Christ with their lives, never ask that His will be done except in rote prayer, never appreciate what Christ has done to bring them forgiveness and everlasting life, and who, when they run into the inevitable pain and difficulties that are part of life in this fallen, sinful, imperfect world, complain that God isn’t dancing to their tunes, making things easy for them, or approving their favorite sins of choice. That, I’m sure, amazes Jesus.
Our Gospel lesson for this morning records the other time in His earthly ministry that Jesus was amazed. Please turn to it, Luke 7:1-10.
Jesus has just concluded what scholars call His Sermon on the Plain. He goes to Capernaum, a city that sets at the northeast tip of the Sea of Galilee.
Verse 2 says: “And a certain centurion’s servant, who was dear to him, was sick and ready to die.” A centurion, of course, was an officer of the Roman army, who commanded a maximum of 100 soldiers--a century of soldiers. The Romans occupied Judea and Galilee and were resented. But already in this verse, we’re alerted to there being something different about this centurion. He is a what was called a God-fearer, a Gentile who believes in the God of the Jews.
His servant, the verse tells us, was “dear” to him. The word translated as dear is a compound word: entimos. It means honored, respected, distinguished and related to a word for precious, valuable, worthy of honor. This centurion esteems the servant and cares about what happens to him.
The centurion hears that Jesus is in town and he asks the local Jewish elders, the officials of the synagogue, to go ask Jesus to heal his servant.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the centurion does this instead of approaching Jesus himself. Gentiles were considered “outsiders” by the Jews, damned with no chance of knowing God. That may be one reason for the centurion not going to Jesus with His request.
But I think there’s a deeper reason for it: He is aware of his own faults, deficiencies, unworthiness, and sin. The believer in Jesus Christ should feel no hesitation at all about approaching the God we know in Christ in prayer. That’s why Hebrews 4:16, in light of the fact that Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross makes those who believe in Him worthy of coming to God in prayer, says: “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
But if we ever approach God in prayer with the notion that what we ask for are things we deserve, we approach God with the wrong heart and the wrong attitude.
The great 20th-century Lutheran theologian and author Ole Hallesby, in his book Why I Am a Christian writes: “...there is no other way of becoming personally assured of Christ and of the Christian faith than...the way of the sinner, the way which leads through complete despair of self.”
Until we know how desperately we need Christ and His blessings and how desperately unworthy we are of them, we will never ask Him for anything rightly!
The centurion sees two things clearly: his own unworthiness and Christ’s mercy and grace. And so, aware of his own deficiencies, he asks friends to bring his request--not for himself, but for his servant--before the Lord Jesus, Who has no deficiencies. He believes that, in Christ, God can give grace, undeserved favor.
His Jewish friends don’t have that kind of faith. They think that a human being can be worthy of God’s favor. They think that to get God’s blessings and favor, you make deals with God. That’s why in verse 5, they try to build a case for the centurion. They talk about the centurion’s works. “He loves our nation,” they tell Jesus, “He built our synagogue.”
They don’t get it. Neither do we if we think that we can earn God’s favor.
We know that the ratio of births to deaths in this world remains 1 to 1. Not everyone who is ill for whom we pray will be healed. But we do know that everyone--Jew, Gentile, sick, healthy--who calls on the Name of Jesus Christ, repenting for sin and trusting in Him for forgiveness and new life, will be saved from sin, death, and the devil.
And that won’t happen because of their virtues. It will only happen because of the love, mercy, and grace of the Savior on Whom they call, we call. We are saved by God’s grace in Christ and our faith in the grace-giver, not by our non-existent goodness or good deeds.
As Jesus approaches the centurion’s house, the centurion sends a few more friends to Jesus with a new message. Verse 6: “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof. Therefore I did not even think myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed.” He explains that as a soldier, he understands authority. He understands that if the Lord of all creation commands the disease that afflicts his servant to be gone, it will be gone.
Verse 9 tells us: “When Jesus heard these things, He marveled at him [Jesus was amazed by the centurion!], and turned and said to the crowd that followed Him, ‘I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!” When the centurion’s friends returned to his house, they found that the servant had been made well.
Folks: If you turn from sin and trust in Christ, you can know you belong to Him no matter!
If you seek it, Jesus Christ will prevent Satan from reminding you of the sin for which you long ago repented and you can know that Satan will be constrained.
If you need help to resist temptation, Christ can give you that power.
If you need the strength to bear hard circumstances, Christ can give you the strength you need.
Jesus Christ, Who died and rose and sent His Holy Spirit to those who believe in Him, can give you a trust that no matter what happens to you in this world, you belong to Christ for eternity. Nothing can snatch you from Christ’s hands!
The centurion knew the extent, the height, the eternal depths, and the power of Jesus‘ authority.
If there is one thing we need in Christ’s Church today, one thing that we who call ourselves Christians need more than anything, it’s a renewed understanding of Jesus‘ authority, a renewed commitment to living under Jesus‘ authority and grace alone!
We need to learn again what the witnesses of His resurrection told us: Jesus Christ is Lord of everything!
Faith informed by an understanding that only Christ has authority over life, death, and sin gives us peace and hope and joy even in the midst of life’s difficulties.
And that’s the faith that amazed Jesus when He saw it in the centurion!
May our prayer be, “Lord, build faith that rejoices in Christ’s grace AND respects Christ’s authority within me. Help me to trust in Jesus Christ and His Word alone!”
May Christ give us a faith in Him and Him alone that amazes Him, a faith that no longer seeks to assert our authority or power or selfish ends, but seeks only to honor and glorify the One Who died and rose to give us life with God! Amen
Luke 7:1-10
Jesus did things that amazed a lot of people during His time on earth: turning water into wine, raising dead people to life, casting out demons, dying a death on the cross He didn’t deserve to pay the price for our sins, rising from the dead to give eternal life to all who repent for sin and surrender to Him. To this day, Jesus amazes: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch--undeserving, imperfect, sinful old bag of wind--like me.” That’s amazing!
But have you ever thought about what it would take to amaze Jesus?
Jesus is God in the flesh. He’s the author of amazing. The Bible says that in Jesus, “all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible...all things have been created through Him and for Him...[and] in Him all things hold together.” So, what would it take to amaze Jesus?
Interestingly, the Gospels, the Bible’s authoritative accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, tell us that Jesus was amazed two times during His earthly ministry.
The first time is recorded by two of the gospel writers, Matthew and Mark. Let’s take a look at Mark’s version of things, found in Mark 6:5-6. After beginning His public ministry--teaching and preaching, calling people to repent and believe the good news that He has come to bring God’s kingdom into our fallen world, and performing miracles, Jesus goes home to Nazareth. But Jesus’ fellow Nazarenes refused to trust in Him. “Hey,” they told each other, “we know this kid. He’s Mary’s boy. We know His brothers and sisters.”
Familiarity, you know, breeds contempt. The people of Nazareth thought they knew Jesus. But they clearly hadn’t gotten to know Jesus.
If they’d known Jesus, they would have known about His uniqueness. He had never been in trouble. He had never hurt anyone. He had never misused God’s Name, never gotten involved in sexual shenanigans, never had any shady business dealings. Jesus was sinless and had they reflected on that, they would have understood why their fellow Nazarene was out in the world pronouncing and demonstrating the arrival of the Kingdom of God.
When Jesus returned to Nazareth though, He didn’t find faith, but contempt. Look, please at what verses 5 and 6 tell us: “Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He marveled [Jesus was amazed!] because of their unbelief...”
I wonder if today, Jesus were to walk into this sanctuary, whether He would have cause to be amazed by our unbelief? Over our lifetimes, we’ve gotten to know Jesus. But is our knowledge of Jesus something that fires and inspires our faith in Him, our trust in Him, our dependence on Him, our love for Him, our acts of sacrifice and service in His Name? Or has it bred something like contempt?
I know that speaking for myself, I sometimes pray, giving my concerns to God, and then, as I rise from my knees, take them right back onto my own shoulders. Don’t I trust Jesus? Don’t I believe it when I pray, “Thy will be done”? Would Jesus marvel at my unbelief? This is why I turn to Christ again and again each day: Moved by His loving grace, anxious to let Him crucify the old Mark and give life to the Mark who will live with Him in eternity, I repent and grasp hold of Christ’s grace any time I can!
There is also unbelief, a functional atheism, among some Christians today who comfortably sit in their pews on Sunday mornings and go through the motions of faith, but never repent for sin, never trust Christ with their lives, never ask that His will be done except in rote prayer, never appreciate what Christ has done to bring them forgiveness and everlasting life, and who, when they run into the inevitable pain and difficulties that are part of life in this fallen, sinful, imperfect world, complain that God isn’t dancing to their tunes, making things easy for them, or approving their favorite sins of choice. That, I’m sure, amazes Jesus.
Our Gospel lesson for this morning records the other time in His earthly ministry that Jesus was amazed. Please turn to it, Luke 7:1-10.
Jesus has just concluded what scholars call His Sermon on the Plain. He goes to Capernaum, a city that sets at the northeast tip of the Sea of Galilee.
Verse 2 says: “And a certain centurion’s servant, who was dear to him, was sick and ready to die.” A centurion, of course, was an officer of the Roman army, who commanded a maximum of 100 soldiers--a century of soldiers. The Romans occupied Judea and Galilee and were resented. But already in this verse, we’re alerted to there being something different about this centurion. He is a what was called a God-fearer, a Gentile who believes in the God of the Jews.
His servant, the verse tells us, was “dear” to him. The word translated as dear is a compound word: entimos. It means honored, respected, distinguished and related to a word for precious, valuable, worthy of honor. This centurion esteems the servant and cares about what happens to him.
The centurion hears that Jesus is in town and he asks the local Jewish elders, the officials of the synagogue, to go ask Jesus to heal his servant.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the centurion does this instead of approaching Jesus himself. Gentiles were considered “outsiders” by the Jews, damned with no chance of knowing God. That may be one reason for the centurion not going to Jesus with His request.
But I think there’s a deeper reason for it: He is aware of his own faults, deficiencies, unworthiness, and sin. The believer in Jesus Christ should feel no hesitation at all about approaching the God we know in Christ in prayer. That’s why Hebrews 4:16, in light of the fact that Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross makes those who believe in Him worthy of coming to God in prayer, says: “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
But if we ever approach God in prayer with the notion that what we ask for are things we deserve, we approach God with the wrong heart and the wrong attitude.
The great 20th-century Lutheran theologian and author Ole Hallesby, in his book Why I Am a Christian writes: “...there is no other way of becoming personally assured of Christ and of the Christian faith than...the way of the sinner, the way which leads through complete despair of self.”
Until we know how desperately we need Christ and His blessings and how desperately unworthy we are of them, we will never ask Him for anything rightly!
The centurion sees two things clearly: his own unworthiness and Christ’s mercy and grace. And so, aware of his own deficiencies, he asks friends to bring his request--not for himself, but for his servant--before the Lord Jesus, Who has no deficiencies. He believes that, in Christ, God can give grace, undeserved favor.
His Jewish friends don’t have that kind of faith. They think that a human being can be worthy of God’s favor. They think that to get God’s blessings and favor, you make deals with God. That’s why in verse 5, they try to build a case for the centurion. They talk about the centurion’s works. “He loves our nation,” they tell Jesus, “He built our synagogue.”
They don’t get it. Neither do we if we think that we can earn God’s favor.
We know that the ratio of births to deaths in this world remains 1 to 1. Not everyone who is ill for whom we pray will be healed. But we do know that everyone--Jew, Gentile, sick, healthy--who calls on the Name of Jesus Christ, repenting for sin and trusting in Him for forgiveness and new life, will be saved from sin, death, and the devil.
And that won’t happen because of their virtues. It will only happen because of the love, mercy, and grace of the Savior on Whom they call, we call. We are saved by God’s grace in Christ and our faith in the grace-giver, not by our non-existent goodness or good deeds.
As Jesus approaches the centurion’s house, the centurion sends a few more friends to Jesus with a new message. Verse 6: “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof. Therefore I did not even think myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed.” He explains that as a soldier, he understands authority. He understands that if the Lord of all creation commands the disease that afflicts his servant to be gone, it will be gone.
Verse 9 tells us: “When Jesus heard these things, He marveled at him [Jesus was amazed by the centurion!], and turned and said to the crowd that followed Him, ‘I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!” When the centurion’s friends returned to his house, they found that the servant had been made well.
Folks: If you turn from sin and trust in Christ, you can know you belong to Him no matter!
If you seek it, Jesus Christ will prevent Satan from reminding you of the sin for which you long ago repented and you can know that Satan will be constrained.
If you need help to resist temptation, Christ can give you that power.
If you need the strength to bear hard circumstances, Christ can give you the strength you need.
Jesus Christ, Who died and rose and sent His Holy Spirit to those who believe in Him, can give you a trust that no matter what happens to you in this world, you belong to Christ for eternity. Nothing can snatch you from Christ’s hands!
The centurion knew the extent, the height, the eternal depths, and the power of Jesus‘ authority.
If there is one thing we need in Christ’s Church today, one thing that we who call ourselves Christians need more than anything, it’s a renewed understanding of Jesus‘ authority, a renewed commitment to living under Jesus‘ authority and grace alone!
We need to learn again what the witnesses of His resurrection told us: Jesus Christ is Lord of everything!
Faith informed by an understanding that only Christ has authority over life, death, and sin gives us peace and hope and joy even in the midst of life’s difficulties.
And that’s the faith that amazed Jesus when He saw it in the centurion!
May our prayer be, “Lord, build faith that rejoices in Christ’s grace AND respects Christ’s authority within me. Help me to trust in Jesus Christ and His Word alone!”
May Christ give us a faith in Him and Him alone that amazes Him, a faith that no longer seeks to assert our authority or power or selfish ends, but seeks only to honor and glorify the One Who died and rose to give us life with God! Amen
Friday, May 24, 2013
How Can You Believe in Jesus Christ?
There are people who want to believe in Jesus Christ, but find it difficult to do so.
The fact is that none of us can ever know the truth about Jesus Christ, God made flesh, the Savior Who came to die and rise and offer everlasting life to all who believe in Him, until we dare to experience Him.
The great Norwegian Lutheran theologian Ole Hallesby, in his book Why I Am a Christian, gives us five things that we can do to experience Jesus.
First, read the New Testament. Contrary to some of the psuedo-scholarship referred to in the novel, The DaVinci Code, the New Testament is accurate in its portrayal of Jesus inspired by God that has withstood the challenge and scrutiny of many skeptics. By reading the New Testament, you will get to know Jesus. Don’t worry about what you don’t understand. Instead, savor and apply what you do understand.
Next, Hallesby suggests, that we begin to pray. Talk with God honestly about your doubts, fears, hopes, and joys. Make yourself vulnerable to God and open to His guidance.
Third, while praying, should make an honest inventory of yourself , asking God to show you what you need to do to live life as He designed it to be lived. You will find God orchestrating events, encounters, and thought processes in your life that will move you increasingly into Christ's orbit and give you greater confidence about the faith you desire to have.
Fourth, participate in Holy Communion when it’s offered. We Lutheran Christians, for example, believe that in the bread and wine, Jesus offers Himself body and blood and embodies His forgiving love to us. In Communion, God takes on flesh and lives among us again. How that works, I don't know. Holy Communion is a deep mystery. I only know that, in ways I cannot explain, it works: it connects me intimately to Jesus, connects me to His eternal Church, and brings me the forgiveness of my sins, among other blessings.
Even if we don't understand how the bread and wine of Holy Communion are also Jesus' body and blood, we have His word on it. In recalling the night when Jesus first instituted Holy Communion, the apostle Paul writes:
Finally, Hallesby says, we should fellowship with people who are wholeheartedly convinced that Jesus is the real deal, the Word, the Savior Who lights our ways.
The nineteenth century English preacher Charles Spurgeon was once asked to explain why so many people flocked to his church on Sunday mornings to hear him preach the Gospel. Spurgeon said that he spent the week setting himself on fire with the Word of God and people came on Sundays to watch him burn. When we spend time in the fellowship of believers in Christ, our faith will be ignited.
When we allow ourselves to experience Jesus Christ, He will light our way through even the darkest of passages of life, enabling us to cope and inspiring us to love our neighbors--even those across the ocean--so that they too can be given light in their darkness and hope for their futures.
The fact is that none of us can ever know the truth about Jesus Christ, God made flesh, the Savior Who came to die and rise and offer everlasting life to all who believe in Him, until we dare to experience Him.
The great Norwegian Lutheran theologian Ole Hallesby, in his book Why I Am a Christian, gives us five things that we can do to experience Jesus.
First, read the New Testament. Contrary to some of the psuedo-scholarship referred to in the novel, The DaVinci Code, the New Testament is accurate in its portrayal of Jesus inspired by God that has withstood the challenge and scrutiny of many skeptics. By reading the New Testament, you will get to know Jesus. Don’t worry about what you don’t understand. Instead, savor and apply what you do understand.
Next, Hallesby suggests, that we begin to pray. Talk with God honestly about your doubts, fears, hopes, and joys. Make yourself vulnerable to God and open to His guidance.
Third, while praying, should make an honest inventory of yourself , asking God to show you what you need to do to live life as He designed it to be lived. You will find God orchestrating events, encounters, and thought processes in your life that will move you increasingly into Christ's orbit and give you greater confidence about the faith you desire to have.
Fourth, participate in Holy Communion when it’s offered. We Lutheran Christians, for example, believe that in the bread and wine, Jesus offers Himself body and blood and embodies His forgiving love to us. In Communion, God takes on flesh and lives among us again. How that works, I don't know. Holy Communion is a deep mystery. I only know that, in ways I cannot explain, it works: it connects me intimately to Jesus, connects me to His eternal Church, and brings me the forgiveness of my sins, among other blessings.
Even if we don't understand how the bread and wine of Holy Communion are also Jesus' body and blood, we have His word on it. In recalling the night when Jesus first instituted Holy Communion, the apostle Paul writes:
...the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” (1 Corinthians 11:23-25)Notice Jesus' use of the verb is. For Jesus, there is no question as to what the definition of the word is is. Nor should there be for us, even if we can't understand or explain it: When we receive the bread and wine of the Sacrament, we also receive Christ's body and blood in an intimate act of sharing by God that is one of the greatest blessings a human being can enjoy!
Finally, Hallesby says, we should fellowship with people who are wholeheartedly convinced that Jesus is the real deal, the Word, the Savior Who lights our ways.
The nineteenth century English preacher Charles Spurgeon was once asked to explain why so many people flocked to his church on Sunday mornings to hear him preach the Gospel. Spurgeon said that he spent the week setting himself on fire with the Word of God and people came on Sundays to watch him burn. When we spend time in the fellowship of believers in Christ, our faith will be ignited.
When we allow ourselves to experience Jesus Christ, He will light our way through even the darkest of passages of life, enabling us to cope and inspiring us to love our neighbors--even those across the ocean--so that they too can be given light in their darkness and hope for their futures.
Monday, January 07, 2013
5 Thoughts on Prayer for the New Year
The beginning of a new year is often a time when people resolve to have a more active prayer life. But through the years, I've seen people who make this resolution with sincerity find it tough to pursue. So, here are a few thoughts on prayer to help you have a fulfilling prayer life.
1. Remember that prayer is a lot simpler than you may think. "What should I say?" people have asked me.
Jesus says that He calls those who follow Him and obey Him by trusting in Him for their salvation are His friends (John 15:5; John 6:29).
So, ask yourself, "How do I talk with my friends?" Before you get together with your friends, do you sit down and put together an agenda?
Formal, public prayer may sometimes require more forethought and planning. But if the God made known to all the world in Jesus Christ is your friend, just talk with Him.
2. Remember that prayer is a lot more complicated than you may think.
I love something C.S. Lewis writes in his classic, Mere Christianity:
3. Remember that it's likely your most genuine, authentic praying will happen when you are so overwhelmed by your circumstances that you don't know what to pray.
The Bible teaches that God's power is brought to bear perfectly in our lives when we are strong enough to admit our vulnerability and weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
This is why Ole Hallesby, a great Lutheran pastor and teacher of the last century, said that there are two elements that must be present in order for prayer to actually be prayer:
4. Nothing you pray about, no request you make, is stupid.
As you continue to submit to God, He may show you through His Word, the Bible, and through counsel consistent with the Bible that you hear or learn in other ways, that some of your requests as ill-advised or even contrary to the will of God.
But never be afraid to speak your mind and heart to God!
Someone, Bill Hybels among others, has said that, as Jesus promises, God always answers prayer offered in Jesus' Name. But God may answer our prayers in four different ways:
5. It's good to keep God's priorities for prayer in mind. When God in the flesh, Jesus, was asked by His disciples how to pray, He gave as a model what we call, "the Lord's Prayer" or the "Our Father."
The prayer is divisible into sections and prayer petitions, as Martin Luther does in The Small Catechism:
The Lord's Prayer represents a way we can ask God to move us away from selfishness to holiness in our praying.
The introduction and the first three petitions are all about God's Name and will being honored by the world and us. It isn't until the fourth petition that Jesus teaches us to pray for something for ourselves and even then, He doesn't tell us to pray for a iPad or a Mercedes-Benz, but what we need this day to live.
Seeking to have our prayer lives reflect the kind of concern for God and for others that Jesus models in the Lord's Prayer is a good goal.
I'm still working on that myself and, because I'm a sinner saved only by the grace God grants to those who surrender to Jesus, I no doubt will have to continue working on it until the moment I draw my last breath on earth.But some goals are worth pursuing no matter how outrageous the odds!
1. Remember that prayer is a lot simpler than you may think. "What should I say?" people have asked me.
Jesus says that He calls those who follow Him and obey Him by trusting in Him for their salvation are His friends (John 15:5; John 6:29).
So, ask yourself, "How do I talk with my friends?" Before you get together with your friends, do you sit down and put together an agenda?
Formal, public prayer may sometimes require more forethought and planning. But if the God made known to all the world in Jesus Christ is your friend, just talk with Him.
2. Remember that prayer is a lot more complicated than you may think.
I love something C.S. Lewis writes in his classic, Mere Christianity:
An ordinary Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get in touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him [God the Holy Spirit, Who comes to us in Holy Baptism]. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God--that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying--the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on--the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being [the Holy Trinity, one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers.Every prayer we offer is an instance of God empowering us to militate against our inborn impulse to self-sufficiency and self-will. And that is a complicated miracle of grace. Never lose your wonder at that!
3. Remember that it's likely your most genuine, authentic praying will happen when you are so overwhelmed by your circumstances that you don't know what to pray.
The Bible teaches that God's power is brought to bear perfectly in our lives when we are strong enough to admit our vulnerability and weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
This is why Ole Hallesby, a great Lutheran pastor and teacher of the last century, said that there are two elements that must be present in order for prayer to actually be prayer:
- faith in the God revealed in Jesus Christ and
- helplessness, the realization that only God and not we ourselves can make happen the things for which we pray.
...we do not know how to pray as we ought, but...[the Holy] Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words...Go to God. God will take care of the rest.
4. Nothing you pray about, no request you make, is stupid.
As you continue to submit to God, He may show you through His Word, the Bible, and through counsel consistent with the Bible that you hear or learn in other ways, that some of your requests as ill-advised or even contrary to the will of God.
But never be afraid to speak your mind and heart to God!
Someone, Bill Hybels among others, has said that, as Jesus promises, God always answers prayer offered in Jesus' Name. But God may answer our prayers in four different ways:
- God may say, "No"
- God may say, "Maybe"
- God may say, "Wait"
- God may say, "Yes"
5. It's good to keep God's priorities for prayer in mind. When God in the flesh, Jesus, was asked by His disciples how to pray, He gave as a model what we call, "the Lord's Prayer" or the "Our Father."
The prayer is divisible into sections and prayer petitions, as Martin Luther does in The Small Catechism:
- The introduction: Our Father, Who art in heaven
- The first petition: Hallowed be Thy Name
- The second petition: Thy kingdom come
- The third petition: Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven
- The fourth petition: Give us this day our daily bread
- The fifth petition: And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us
- The sixth petition: And lead us not into temptation
- The seventh petition: But deliver us from evil
- The conclusion (added by the Church, based on Scripture): For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen
The Lord's Prayer represents a way we can ask God to move us away from selfishness to holiness in our praying.
The introduction and the first three petitions are all about God's Name and will being honored by the world and us. It isn't until the fourth petition that Jesus teaches us to pray for something for ourselves and even then, He doesn't tell us to pray for a iPad or a Mercedes-Benz, but what we need this day to live.
Seeking to have our prayer lives reflect the kind of concern for God and for others that Jesus models in the Lord's Prayer is a good goal.
I'm still working on that myself and, because I'm a sinner saved only by the grace God grants to those who surrender to Jesus, I no doubt will have to continue working on it until the moment I draw my last breath on earth.But some goals are worth pursuing no matter how outrageous the odds!
Sunday, February 19, 2012
How to See Jesus
[This is the sermon prepared for today's worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. While the one given had a lot of what's here, this isn't the actual sermon delivered.]
Mark 9:2-9
On this Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday of the Epiphany season, we’re going to explore the Gospel of Mark’s account of the day that Jesus took three of His disciples--Peter, James, and John--to a mountaintop and His glory as God was made plain to see.
But to set the stage, we need to look at a passage in the Gospel of John. So, turn to John 1:14, please. John, you remember, says that Jesus is the Word, Who was with God and was God. John then says this: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us...”
The biggest word in that verse is the verb, dwelt. In the Greek in which John originally wrote his gospel, the word translated as dwelt is eskenosen. It’s the verb form of a noun, skene, which means tabernacle or tent.
John is saying that God Almighty took on flesh and experienced everything that we human beings experience because He pitched His tent among us.
Now, the idea of the tent or the tabernacle was important in the centuries before Jesus, in Old Testament times. In the 21st. century BC, God called a couple He later renamed Abraham and Sarah to leave their comfortable lives in the land of Ur, in what is today known as Iraq, and go live in a place God would show them after they’d gotten their start. God said that He would also make this childless and elderly couple the ancestors of God’s own people, of which we as people who confess Jesus Christ as Savior and God, are part. From the moment God called, Abraham and Sarah knew that they were just passing through this life and so, lived in tents or tabernacles.
Some six-hundred years later, about 1450 BC, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, having been freed from slavery in Egypt by God, spent forty years in a wilderness before entering the land God had promised their ancestors. In the wilderness, they slept in tents.
During their journey, the Old Testament says, God led them by a cloud. God was in the cloud, a bright and overwhelming presence shining within it. God’s perfection would kill any imperfect human being who came directly into His presence and, in fact, the Abraham’s descendants--the Hebrews, AKA Israelites, AKA the Jews--begged their earthly leader Moses not to let them be exposed to God’s presence. The cloud in which God’s presence and glory were shrouded were OK at a distance distance. But they didn’t want to see God up close.
But the fact is, God has never wanted to be removed from us. God cares about us. And while we should always approach God with reverence and awe, knowing that He is the Creator and we are His creatures, we also treasure knowing that we were made for intimacy with God, an intimacy God craves. That’s why God didn’t want to stay in the cloud away from His people.
Turn to Exodus 25:8. There, God is giving instructions to Moses on how His people are to worship Him and He says: “And let them [God’s people] make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.” By now, you can guess what God told Moses in the original Hebrew: “Build a tent, a tabernacle, for Me, that I may pitch My tent, live, among them.”
For many years, God’s people lived in tents while the presence of God lived among them in a tent that also housed the Ten Commandments. In the very inner sanctum of this tent was a place called “the holy of holies,” the place where the holiness of God dwelt on earth.
Five hundred years after God gave those instructions to Moses, King Solomon built a temple which, like the tent in the wilderness, was a copy of God’s heavenly throne room. In the midst of it was the tabernacle, the holy of holies, the place where God pitched His tent. It could only be entered only once a year, on a day known as Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. A priest, after making several sacrifices for his own sin, would enter the holy of holies to sacrifice a perfect, unblemished lamb for the sins of God’s people, then sprinkle the waiting worshipers with the blood of the lamb, assuring them that their sins from the previous year had been atoned for and forgiven. A curtain concealed the holy of holies, a wall that the people feared to breach, afraid, just like their ancestors, of meeting God face to face.
Now, we come to our Gospel lesson, Mark 2:2-9. Take a look at it, please.
Six days before the events the lesson recounts, Jesus told His disciples: “Truly, I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”
Now, Jesus takes His core leadership group--Peter, James, and John--to a mountaintop. While there, verse 3 says, Jesus “was transfigured before them [His appearance was radically changed], and His clothes became dazzling white...” Suddenly, Peter, James, and John, though they didn’t yet understand it all, saw Jesus in the bright splendor of His deity.
Look now at verse 4: “And there appeared to them Elijah and Moses...” The main strands of the Old Testament scriptures are the Law and the Prophets. The Law and the Prophets pointed to Jesus and here was Moses, the great Lawgiver, and Elijah, Israel’s greatest prophet, conversing with Jesus.
Look at what happens next, in verse 5. “Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings...”
Can you guess what the word translated as dwellings might be in the original New Testament Greek?
It’s skenas, the plural word for tents or tabernacles.
Jesus says nothing to Peter’s well-meaning but misguided suggestion. But there are two problems with what Peter wants to do.
First: Peter is putting Moses and Elijah on the same level with Jesus. Peter still doesn’t understand that Jesus is God in human flesh.
Second: When the Word became flesh and pitched His tent among us, God signaled that He was busting out of the confines of tents or clouds or any of the other straitjackets in which we try to put God.
God wants to come into your life right now, today, with all its messiness and drama, boredom and challenge, joy and sorrow.
God wants to be your friend and Savior.
God doesn’t want you to wait for the sweet by and by to have an intimate relationship with Him.
God wants in on every part of Your life, to clean up what is sinful and ugly and to give you a new life.
Peter doesn't understand any of these things about God yet. It's out of this ignorance, Mark tells us that Peter suggests building coequal dwelling places or monuments for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. Peter “did not know what to say,” Mark tells us in verse 6, “for they [Peter, James, and John] were terrified.”
Their fright no doubt increased with what happened next. Look at verse 7: “Then a cloud overshadowed them [a cloud again] and from the cloud came a voice, ‘This is My Son, the Beloved; listen to Him.”
Not long after these events, the God Who came to tabernacle among us would die on a cross and, strangely, the curtain of the temple, the wall between God and the human race, breached only rarely, would tear in two, from top to bottom.
No longer would human beings need to offer sacrifices or live without the constant, sustaining presence of God in their lives.
Through Jesus, all who turn from sin in His Name and trust in Him alone as their God and King can have immediate access to God.
Need your sins forgiven? Approach God in Jesus’ Name.
Need guidance on how to live your life? Come to God in Jesus’ Name.
Wrestling with a tragedy or setback that has befallen you? You may not get an answer to the question of why, but you will get God by your side.
Jesus Himself was and is the only sacrifice needed to bridge the gulf between a perfect God and imperfect people like you and me. He is, as John the Baptist said of Jesus, "the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world."
After the voice of God the Father spoke on the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus stood alone with Peter, James, and John.
But those three apostles still could’t yet understand what you and I can understand, if only we will open our wills, minds, and hearts to Jesus. Here's why. Notice that Jesus says, in verse 9, “to tell no one about what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”
You see, none of us can really see Jesus for Who He really is, God in human flesh, until we see the cross of Jesus and know that it was our sins--yours and mine--that made Jesus’ death necessary. The wages of sin is death and sinless Jesus took the wages we earned on His sinless body.
And none of us can see Jesus for Who He really is until we accept by faith the testimony about His actual, physical resurrection from the dead. Jesus rising from the dead is the sure sign that He and He alone is the way to new, eternal life with God.
Until Jesus' death and resurrection happened, no matter how amazed Peter, James, and John must have been by Jesus' transfiguration, they could not see Who Jesus really was...and is.
Today, at this moment, you and I can't see the risen Jesus physically. But we can see Jesus by faith in Him. Here are five ways that can happen:
These five things--reading the New Testament, praying in Jesus' Name, receiving the Sacrament, living in fellowship with believers in Jesus, and asking God to show you your sins so that they can be dismantled by the forgiveness He offers to all with faith in Jesus--can be means by which Jesus helps us see Him in our lives today.
May you always see Him clearly, starting now.
Mark 9:2-9
On this Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday of the Epiphany season, we’re going to explore the Gospel of Mark’s account of the day that Jesus took three of His disciples--Peter, James, and John--to a mountaintop and His glory as God was made plain to see.
But to set the stage, we need to look at a passage in the Gospel of John. So, turn to John 1:14, please. John, you remember, says that Jesus is the Word, Who was with God and was God. John then says this: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us...”
The biggest word in that verse is the verb, dwelt. In the Greek in which John originally wrote his gospel, the word translated as dwelt is eskenosen. It’s the verb form of a noun, skene, which means tabernacle or tent.
John is saying that God Almighty took on flesh and experienced everything that we human beings experience because He pitched His tent among us.
Now, the idea of the tent or the tabernacle was important in the centuries before Jesus, in Old Testament times. In the 21st. century BC, God called a couple He later renamed Abraham and Sarah to leave their comfortable lives in the land of Ur, in what is today known as Iraq, and go live in a place God would show them after they’d gotten their start. God said that He would also make this childless and elderly couple the ancestors of God’s own people, of which we as people who confess Jesus Christ as Savior and God, are part. From the moment God called, Abraham and Sarah knew that they were just passing through this life and so, lived in tents or tabernacles.
Some six-hundred years later, about 1450 BC, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, having been freed from slavery in Egypt by God, spent forty years in a wilderness before entering the land God had promised their ancestors. In the wilderness, they slept in tents.
During their journey, the Old Testament says, God led them by a cloud. God was in the cloud, a bright and overwhelming presence shining within it. God’s perfection would kill any imperfect human being who came directly into His presence and, in fact, the Abraham’s descendants--the Hebrews, AKA Israelites, AKA the Jews--begged their earthly leader Moses not to let them be exposed to God’s presence. The cloud in which God’s presence and glory were shrouded were OK at a distance distance. But they didn’t want to see God up close.
But the fact is, God has never wanted to be removed from us. God cares about us. And while we should always approach God with reverence and awe, knowing that He is the Creator and we are His creatures, we also treasure knowing that we were made for intimacy with God, an intimacy God craves. That’s why God didn’t want to stay in the cloud away from His people.
Turn to Exodus 25:8. There, God is giving instructions to Moses on how His people are to worship Him and He says: “And let them [God’s people] make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.” By now, you can guess what God told Moses in the original Hebrew: “Build a tent, a tabernacle, for Me, that I may pitch My tent, live, among them.”
For many years, God’s people lived in tents while the presence of God lived among them in a tent that also housed the Ten Commandments. In the very inner sanctum of this tent was a place called “the holy of holies,” the place where the holiness of God dwelt on earth.
Five hundred years after God gave those instructions to Moses, King Solomon built a temple which, like the tent in the wilderness, was a copy of God’s heavenly throne room. In the midst of it was the tabernacle, the holy of holies, the place where God pitched His tent. It could only be entered only once a year, on a day known as Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. A priest, after making several sacrifices for his own sin, would enter the holy of holies to sacrifice a perfect, unblemished lamb for the sins of God’s people, then sprinkle the waiting worshipers with the blood of the lamb, assuring them that their sins from the previous year had been atoned for and forgiven. A curtain concealed the holy of holies, a wall that the people feared to breach, afraid, just like their ancestors, of meeting God face to face.
Now, we come to our Gospel lesson, Mark 2:2-9. Take a look at it, please.
Six days before the events the lesson recounts, Jesus told His disciples: “Truly, I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”
Now, Jesus takes His core leadership group--Peter, James, and John--to a mountaintop. While there, verse 3 says, Jesus “was transfigured before them [His appearance was radically changed], and His clothes became dazzling white...” Suddenly, Peter, James, and John, though they didn’t yet understand it all, saw Jesus in the bright splendor of His deity.
Look now at verse 4: “And there appeared to them Elijah and Moses...” The main strands of the Old Testament scriptures are the Law and the Prophets. The Law and the Prophets pointed to Jesus and here was Moses, the great Lawgiver, and Elijah, Israel’s greatest prophet, conversing with Jesus.
Look at what happens next, in verse 5. “Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings...”
Can you guess what the word translated as dwellings might be in the original New Testament Greek?
It’s skenas, the plural word for tents or tabernacles.
Jesus says nothing to Peter’s well-meaning but misguided suggestion. But there are two problems with what Peter wants to do.
First: Peter is putting Moses and Elijah on the same level with Jesus. Peter still doesn’t understand that Jesus is God in human flesh.
Second: When the Word became flesh and pitched His tent among us, God signaled that He was busting out of the confines of tents or clouds or any of the other straitjackets in which we try to put God.
God wants to come into your life right now, today, with all its messiness and drama, boredom and challenge, joy and sorrow.
God wants to be your friend and Savior.
God doesn’t want you to wait for the sweet by and by to have an intimate relationship with Him.
God wants in on every part of Your life, to clean up what is sinful and ugly and to give you a new life.
Peter doesn't understand any of these things about God yet. It's out of this ignorance, Mark tells us that Peter suggests building coequal dwelling places or monuments for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. Peter “did not know what to say,” Mark tells us in verse 6, “for they [Peter, James, and John] were terrified.”
Their fright no doubt increased with what happened next. Look at verse 7: “Then a cloud overshadowed them [a cloud again] and from the cloud came a voice, ‘This is My Son, the Beloved; listen to Him.”
Not long after these events, the God Who came to tabernacle among us would die on a cross and, strangely, the curtain of the temple, the wall between God and the human race, breached only rarely, would tear in two, from top to bottom.
No longer would human beings need to offer sacrifices or live without the constant, sustaining presence of God in their lives.
Through Jesus, all who turn from sin in His Name and trust in Him alone as their God and King can have immediate access to God.
Need your sins forgiven? Approach God in Jesus’ Name.
Need guidance on how to live your life? Come to God in Jesus’ Name.
Wrestling with a tragedy or setback that has befallen you? You may not get an answer to the question of why, but you will get God by your side.
Jesus Himself was and is the only sacrifice needed to bridge the gulf between a perfect God and imperfect people like you and me. He is, as John the Baptist said of Jesus, "the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world."
After the voice of God the Father spoke on the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus stood alone with Peter, James, and John.
But those three apostles still could’t yet understand what you and I can understand, if only we will open our wills, minds, and hearts to Jesus. Here's why. Notice that Jesus says, in verse 9, “to tell no one about what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”
You see, none of us can really see Jesus for Who He really is, God in human flesh, until we see the cross of Jesus and know that it was our sins--yours and mine--that made Jesus’ death necessary. The wages of sin is death and sinless Jesus took the wages we earned on His sinless body.
And none of us can see Jesus for Who He really is until we accept by faith the testimony about His actual, physical resurrection from the dead. Jesus rising from the dead is the sure sign that He and He alone is the way to new, eternal life with God.
Until Jesus' death and resurrection happened, no matter how amazed Peter, James, and John must have been by Jesus' transfiguration, they could not see Who Jesus really was...and is.
Today, at this moment, you and I can't see the risen Jesus physically. But we can see Jesus by faith in Him. Here are five ways that can happen:
- First: Read the New Testament. The New Testament is the cradle in which the baby Jesus can be found, His cross can be experienced, and His empty tomb can be seen. Starting on March 8, you can be part of Read the New Testament in a Year, digging into and discussing the second great part of God's written word for the human race, the Bible, with other members of the Saint Matthew family. As we read and discuss and pray over the New Testament, we're going to see Jesus together.
- Second: Pray in Jesus' Name.
- Third: Receive Holy Communion every time it’s offered. “This is my body; this is my blood,” Jesus says of the bread and the wine. In Communion, Jesus literally comes to us and enters us. He is as present and as powerful for us when we receive the body and blood by faith in Jesus, as He was to Peter, James, and John at the Transfiguration.
- Fourth: Spend time in fellowship with God’s people, including regularly worshiping, studying Scripture, and praying with people who believe in Jesus. The Bible says that "iron sharpens iron," meaning that as we challenge and affirm one another, we grow. If you're intent on seeing Jesus, you can't go solo; you need to hang out with and learn from other believers.
- Finally: Ask God to show you the ways in which you may have displeased him. King David prayed, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting." We need to submit to a spiritual examination by God and to confess the sins God makes known to us. Jesus died a rose to tear open the curtain--the wall--that sin had put between us. Our sins, the things we do that hurt God or hurt others, can become new walls between God and us. When we ask God to show us the walls we’ve erected against His will, God forgives our sins and dismantles the walls, and we get a clearer view of Jesus, God in the flesh.
These five things--reading the New Testament, praying in Jesus' Name, receiving the Sacrament, living in fellowship with believers in Jesus, and asking God to show you your sins so that they can be dismantled by the forgiveness He offers to all with faith in Jesus--can be means by which Jesus helps us see Him in our lives today.
May you always see Him clearly, starting now.
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