It Starts With Us

[This sermon was prepared to be shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on January 22. We had to cancel worship because of icy conditions. But the sermon was shared via the local radio station that carries our Sunday worship services and has done so since 1962.]

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
This morning, I want to walk through the six verses that make up our first lesson, taken from the Old Testament, Jonah 3, verses 1 to 5 and verse 10, and see what God wants to reveal to us this morning.

Jonah 3, verse 1, says: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.” 

I love the understatement of this passage! You may remember the first time that God’s word came to Jonah, a prophet who lived in the Judean coastal city of Joppa eight centuries before Jesus was born. The first time God called Jonah is recounted in Jonah, chapter 1, verse 2. It says: “Go at once to Ninveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.”

God gave Jonah simple instructions. He was to go to Nineveh, the most important metropolis of the Assyrian nation and decry their sin.

In those days, all of God’s people, the Judeans, probably feared Assyria, a rising world power. But Jonah clearly hated the people of Assyria and its major city, Nineveh.

So, instead of doing as God directed, Jonah booked a berth on a ship headed for Spain.

Things didn’t go well for him after that! God stirred up a storm on the Mediterranean. Jonah knew that the lives of all on the ship were threatened by his faithlessness toward God.

So, he told them to throw him overboard. As soon as they did so, the storm ended. They were spared.

But what about Jonah?

As you know, God caused him to spend time in the belly of a great fish. Jonah was there for three days, praying. Finally, the fish vomited him onto dry land.

After trying to thwart the will of God, Jonah was exhausted, filthy, and smelly.

You know what I’ve learned over the years, folks? This world can be a hard place. We have no control over the evil that the devil and this world sometimes bring against the most faithful people we know. That’s hard and horrible.

But there are others kinds of suffering we may undergo over which we do have control. It’s the suffering that comes to us when we who claim to believe in the God ultimately revealed to the world in Jesus Christ, but deliberately contradict the Word and the will of God. It's the kind of suffering Jonah caused himself when he refused to do what God told him to do.

I once counseled with a man, a pillar of his church, who gave generously to Christ’s causes in the world, but who was deeply unhappy. As I scratched below his surface talk, I leaned that he was having an affair. He was alienated from the kids he constantly discouraged. He was drinking to excess, which, in turn, was a major cause for multiple hospitalizations and ever-worsening health. 

It was clear why he was so unhappy: As was true of Jonah when God sent the storm to disrupt his Mediterranean escape, God hadn’t given up on this man. So God was making this man miserable, waging war for his soul. He was still close enough to God to feel badly when he continued to do what he knew in his soul and from the Word of God was wrong!

When we who claim to be believers in the God revealed in Jesus turn our backs on the will of God, God will put us in the vise of what the psychologists call cognitive dissonance: the miserable condition that comes to those who claim to see reality in one way, yet live in a different way.

If people who confess Christ brazenly violate the will of God—using God’s Name for anything other than prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, for example; or, cheating others in business dealings; or, spreading unconfirmed rumors without knowing the facts; or, having a sexual relationship outside of the marriage of a man and a woman; or whatever the sin may be—God will hound them until they have either repented and returned to Christ or until they have totally stopped their ears and hearts to God.

After he headed for Spain, God didn’t given up on Jonah.

God had apparently not given up on Nineveh, either. If God hadn’t wanted the people of Nineveh to repent for their sins and believe in Him, He wouldn’t have called Jonah to go to them, either the first or the second times.


If you're listening to me today, having taken the time to go to worship or listen to the Saint Matthew radio broadcast, it shows that God hasn't given up on you...and, whether you're willing to admit it or not, God hasn't given up you either!

Listen, folks: Pray that God will always make you miserable when you ignore His will.

If your conscience bothers you when you realize you’re guilty of sin, that is a very good sign. Only those who have left themselves within range of God's loving arms feel guilt for their wrongs. And it's only when we're touched by guilt that we go to God for the forgiveness and the power for living eternally with God that only Jesus Christ can give.

The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline?”

Followers of Jesus Christ will rise again to live in God’s new heaven and new earth and God disciplines us to prepare us to be the useful, joyful people you and I are going to be in eternity. Earthly pains can yield heavenly gains!

Verses three and four tell us that Jonah, battered from his battle with the God he claimed to serve, “…set out and went to Nineveh, according to the Word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, 'Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.'” 

Jonah may have said those words with relish. He hated the Ninevites, after all.

But even if Jonah meant his message for evil, God meant it for good!

Jonah hoped that the words he spoke from God would fall on deaf ears and that God would destroy the Ninevites.

He underestimated the power of the Word of God, though. Through the prophet Isaiah, God says, “My Word…shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” God's Word has the power to melt the hardest of hearts and turn them to God! If we let it, God's Word can penetrate our darkest times with the comfort of His presence and the promise of eternity.

When I get up to preach on Sunday mornings, I believe that, even if it happens in the life of just one person, the sermon will accomplish something.

• It may cause one unrepentant sinner to ask for God’s forgiveness. 
• Or lead one atheist or doubter to turn in faith to Christ. 
• It may bring comfort to one grieving person, hope to one despairing person. 

I believe all of this because I’m confident that when we lift up the Word of God in all its fullness, God’s Word will accomplish great things.

Jonah was a less than enthusiastic preacher. It didn’t matter. He was speaking the Word of God and the Word of God has power!

Look at verse 5 to see how much power: “And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.” 

I almost have to laugh every time I read this verse. Jonah never mentioned God! But the power of God’s Word is such that those who are open to it know it when they’ve heard it.

Folks, there are people you know who are steeped in sin who are just waiting to hear your invitation to turn from sin and believe in Jesus. You won’t be judgmental if you deliver this message to them. You’ll be sharing the greatest love the world has ever known: the love of God that saves sinners from death and futility to live with God, imperfectly today and one day in eternity, in complete perfection.

Don’t be discouraged when people aren’t receptive to your word about Jesus. I turned down people's invitations to follow Jesus for years before God used my wife, Ann, to introduce me to a group of joyful Lutheran Christians whose faith was so infectious, I wanted follow Jesus. During my atheist decade, I was once invited to a Christian movie at the Ohio Theater in Columbus by a friend. As we sat in the theater afterward, I told him, "No, I don't want Jesus in my life." Little did I know that thirty-plus years later, I would be captain of the team that counseled thousands of people who said, "Yes" to Billy Graham's invitation to follow Jesus during Dr. Graham's 2002 Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Mission at Paul Brown Stadium. Just because people say no to your invitations to experience or follow Jesus the first time doesn't mean that's their final answer. As a disciple-maker for Jesus, you aren't responsible for other people's answers, only for praying for them and sharing Christ's invitation.

And don’t be surprised when people take you up on your invitations to join you for church or Sunday School or Bible study or prayer. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold,” Jesus once said. “I must bring them also, and they will listen to My voice.” You and I are called to be the voice of Christ in this world! If we’ll just be open about our faith in Christ, we’ll be amazed at how many people are receptive.



In Jonah, chapter 3, verse 10 we're told: “When God saw what [the Ninevites] did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed His mind about the calamity that He had said He would bring upon them; and He did not do it.” 

God’s character is never changing and constant:

• God will always love you passionately. (Sadly, hell will be filled with people God loves. But God will not force His love and forgiveness on anyone.) 
• God will always hate sin and not allow it in His presence. 
• God will always command that you repent for sin and trust in His Son. 
• God will always welcome those who repent and believe, like the father who welcomed the prodigal son.
• God will always have a place ready and waiting for you in His heart and in His kingdom if you're willing to turn from sin and give your life to Christ. 

Even though God is unchanging, God can change His mind. He did so when it came to His planned destruction of Nineveh. God used Jonah's half-hearted preaching to turn people from enemies of God into children of God. God wanted to save the people of Nineveh from condemnation and hell. He wants to do the same thing for every person in Logan and Hocking County today.

So, I challenge you (and me) to do two things with our lives. First, to take stock of our own lives, asking God to show us what we may need to repent for. Make this a daily practice. In Psalm 51, King David prays to God, “You desire truth in the inward being.”

When we get honest with God about our sins, He gives us forgiveness and helps us to live our lives differently. God’s Holy Spirit will help us to be sensitive to how we can keep walking in the will of God and to remain sensitive to the call to repentance that will put us back on the right track. When we daily repent and renew our trust in Jesus, God will help us to live the faith we profess.

Second, don’t be reluctant about going to your friends with the truth about their sin and their need of Jesus’ forgiveness. This is not being judgmental. When Jesus says, "Judge not, lest you be judged," he is warning us against making judgments that are unfair. But if a friend of yours was stepping out into traffic, you wouldn't decide to say nothing because of some fear that you would be casting judgment on your friend's bad decision, would you? No way. You'd yell loudly and clearly, "Stop!" Loving our neighbors as we love ourselves, which Jesus commands of every Christian, must entail caring enough about others to tell them that their favorite sins are hurting them, hurting God, and putting their eternities at risk.

I'm convinced many people want to hear the simple message Jesus delivers in today’s Gospel lesson: “Repent, and believe in the good news.” They're just waiting for the Christian who is bold enough and loving enough to share it with them. It's a message I want to share with you today. If you have wandered far from God, then I invite you to turn from sin and death and turn instead to Jesus and the life that only He can give. Life on this earth isn't perfect. But you don't want to draw another breath or take another step without Jesus Christ as your God and companion. And you surely don't want to step into eternity, whenever that might happen, without Jesus as your Savior and king. Turn to Him now and live!

God has a simple plan for renewing the people of the world. It begins with us.

First, we daily and consistently repent and trust in the God we know in Jesus.

Second, we invite others to repent and trust in this same God.

If the Ninevites proved open to this message, maybe the Loganites will too. Maybe the people of the world will be open to it.

Are you ready for that?

Then, start with repentance for your own sins and trusting Jesus to forgive you and make you new each day.

Then, start telling others what an amazing God He is. Amen

Audio of Wednesday Morning's 'Read the Bible in a Year' Discussion

At Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, we're reading the Bible together in a year, about three chapters at a time. Once a week, we get together to discuss the readings. This week's readings have been John 19 through Acts 15. Today's discussion mostly focused on Acts.

7 Things Jesus Will Never Say or Do to Get Your "Vote"

It's presidential campaign season. Candidates say a lot of things to get your vote. The God we meet in Jesus Christ (in Him, the Bible says, "all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell") has been engaged in a "campaign" to win our "votes" as Lord and Savior of our lives for centuries. But, unlike the political candidates frenetically seeking your vote, there are some things that Jesus will never say or do to get your vote:

• Jesus will never pretend to be something He's not, part 1. Jesus, God the Son, never downplayed His origins. Asked, "Are You the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?" Jesus answered, "I AM" (Mark 14:62). I AM, Yahweh, is the name with which God first identified Himself when God called Moses to lead His people Israel. 
• Jesus will never pretend to be something He's not, part 2. When God came to earth in the Person of Jesus, He experienced a life of humility and simplicity. He was raised by a couple so poor that when they brought Jesus to be dedicated at the Temple in Jerusalem, they couldn't afford the sacrifice given by wealthier parents, a lamb. Instead, the offered what the Old Testament stipulated for families of more modest means: "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons" (Luke 2:23, Exodus 13:2, 12). 
• Jesus will never pretend to be empathetic; He really does understand us. The Bible says that we do not have in Jesus a "high priest," an advocate, Who "is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but...One Who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin." This allows us to "approach the throne of grace [God] with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:15-16). 
• Jesus will never turn His back on some followers in order to placate others. He promises all who believe in Him, "I am with you always, even to the close of the age" (Matthew 28:20).
• Jesus will never tell us that we are blameless. Politicians try to build coalitions of support by appealing to our egos. But Jesus once told a group of people who had believed in Him (John 8:31), "If I tell you the truth, why do you not believe Me? Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear then is that you are not from God..." (John 8:46-47). Yet it was to "seek and save" those lost in sin--the entire human race--that Jesus came to die on a cross and rise from the dead (Luke 19:10). Only those who "repent and believe" in the Kingdom of God over which He reigns can have Jesus as their king, today and in eternity (Mark 1:15).
• Jesus will never tell you He will make this world perfect for those who "vote" for Him. While Jesus' kingdom has invaded this imperfect world (Luke 17:21), His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). It's Jesus' intention to establish a "new heaven and a new earth," in which sin and injustice are banished forever and where those who have become part of His new creation, by faith in Him (2 Corinthians 5:17), will live eternally (Revelation 21:1). In the meantime, even believers in Jesus will be pressed hard by the pain, difficulties, and tragedies of this fallen world. Sometimes, following Jesus will make our lives harder than they otherwise would be. "In this world you face persecution" for faith in Him, Jesus once said, "But take courage; I have conquered the world" (John 16:33).
• Jesus never promises His followers material wealth. But He does warn us of the dangers an obsession of wealth can cause our souls when money takes the place of God in our priorities: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24).

With campaign promises like these, it's no wonder that the people of Jesus' day--Jew and Gentile--elected to crucify or abandon Him.

But today, as in Jesus' time on earth, those who receive Him and believe in His Name, are given the power to become the children of God (John 1:12-13).

Vote for Jesus by giving your life to Him. As Jesus Himself says: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life."

After God Has Forgiven You...Forgive Yourself

Today, after you've confessed your sins to God, ask God to help you to forgive yourself as God has forgiven you.

No more rehearsing of the sins that caused you to tell God you were sorry and to ask God for His forgiveness! God's Word in the Bible promises: "As far as east is from the west, so far [God] removes our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12).

When we hold onto sin that God has forgiven, we display a lack of faith in God's compassion and God's willingness to keep His promises. But the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, show us God's compassion and God's resolve to do all that's necessary for us to be forgiven and have our relationship with God restored. When we genuinely confess our sins to God in Jesus' Name, we can be sure that we are forgiven.

Holding onto our sin and refusing to accept God's forgiveness can also turn our guilt into shame.

Guilt is God's prod to our consciences, alerting us to something we have done that's building a barrier between God and us, between us and others, between us and God's forgiveness.

Shame is that boulder we carry on our shoulders when we think that our faults, real and imagined, make us irredeemably bad.

Look, no one is irredeemably bad. Even the bandit on the cross next to Jesus turned from sin and to faith in Jesus with His dying breaths and Jesus told him, "Today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43).

Through Jesus, we know, as the Bible tells us, "If we confess our sins, [God] Who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). It also says that "everyone who believes in [Jesus] receives forgiveness of sins through His Name" (Acts 10:43).

Today, after you've confessed your sins to God, ask God to help you to forgive yourself as God has forgiven you.

To Be an Honest Witness for Jesus

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

John 1:43-51
Let’s say that friends are visiting you. You’ve just renovated your living room: new chairs, couch, end tables, lamps, entertainment center, furnishings. All are tasteful, plain, functional, pleasing to the eye. The chairs and couch are comfy. The wall coloring is rich and inviting.

Now, sometime during their visit, your friends, who have been to your house before, are going to ask you about your newly appointed living room. Where did you get the furniture, the paint, the carpeting? Did you have help? If so, who was the contractor?

Let me ask you this: If your friends asked you questions like these, would you refuse to answer them? Of course not! You’d be happy to answer their questions, maybe even with a trace of pride. When we have good things happen in our lives, we want to share the story with others.

We are now in a season of the Church Year called Epiphany. The New Testament was, of course, originally written in Greek and the word epiphany comes from the Greek word epiphaino. It means to show oneself, to appear. The Gospel lessons for the season of Epiphany are ones in which Jesus showed Himself to be more than just another man—more even than just another king, but God enfleshed, the King of all kings, the Savior Who offers freedom from sin and death to all who will repent for sin and entrust their lives to only Him.

Today, as in Biblical times, the true identity of Jesus can be shown to people in miraculous signs as well as in moments of quiet clarity. People come to life-saving faith in Jesus Christ in many different ways. But coming to believe in Jesus always involves an epiphany, whether one that evolves slowly, one that takes roots in us as children on our parents' knees, or one that comes in a flash.

Whenever our epiphany comes to us, we know that Jesus is our God and King and that the only reasonable thing to do is bow down and surrender our whole lives to Him.

Today’s Gospel lesson recounts an epiphany in which Jesus revealed His identity to an honest skeptic named Nathanael. And it all happened when a friend of Nathanael’s talked about Jesus the way we might talk about a newly renovated living room with friends.

You know the story well. But let’s look at it together this morning. Please go to our Gospel lesson, John 1:43-51.

Here's a bit of background to put the incidents in today's lesson in context. Three days before the incidents recounted in our lesson, John the Baptist had told crowds thronging to him to repent for sin because the Messiah was coming. He said that he himself was such an imperfect sinner, he was unworthy to even do the slave’s work of untying the thongs of the Messiah's sandals.

The next day, John saw Jesus and said, “Here is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.” (John was saying here that Jesus, without sin Himself, would become the perfect sacrificial Lamb for the whole human race, taking our deserved punishment for sin so that, when He rose from the dead, He could give everlasting life with God to all who follow Jesus through the crucifixion of their old sinful bodies and the resurrection of their new bodies in eternity.)

The following day, John told two of his own followers, Andrew and John, known as disciples, mathetes in the Greek, a word that means students: “Look, here is the Lamb of God.” John, the preacher who said elsewhere, “He [Jesus] must increase, I must decrease” was, in effect, telling his two students, “I’m giving you to a new teacher, this One is the Lamb of God, the One you and I and all the world have been waiting for!”

We pick up what happens next in today’s lesson. Jesus has gone from the Jordan to His native region of Galilee. Philip is from Bethsaida, a fishing town on the lakeshore there. Jesus goes to Philip and says, “Follow Me.” Philip, who already has spent time with Jesus the previous evening, is ready to follow when Jesus calls.

But Philip understands that following Jesus is not a private matter. He seems to understand that if followers of Jesus fail to tell others about Jesus, God will be forced to make the inanimate stones cry out Jesus’ Name, so that all the world will have the chance to hear of Him!

Look at what happens next, in verse 45. Philip has received no training as an evangelist. He hasn’t been to seminary. But he can’t contain himself! (Jesus is a bigger deal than a renovated living room!) So, Philip finds his friend, Nathanael and tells him: “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote…” Stop right there a second.

We’re nearing the end of our year of reading the Bible together. It’s been the best experience of my twenty-seven years as a pastor! Two things that come through loudly and clearly as you read the whole Bible—Old and New Testament—are:

• how the God of the Old Testament is exactly the same God we meet in the New Testament and 
• how all of history up to Jesus’ time was aimed toward the moment when God would take on flesh, walk among us, go to a cross for us, and rise to give everlasting life to repentant sinners who believe in the Messiah, Jesus. 

Philip knew his Biblical history and he was sure that Jesus was the Messiah. “We have found Him,” Philip tells Nathanael (read what he says next in verse 45), “Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”

Nathanael has an understandable question. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Nazareth was a pigsty of a village in the Galilean hills, composed of maybe 15 shacks where impoverished people eked out their livelihoods.

Besides, Nathanael may have known the prophecies as well as Philip: the prophets said that the Messiah would be from Bethlehem. Knowing nothing of the place where Jesus was born, Nathanael was skeptical.

We run into skepticism about Jesus all the time. But Philip doesn’t get defensive. Neither should we when people challenge our faith. Look at Philip's response in verse 46: “Come and see.”

Folks, this is a great example for us as Christians who have been commissioned by Jesus Himself to “make disciples.”

And this is no small matter! As I read the Bible, making disciples is the only job Christ has given to the Church.

Jesus did not commission the Church to do political advocacy, to erect church buildings as monuments to our piety, to perpetuate congregations as social clubs where everybody smiles and nobody's life gets changed.

The Church has one job and one job only: to make disciples, to help people know and grow in their faith in Jesus Christ.

Conservative and liberal Christians alike often grow impatient with Jesus’ way of changing people’s lives. They want to push their own particular versions of Christian living on people through things like politics, political correctness, or social pressure.

But Jesus never once coerced goodness or faithfulness out of people and we would be faithless, shortsighted fools to try coercion ourselves.

Instead, we Christians, together in Christ’s body, the Church, are commissioned to speak and lovingly live out God’s truth about human sin and about the forgiveness and hope offered to every single person on the planet through faith in Jesus Christ.

We do so in order to make disciples of Christ.

Ideally, this can happen when people see us living for Jesus and they ask us about the steadying, joy-giving influence over our lives and we can say, “Jesus.” That, after all is the quiet way we Lutherans would prefer to spread the Good News of Jesus. No muss. No fuss. No witnessing.

And sometimes, it actually works that way.  I've known John since I was in the fourth grade. We were in Cub Scouts together. We played Gra-Y and Junior Hi-Y basketball together. John was a good athlete. I wasn't. John was popular. I wasn't. John got elected to student council. I didn't. John and I liked the same girl in the sixth grade. Guess who she went with to Fun Night, the biggest event of the year?

In the forty years after we graduated from high school, I ran into John twice and each time our conversations were quick and perfunctory. Then, at our high school class reunion last year, John, his wife, and I had a long and enjoyable chat. After the reunion, a number of our classmates kept in touch through a Facebook page. We talk with each other fairly often, even John and I.

In the months since last June, John undoubtedly saw the sermons and prayer requests I post on Facebook. But I never once "witnessed" to John. Yet he wrote to me last month just before Christmas to say, "Mark, haven't been to church in a long time, but you've inspired me to go. Christmas Eve I will attend a service here in town." 

It isn't a confession of faith, but when I read that, it made me feel good! It's a beginning and it's to hear and read things like that that every Christian is made for! My invitation to John to "come and see" Jesus had happened quite indirectly, without my really knowing it.
 
But Jesus has commissioned us to take a more direct approach in making disciples for Jesus. It's an approach like that of Philip, who went to his friend, Nathanael...or, like my friend Zack, when he went to his father.

After Zack's mother died, his dad was inconsolable. Unlike Zack's mom, a faithful believer in Jesus, his dad had always been indifferent to God, almost scornful of the Church. Following his mother's death, Zack watched his father go into a tailspin of depression and self-destructive behavior. He had no hope and he ricocheted between long periods of sleeping for hours on end and almost frenetic activity, anything to block out his pain and grief and utter hopelessness.

Zack finally approached his father. "Dad," he said, "do you remember how strong and joyful Mom was? It was because of her faith in Jesus, Dad. You need Jesus, too. If you'll trust in Him, you'll know that He's beside you, helping you get through these tough days. You'll also know that one day, not only will you see Jesus, but you'll see Mom again."

Amazingly, Zack's Dad took his son's message to heart. He came to faith in Christ. When I met Zack's father some years later, he was a truly joyful follower of Jesus, deeply involved in his church. This once self-absorbed man spent many hours every week providing help to people without work, food, or shelter. It all happened because his son, like Philip in our Gospel lesson, proactively went to him and said, "Dad, come and see. Come and see Jesus."


Who could you issue the same invitation to this week?


When Nathanael took Philip up on his invitation and Jesus told Nathanael things about himself that Jesus could only have known if Jesus were God in the flesh, Nathanael confessed his faith in Jesus: "Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"

Philip, the Gospel of John makes clear, was no perfect disciple. But he was what we are called to be: an honest witness for Jesus. He made himself available for Jesus’ great commission and available to his friend who needed the Savior. When he invited Nathanael to “come and see” the Messiah, Nathanael saw the God Who knows all about us and loves us anyway.

May we be more like Philip, so that the people we know will experience epiphanies about the forgiveness, the healing, and the wholeness God gives to all who turn from sin and trust in Christ.

May we tell the story of Jesus and let others see Jesus for themselves. Amen

The Church: A Fellowship of Recovering Sinners

Church isn't a place for the perfect, but a fellowship for recovering sinners.

After I posted that on Facebook earlier today, a high school classmate wrote to ask, "Mark do we ever really 'recover' from sinfulness?"

If by "recover," it was meant to "get over," the answer is no. Just as with any addiction, we never fully get over the common human condition of sin this side of the grave. We depend on God's grace and the power of the Holy Spirit to help us resist temptation and to enable us do better when we "fall off the... wagon" and any sin, from taking God's Name in vain to engaging in sexual intimacy outside of marriage, from gossip to thievery. 

Just as an alcoholic who has given up drink is still only a recovering alcoholic no matter how many years it's been since their last drink, Christians are nothing more than recovering sinners. 

But, thank God for the process of recovery--what the Biblical theology calls "sanctification"--that happens for all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ.

That's why Christians, mindful that we are sinners saved only by the grace of God given through Jesus Christ, should never look down their noses on unrepentant sinners. Instead, we should befriend them, tell them God's truth in love, pray for them, and ask them, one sinner to another, to "come and see" what it's like to be set free from sin's power, to live today as recovering sinners, and to look to an eternal future when we will live the sinless lives for which God first made us. 


The Church exists as the fellowship within which we hear God's Word and receive the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, confess our sins, receive forgiveness through Christ, and learn together to follow Jesus in our everyday lives. While Christians boldly confess, as Jesus Himself has taught, that Jesus is the only way to a relationship with God, arrogance is inconsistent with being a Christian. As Paul puts it in the New Testament: "If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness...", that is, my complete dependence on Jesus Christ.


So, if you're looking for a church home, find one where neither pastor nor people think they're "all that," but who freely acknowledge their imperfections. It's in the fellowship of other "recovering sinners" that you can really experience what it is to be set free from the power of sin.

Church isn't a place for the perfect, but a fellowship for recovering sinners. Want to be a part of that?

[If you live in or near Logan or Hocking County, Ohio, you're invited to "come and see" how Jesus is living in our congregation, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church. Sunday School for all ages--and we have a great adult Sunday School class--meets at 9:15AM each Sunday. Worship happens at 10:15AM. If you currently have no church home, we would love to welcome you!]

Audio of Wednesday Morning's 'Read the Bible in a Year' Discussion

At Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, we're reading the Bible together in a year. This is the Wednesday discussion of this week's readings, Luke 19 through John 15.

How Can I Pray When I Don't Feel Like Praying?

"How can I discipline myself to pray even when I don't 'feel' like praying?"

This is what a man asked me recently.

It's a good question. Here's something that works for me, which, like all my good ideas, I stole from someone much wiser than myself. This idea comes from Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois. He writes about it in his book, Too Busy Not to Pray.

Hybels' approach is built off of the ACTS pattern for prayer. ACTS is an acronym, the letters of which stand for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication.

But Hybels takes ACTS-praying one step further. He suggests that, at least for a period of time, we write out our prayers (whether on the computer or in long hand is up to you, I suppose), in the ACTS format.

So, instead of jumping into your prayer requests (supplications), you first write out words praising God for His greatness, grace, rectitude, and power.

Second, you humbly confess our sins to God. This is a good time to put your life under the microscope of the Ten Commandments, which aren't an archaic list of "thou shalt nots," but expressive of God's plan for the optimal human life. (If you're not sure about the contents of the Ten Commandments, here is a good place to go for them. This list is taken from Martin Luther's Small Catechism, which also gives brief explanations of each commandment.)

 The Bible says this about confession:

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:8-10)

Third, you write out our words of thanksgiving for all of God's blessings to you, from the death and resurrection of God's only Son, Jesus, to the everyday blessings all of us can take for granted.

Fourth, Hybels says, write out your prayer requests (supplications).

Offer all these requests in Jesus' Name. To ask for anything in Jesus' Name means that you:

• acknowledge that it's only through Jesus that you dare approach God;
• are willing to receive from God--whether it's greater than you can ask or imagine or less than you want--what is consistent with God's character and will as revealed in Jesus; and
• submit to the will of God, as Jesus did when He faced execution on the cross.

Next, Hybels suggests that you read aloud the prayers you've written, offering them to God.

I use this method several days a week and find it beneficial, especially when, periodically, as Hybels suggests, I go back to read the previous prayers and see how God is working in my life.

You can take this approach to your prayers at any time of day that works best for you. But if you really want to pray, I think that what I call ACTS journaling is one good tool to help you stick to regular prayer.

The benefit of committing to this approach is that it disciplines us to STOP. AND. TAKE. THE. TIME. for the most important relationship in our lives and the most important conversation we can have any day.

Can Revival Happen Here and Now? Yes!

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

Mark 1:4-11
In his best-selling book, Whatever Became of Sin?, psychiatrist Karl Menninger tells the true story of a man, stern-faced and unremarkably dressed, who stood on a busy sidewalk in Chicago.

As people hurried along, he pointed to a person he singled out, and shout, "Guilty!" Then without changing expression, he resumed his stance for a few more moments until he directed the same gesture and word at someone else: "Guilty!"

You can almost imagine the effect this strange display had on the passersby. They stared at him, hesitated, looked away, looked at each other, and then hurried on their ways. One man who had received this stranger’s verdict turned to another and asked, "But how did he know?"

Was the stern man who indicted passersby crazy or was he on a mission from God?

Whether he was nuts or not, one thing is true: His verdict was correct. The Bible says that, “there is no one who is righteous, not even one.” We are all guilty of sin. And the Bible teaches that the proper wages for sin is death, separation from God. Crazy or not, the streetside prophet was onto something.

We live in a time, though, when the notion of sin or judgment by God is out of fashion. Actually, this attitude is nothing new. Four hundred years before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Malachi said that God’s own people were wearying God by telling each other, "’God loves sinners and sin alike. God loves all.’ And also by saying, ‘Judgment? God's too nice to judge.’"  I hear people say stuff like that all the time.

Look, folks, God makes it clear in His Word: Just because God loves us does not mean that He winks indulgently at our sins. God will not force us into His eternal kingdom if we choose to spend our time in this life walking away from God’s will. In the suffering and cross of Jesus, God has spared no effort to reach out to us, to save us from our sins, and, as Jesus Himself puts it, “to seek and save” those who are lost in their sin. But God will not veto the choices that human beings make when they walk their own way and not God’s way.

We don’t like to be told that we’re guilty of sin. That’s what made the ministry of John the Baptist so remarkable. John told people that they were guilty. Yet despite his unpalatable message, thousands of people apparently thronged to him and confessed that they were sinners in need of the grace of God. Verse 5 of our Gospel lesson from Mark says, “People from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him, confessing their sins.”

Why did that happen? Why did thousands go to repent and be washed in the Jordan River?

Because the power of God was at work in a person who himself was cleansed through repentance and faith in God. People went to hear John the Baptist's call to repentance and faith not because of John the Baptist, but because they saw God working within this strange man. 

Is it possible in the sin-hardened times in which you and I live where sin is so accepted that people might, like they did when John preached on the Jordan, turn to repent for sin and humbly trust in God?

Will people admit their greed and materialism, sexual immorality and selfishness, racism and sexism, gossiping and other forms of violence that characterize these times, then give them up, and seek God’s power to help them walk with God?

I believe that the answer is, “Yes!”

In 1989, Pastor Tim Keller, went to midtown Manhattan in New York City to start a new church. Midtown Manhattan is one of the most interesting and exciting places in the world. I love it! But it’s also a place where the most flagrant disregard for God’s will is on open display, where sin is commended and sinners are seen as heroes. Manhattan is home to some of the most important churches in American history and many of them are dead or dying.

But Redeemer Presbyterian Church, the congregation Keller founded, has grown and is thriving. People who visit there are surprised, Keller says, that the church doesn’t have contemporary praise bands or glitzy video presentations.

Nor is the congregation’s theology tilted toward winning over the multicultural free-spirits of New York City: Keller and the Church teach that all human beings are sinners who need the forgiveness and new life that come to those who repent for sin and believe in Jesus Christ. They teach that Jesus is the one and only way to a relationship with God, that sinners who refuse to repent or believe in Christ will go to hell, that sexual intimacy is meant only for a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage.

Despite holding up the teachings of Jesus and the Bible and running directly against all the politically correct preferences of American culture—in Logan as much as in New York City, Redeemer has grown and welcomes thousands of people to worship each week. Why?

Quite simply, Keller and the people of Redeemer, with humility about their own failings, tell the truth about sin, repentance, and the grace of Christ.

People went to see John the Baptist back in first century Judea because he told the truth about the human condition and their need of God. Through this same truth-telling, Redeemer Presbyterian Church is making disciples for Jesus Christ in what some would consider an inhospitable place.

The same thing needs to happen here in Logan!

But if we want people in Logan to experience the miracle of a life made new by Christ, it must start with Christ’s Church, with you and me.*

In 1947, a group of five men in the Hebrides Islands off the coast of Scotland began to pray together in a barn. They were heartsick over the spiritual state of their community and country. People were far from God, lost in sin. “God,” they cried out, “do something for our islands.” They prayed together nightly.

Every time they prayed, they also read a passage of Scripture. After two years of prayer, nothing had changed in their village, let alone their country. But one night in 1949, they gathered once more to pray, beginning by opening their Bibles, this time reading these words from Psalm 24: “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in His holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts…”

Suddenly, God hit these men with a hard, heavenly truth: They had been praying for two years that their islands would turn from sin and turn to Christ, but their own hands were unclean, their own hearts were impure!

They needed to clear away the mark of sin on their own lives and put their sins and their lives under the blood of Jesus Christ! Then, with lives made clean by the grace of Jesus, their prayers for revival--new life--might be heard.

They began to confess their sins to one another. Then they prayed. When they finished, it was 1:30 in the morning. They headed for their homes.

As they walked together, they topped a hill and saw two town drunks, stumbling and mumbling on their knees in a ditch. But as they got closer, they saw that the two men were sober, praying, and asking God to forgive them for their sins.

Then they looked up to see that all over the village, lights had come on in the middle of the night. Dozens of families, aware suddenly of how far they were from God, had gotten out of their beds to pray for forgiveness.

The next morning, people throughout the village met one another and they knew that something had changed. The pall of unrepented sin and selfish living had been lifted. They were walking in the lightness and freedom that belongs to all repentant believers in Jesus.

After that, the people of the village invited Duncan Campbell, an English evangelist, to preach in their homeland. He came and preached and on the strength of the repentant prayers of hundreds, then thousands, of Scots, a great revival of faith happened. The Hebrides Revival, as history now calls it, lasted for three years. Thousands came to faith in Christ.

The same kind of thing can happen here in Logan! God is just as anxious to call people to repentance and faith and new life in Jesus today in Hocking County as He was when He called John the Baptist to preach by the Jordan River, just as anxious as He was when He died on a cross and rose from the dead for us.

But our neighbors and friends not presently walking with Jesus will never know that they need to repent for sin and they’ll never know that their sins can be forgiven through Jesus Christ if all we Christians ever do is engage in our favorite indoor sport. Do you know what that is? It's bellyaching about the awful mess the world is in.

The world is in an awful mess and it has been since Adam and Eve bit into the forbidden fruit.

It was to eternally free us from the mess we’re in that Jesus came into our mess in order to die and rise for us.

So, get over the world being a mess and instead, resolve today not to be a bellyacher, but a knee-bender, a prayer warrior!

Be someone who prays, “God, clean my hands and my heart so that my prayers will be acceptable to you, so that, covered by the grace and forgiveness of Jesus, I can pray for those whose lives are in messes because they don’t have you to guide them through the good and the bad times. Make me clean so that my personal witness for Christ has credibility and the power to convince others to follow Jesus, too!”

This year, I believe that we at Saint Matthew need to commit ourselves to prayer in Jesus’ Name as we never have before. God is doing so much among us and through us and there is still so much more that God wants to do.

We must not be complacent, either about our own need for Christ or the needs of others for Christ. We must pray!

Are you ready for the kingdom of God to break out in the Hocking Hills and see the devil hamstrung?
Are you ready to see hundreds repent and trust in Jesus Christ?

The path to that vision is clear, though it will demand much of us. We must

• daily confess our sins; 
• ask for the power of the Holy Spirit to live as faithful witnesses for Christ; 
• pray that Jesus will be the undisputed Lord of Saint Matthew and of our community; 
• and when we pray that God’s will be done in our lives, we must also volunteer to do whatever God wants to do through us. 

Then, beloved people of Saint Matthew, watch what the God we know in Jesus Christ does.

God has plans for us! But they will not come to pass unless you and I live completely and totally for the One Who died and rose for us. If you’re ready for this, you may be in for the best time of your whole life. Jesus, please make it so. Amen!

*Of course, it starts with God, Who claims us in Baptism and incites us to repentance and prayer. But, as Jesus shows in the Great Commission, God brings spiritual renewal and revival through the people of His Church (Matthew 28:19-20).

A Mindful Life

Jesus said: "Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have strength...to stand before the Son of Man" (Luke 21:34-36).

Jesus says that we're to live "mindful lives." Grateful for the free gifts of forgiveness and new life that belong to all who turn from sin and give their lives to Him, we're to be mindful of ways in which we can fulfill what Jesus calls the greatest commandment: to love God completely and to love others as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40).

Mindfulness of others--of God and of other people--doesn't come naturally to us. The Bible says that from imperfect parents and imperfect ancestors, we inherit an inborn impulse to think of ourselves first (Psalm 51:5).

But self-absorbed living, Jesus says, is a trap. It prevents us from having the life only the Creator of life can give. And it prevents us from fulfilling the most joyful part of being human, being able to share the life God gives in Christ with others (1 John 1:4).

We spend much of our lives trying to gain, earn, beg, or steal the things we think will give us life. But only Christ can do that (John 14:6; John 6:68).

One step toward a mindful life is to ask that God will free us from the common human addiction to living for ourselves (or for our family, country, or cause) and to replace it with a dependence on Christ alone (Luke 10:41-42). Jesus sets us free to become our true selves, who we were created to be by the master designer, God.

When we're living mindfully, here's some of what happens:

• We see Christ in those in need and try to serve them as though we were serving Christ Himself (Matthew 25:31-46).
• We prepare to share the hope we have with others (1 Peter 3:15-16).
• We resist the temptation to sin, which is really a temptation to dehumanize ourselves or others and dishonor God and ourselves (Matthew 6:13).
• We get over ourselves and forgive others as God forgives us (Luke 11:4).

Turn to Christ each day and ask Him, "Lord, help me to lead a mindful life. Help me to be alert to the possibilities this day presents for me to live in the freedom from self You want to give to me. Amen."

[This was inspired by yesterday's readings for Read the Bible in a Year here at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

Audio of Yesterday Morning's 'Read the Bible in a Year' Discussion

We're reading the Bible together in a year at Saint Matthew. Each week since last March, when we began, we've been discussing the week's readings from the Scriptures. Yesterday, we discussed readings from Mark, chapter 13 through Luke, chapter 18.

I hope that you find it helpful.

"You walk three miles a day in your house? Isn't that boring?"

Nah! Check it out.

Frankly, I don't take a walk just to take a walk, but to stay fit for living the life I almost lost when I had my widow-maker heart attack back in June, 2010.

I walk to push aside health limitations that would otherwise cling to me, for the same reason that I repent for my sins each day, setting aside sins, guilt, and discord that would otherwise destroy me, so that I can, as the book of Hebrews puts it, "run with perseverance the race that is set before [me], looking to Jesus the Pioneer and Perfecter of [my] faith, Who for the sake of the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and [for our sake's] has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:1-2).

When I was being formed in my mother's womb, God miraculously installed an extra artery in my heart which, fifty-seven years later, took some of the blood that could not be pumped as it ordinarily would have been, so that I could take these added days to this life for a purpose: To share the message that God so loves every human being that He gave His only Son Jesus so that all who believe in Him will not perish, lost to God forever in hell, but have eternal life with God.

It would be ungrateful for me not to use my own unique life and gifts to do anything other than lift Jesus up.

That's why I run the race God has set before me. Well, right now, I walk it...but I walk it real fast!

From Someone Who's 'Dumber Than Dirt'

The biggest regrets of my life are all associated with those times when I have impulsively decided to do what I wanted to do, rather than taking the time to seek the wisdom of God in the Bible and through prayer in Jesus' Name.

Fifty-eight years on Planet Earth have taught me that I'm not "all that" and that the mere passage of years doesn't make a person wise. Only the God we know and follow in Jesus Christ can give us wisdom. That's why I love Proverbs 9:10 in the Old Testament:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

Though my use of God's wisdom has often been limited by my own egotistical resistance to taking instruction from anyone or anything besides my intelligence, knowledge, common sense, or emotional impulses, I've learned that God is not stingy about giving us His wisdom if we're humble enough to ask for it.

We may not always like the guidance that God gives to us, but it will always set us on the right path. I can't say that about the "wisdom" I might derive from myself or other people.

So, seek God's wisdom. Dig into God's Word, the Bible. Lift up prayers for counsel to God through prayer in Jesus' Name. Ask God to send Christian counselors to you as you make decisions. And ask God to give you the faith to walk in the paths He marks out for you.

James writes in the New Testament:

If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, Who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. (James 1:5)

My wife and I often say that, in so many ways in life, we are "dumber than dirt." But we've found, often against our own wills or initial judgments, that God is a lot wiser than we are and that when we submit to Him, He helps us to make wise decisions.

Check out these thoughts on getting wisdom from God in today's post at Our Daily Bread. Be sure to read Proverbs 2:1-9, on which it's based, first.

When Someone is Hard to Love

The words of Jesus on which this Our Daily Bread post is based are really hard to put into practice! In fact, we can only do it in the power of God's Holy Spirit. Many of you know that one of the prayers I pray when needing to deal with people who have hurt me, but knowing that Jesus commands that I love this neighbor as much as I love myself, is: "Lord, in spite of how I feel, love this person through me." It seems to work. And often I find, without noticing that it's happened, God brings me to the point of actually loving that person.

"Am I Saved?"

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

Galatians 4:4-7
Let’s pretend that you’re an average, normal Lutheran walking through a crowded mall.

You’re minding your own business, not bothering anybody else--because, after all, you are an average, normal Lutheran--when a young man walks up to you and with urgency in his voice, asks, “Are you saved?”

Now, as an average, normal Lutheran, you’re thrown off by this sudden violation of your personal space. (After all, you’re still trying to get used to the pastor who hugs everybody during the Sharing of the Peace!) All you hear at first is the word, “saved” and naturally, as an average, normal Lutheran who likes to save a buck, you assume that this guy is bragging about a bargain that saved him a lot of money.

But the young man's message and manner don’t quite compute. So you respond to his question by saying, “Huh?” The young man repeats himself, “Are you saved?” “Oh,” you think to yourself, “one of those Christians!”

By now, you are practiced at fending off such unwanted discussions of God, salvation, sin, and being born anew. So, you say, softly, so that nobody else can hear, “Why, yes, I am saved.” The young man, pleased with your answer and concerned that he might soon be stopped by security, looks over his shoulder, then scans the mall for his next victim.

Let me say at the outset that by that little vignette, I mean no disrespect either for the interviewer or the interviewee. The young man is right to want to share his faith in Christ with others. Jesus has commanded—and not just suggested that—all Christians to make disciples.

On the other hand, the average, normal Lutheran is right to feel that making disciples ought to happen more in the course of conversations between two willing participants—sort of like Philip telling Nathanael in the Gospel of John to come and see Jesus for himself—than in a flash of religious verbiage among strangers.

Nonetheless, as our average, normal Lutheran finds a bench to wait for his wife while she hits the After-Christmas Sale at Bath and Body Works, he can’t help thinking of the young man’s question: “Are you saved?” “Am I saved?” he asks himself.

Actually, this is a question I get a lot from Lutherans. “I don’t know what to say when people ask me that question,” they’ll say. “Am I saved?”

Our second lesson for this Sunday in which we celebrate the power of Jesus’ Name may help you to feel a little more comfortable in addressing that question.

Before digging into the lesson though, we should note that both Jesus and the Bible teach that there are people who will not be saved and that there are things from which we all need to be saved.

According to Jesus, there are people—maybe people you and I know—who will go to hell. In one of Jesus’ parables, which we looked at this past week as part of reading the Bible together in a year, Jesus tells about a wedding banquet filled with people who gain entry into the party by wearing special wedding robes issued by a king. One man crashes the party without such a robe. The king has him thrown out, Jesus says, into the “outer darkness, where there [is] weeping and gnashing of teeth.” The point of Jesus’ story is clear: Those who seek to gain entrance into eternity with God while remaining naked in their sins, unclothed by the forgiveness of sin that belongs only to those who repent for sin and believe in Christ, will ticket themselves for separation from God, for hell.

Hell is real. But life with God is also real. And because both heaven and hell are real, this business of salvation has life-and-death importance for every single human being!

Now, pull out the Celebrate insert, please, and turn to our second lesson for today, Galatians 4:4-7.

The church in Galatia was started by the first-century evangelist Paul in about 49AD. Galatia was a prosperous region in what is today Turkey. The church’s members were Gentiles, that is, non-Jews. They had received the good news of new life for all who believe in Jesus Christ through Paul’s ministry. It had come as great, life-changing news to them.

But since Paul had left them, a group of people known as Judaizers had come along to confuse them about their faith. They told the Galatians that it wasn’t enough to believe in Jesus. If they really wanted salvation, the Judaizers said, they also had to submit to Old Testament ritual law. The men had to be circumcised. Everybody had to conform to Jewish dietary laws. They needed to make sacrifices for their sins. All of these things and more, they claimed, were the conditions for salvation.

Some of the folks in the church at Galatia bought into all this nonsense. They allowed themselves to turn what God had given as a free gift—new and everlasting life for all who believe in Jesus Christ—into a legal transaction.

Others, intimidated by the Judaizers in the way our avergage, normal Lutheran was in his encounter with the young man at the mall, were rocked back on their heels and wondered, “Am I saved?”

Paul responds to this question and to the decision of some to turn their backs on Christ to take up the notion that they could save themselves by doing the right things. “You foolish Galatians!” he says at one point. “Who has bewitched you?”

He goes on to say that all who simply trust in Jesus Christ become descendants of Abraham, the founder of God’s Jewish people. Abraham himself was saved, Paul points out, not because of any good works he had done, but simply because he believed in the promises of God, promises that pointed to the sending of God’s Son for the salvation of all people.

Paul talks about the coming of the Son in verses 4 and 5, the opening of our lesson. Take a look at those verses, please: “…when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem [that is, to buy them back from slavery to sin and death] those who were under the law, so that they might receive adoption as children.”

When God decided that the time was right, He sent His Son. But, as we remember at Christmas, Jesus didn’t come in the full majesty of His deity. Nor did He arrive with the paraphernalia of the world's tinhorn kings and dictators. He came as a man to share our lives, our deaths, and our condemnation for sin.

The Bible tells us that Jesus, after His death, even experienced life in hell, where “He made a proclamation to the spirits in prison.” Jesus shared the condemnation that belongs to human beings when they refuse His outstretched hand of mercy, who decide that they don’t need God and don’t need to worry about the question, “Am I saved?”

To be "saved" is to be adopted as God’s children. This is an important point! Jesus once told some of His fellow Jews who refused to believe in Him that, because of their failure to trust in Him, they were children of their father, the devil. Imperfect ourselves, we are nonetheless saved by the blood of Jesus, our Savior! We are adopted into the family of God as a gift of God to all with faith in Christ.

Verse 6 says: “And because you are children [of God], God has sent the Spirit of His Son [this is another way of talking about the Holy Spirit] into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’”

People sometimes ask me, “How do I know that I have the Holy Spirit?”

One way to confirm that you have the Holy Spirit is to ask yourself, “Do I believe in Jesus Christ?” If your answer is, “Yes,” you know that the Holy Spirit is operating in your life because, as the New Testament tells us elsewhere, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit."

You can also know you have the Holy Spirit when you’re able to call God, “Abba!” “Abba” is the term Jesus used for “our Father in heaven” when He taught us the Lord’s Prayer. In Jesus’ everyday language of Aramaic, “Abba” was the term that little children used for their fathers, a term that connoted all the trust a child has in her or his daddy. When you trustingly and submissively pray to your Father in heaven, your own spirit is confirming that God’s Holy Spirit lives within you and that you are a child of God through faith in Christ.

Besides, we have the promise of the Bible, in the words of Peter at the first Pentecost, among other places, that all who are baptized in Jesus’ Name have forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Don’t let anyone ever make you feel like a second-class Christian because you don’t have the same spiritual gifts that they claim as some achievement on their parts! If you humbly pray to God, your Father, you have the Holy Spirit. And He will bring You comfort, hope, guidance, and the assurance of God’s love for you, no matter what happens in your life.

Paul underscores this in verse 7 of our lesson: “So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.” In the New Testament book of Romans, Paul writes in another passage: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

In neither of these passages are there any ifs, ands, or buts. If you believe in the Jesus revealed in life and on the pages of Scripture—who was born of a virgin, suffered death on the cross for our sins, raised from the dead by God the Father, who offers new life to all who turn from their sins and believe in Him—you can rest assured that you have been saved. You are a child of God!

Now folks, that’s such an incredible thing that, while we may not like the method of the young man in the mall of our little scenario, we should be able to understand why he wants to share the good news of salvation for all who believe in Jesus with others, don't you think?

Confident that we have been saved through Christ, may 2012 be a year in which we average, normal Lutherans join the apostles Peter and John, who, when facing persecution told those who threatened them with punishment if they ever again spoke in the Name of Jesus, “we cannot keep from speaking about” Jesus, the One Whose Name is above all names, the One Who has saved us.

If you believe in Jesus Christ, you are saved. That's good news. Amen!

One Woman's Solution to Modern Day Slavery

I've mentioned before that there are more slaves in our world today than at any time in history. Here, Holly Boardman talks about her exploration of this subject and one woman's remarkably simple and gratifying solution to this evil.

We Have Seen the Enemy and He is Us

From an inspiring daily reader by Joseph C. Piscatella, a three-and-a-half decade survivor of heart bypass surgery:

Remember, for every one person whose heart disease originates with bad genes, there are 449 who have created their problems with a knife, a fork, and an unhealthy love affair with their couch.

Guess the Year To Which This Refers

"The [economic downturn] hit that year with whirlwind suddenness and created widespread economic devastation...The boom economy, fed by easy credit, abruptly ended."

Guess the year. I'll give the answer, as well as the source of the quote in the Comments section.

God with Us

"...if we embrace the Christian teaching that Jesus is God and that he went to the Cross, then we have deep consolation and strength to face the brutal realities of life on earth. We can know that God is truly Immanuel--God with us--even in our worst sufferings." (Tim Keller, The Reason for God)

Reds Will Win 2012 World Series

Forget about the upcoming presidential election, the biggest story of 2012 will be the Cincinnati Reds winning the World Series. So says a Sports Illustrated writer. And there's more good news for Reds fans in his predictions. See here.

Now, if we could just get the Veterans Committee to vote David Concepcion into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, that would be great!

The Connection Between Faith and a Sense of Purpose

Interesting research. Here.

The Drama of Salvation: God Saves the Best for Last (Christmas Morning)

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

Hebrews 1:1-4
When I was in the ninth grade at Westmoor Junior High School in Columbus, I took Drama class. We read and analyzed plays, designed sets, learned the nomenclature of theater, and created skits and monologues.

I wasn’t a very good drama student. But I do remember one point that Miss Snead drummed into our heads about a good dramatic presentation: The final act of a good play is the part where all the threads of the story get pulled together. The resolution toward which the plot of the play has been leading becomes clear. Everything that precedes it readies an audience for the last act. The best is saved for last.

The New Testament book of Hebrews, from which our second lesson is taken, is a sermon delivered by an unknown preacher to a group of Jewish believers in Jesus, who were being tempted to turn their backs on Jesus and Christ’s Church by authorities of the Roman Empire under which they lived.

The Roman government had never been kind to Jews, often subjecting them to persecution. But the Jews never threatened the very foundations of worldly power the way believers in Jesus did. When men or women realized that they had an everlasting relationship with the one God of the universe simply by turning from sin and believing in God the Son Jesus, they were freed from the pressures to conform exerted by all the cults of the Roman gods and by the government.

When the first Christians came to believe that Jesus had destroyed the power of death over their lives, threats from Roman emperors, governors, and centurions lost their power. Like the apostle Paul, they lived in the assurance that there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” and that nothing “in all creation [is] able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” They realized that death is not the worst thing that can happen to a Christian.

When, through Jesus Christ, a person is free from the fear of dying, dictatorships, political correctness, and other earthly powers cannot control them.

Confounded by the first Christians’ stubborn allegiance to Jesus, the leaders of the Roman Empire panicked as despots and dictators always do.

They decided on a strategy that they thought would divide and destroy the Christian movement. They promised to let Jewish believers in Jesus live in peace, without harassment, without the threat of death, and with no requirement that they acknowledge Roman gods, if they would only renounce their faith in Jesus.

All the Christians had to do was pledge their ultimate allegiance to the emperor and disavow belief in Jesus as the Son of God Who gives eternal life to all who repent for sin and believe in Him, and go back to the rites and customs of Judaism they and their families had known for centuries.

It’s into this situation that the preacher of Hebrews, himself clearly a Jewish Christian, steps, urging his fellow Jewish Christians not to cave into the tempting offer of acceptance and freedom from persecution offered by the Roman authorities.

He does so by reminding them that as Jews, members of God’s chosen people, descendants of Abraham and Sarah, they knew about the opening act of the salvation drama that has been playing out in human history ever since the first human beings, Adam and Eve, bit into fruit pulled from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden.

But he also reminded them that, through Jesus, the final act of that drama was (and is) being played out.

Pull out the Celebrate inserts and turn to the second lesson and read the first two verses aloud with me: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.”

The first act of the salvation drama is recorded in the Old Testament. God is both the playwright and the leading actor.

The last scenes—the last books—of the Old Testament find God using prophets to drop hints of what’s to come in the second and final act.

Through Isaiah, for example, God said that in “the latter time” He would make His glory fully known in “the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.” And then speaking of the future in the past tense, we’re told in Isaiah, chapter 9: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who have lived in a land of deep darkness—on them a light has shined…For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests on His shoulders; and He is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace…”

Through Jeremiah, God said, “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign…”

And, as we remembered last evening, through Micah, God promised, “But you, O Bethlehem Ephratah…from you shall come forth for Me, One Who is to rule in Israel, Whose origin is…from ancient days.”

In the opening verses of his sermon, the preacher in Hebrews reminds his fellow Jewish Christians of how God spoke through many prophets to point them to the coming of the one anointed King of kings, the Savior of the world, God in the flesh: Jesus. Now, he says, in the last days—in the second and final act—that started when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, God speaks to us directly, intimately, personally through His Son, Jesus, through Whom God created all the worlds.

And just so we understand that Jesus isn’t second-fiddle to God the Father, but is God Himself in the flesh, look at what the preacher says of Jesus in verse 3: “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and He sustains all things by His powerful word.”

As the second act of God’s salvation drama began two thousand years ago, the Author Himself came onto the stage, taking on the role of a human being Who would speak God’s call to repentance and belief to us directly and repeatedly and then, go to a cross in order to set the stage for the final scene of His great drama.

That’s what the preacher addresses next in the rest of verse 3. Look at what he says: “When He had made purification for sins [that is, when the Savior Jesus offered up His sinless body on the cross as the perfect sacrifice not for any sins He committed, because He committed none, but for our sins], He sat down at the right hand [that is, the power hand] of Majesty [God the Father] on high, having become as much superior to angels as the Name He has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”

Through Jesus Christ, we know now how the play is going to end.

Sin and death will end!

Tears and suffering will be no more!

But there is one last scene to be played out.

It’s the scene of the drama in which the Jewish Christians to whom the book of Hebrews was addressed were then participants.

It’s the scene in which you and I find ourselves today.

It’s the scene in which followers of Jesus, filled with His desperate love for all people, share His call to repent and believe in Him and so, live with God forever.

It’s also the scene in which you and I are tempted, as were the first century Jewish Christians, to choose between the Jesus road and the easy road.

The easy road is the one we taken when honor God with our lips, but keep our hearts far from Him.

The easy road is the one we take when see trouble, pain, sorrow, or grief as a reason or an excuse to give up on God.

Jesus says that “the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Jesus and trust in Jesus, no matter what life may bring us, is the only way to God, the only way to life.

The path of faith in Christ will sometimes lead us through adversity and pain. As surely as sin, death, and the devil ran Jesus through their gauntlets, as we follow Jesus, we too, will go through the same gauntlets.

But if we will seek God’s strength, the power of His Holy Spirit, to keep following Jesus—to keep on keeping on in faith—we will have God’s peace and help and the presence of the risen Jesus, in our lives right now.

And when the last scene of the last act plays out, we will be with Jesus in eternity, along with all those who have believed in Him. Jesus promises us that “the one who endures [in faith] to the end will be saved.”

Pastor Joe Stowell wrote in Our Daily Bread this past week that “Christianity is unique among all religions for it is about God’s pursuit of us to draw us to Himself” and not, like other religions, about the human pursuit of deities or harmony with the universe.

In the drama of salvation, God is both author and star. But God is no egotistical actor looking for close-ups and glory for His own selfish ends.

On the first Christmas, God became a helpless baby.

When He grew into manhood, He took on the role of slave, servant, and condemned criminal just so He could die and rise and welcome all who believe in Him into a new life now and into life as it was meant to be for us—a life without disease, suffering, death, oppression, or hardships—in eternity.

On this Christmas Morning, 2011, ask God to help you make and keep a vow to never more be part of the audience observing God’s salvation drama, a pew sitter who leaves Jesus at the church door, but a participant, taking any role God and His Church may give you that will let you join the saints and angels in proclaiming, “To the One seated on the throne and the Lamb [Jesus] be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”

Dearly loved people of God, merry Christmas and God’s blessings to you now and through the coming year! Amen!

Christmas: The Punchline God Wants You to Get

[This message was prepared for the Christmas Eve Candlelight Worship Service of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

Luke 2:1-7
In the first parish I served as a pastor was a couple who had been married many years and were deeply devoted to each other. Several years before I arrived, the woman, Laura, had been struck with Alzheimer’s Disease. By the time I became Laura’s and Vern’s pastor, she was confined to a bed in a nursing home, incapable of recognizing anyone or carrying on a conversation, not even Vern. But every day, Vern would visit and spend hours with Laura. He fed her with a baster, read the Bible and the newspaper to her, told her all the latest family news, and prayed with her. Often, when I visited Laura to pray aloud for her, I would find Vern there by her bedside. And often, when we spoke in private, Vern would tell me all about Laura, his love for her, and their life together. “She was always the first to send a note of encouragement to people who had bad things happen in their lives,” he told me. “And always called them to congratulate them or just be happy with them when good things happened. And she loved going to church, especially at Advent, just before Christmas, because she loved remembering that one day, Jesus was coming back again.”  I remember commenting to Vern how rare it was for someone to love Advent. They might love Christmas or Easter, but few people loved Advent. But Laura did.

Some five years after Vern first told me of Laura’s love for Advent, she died. It was just a few days before Christmas, in the waning days of Advent. We’re never ready for the loss of loved ones, even when we know that their deaths are inevitable. I was with Vern when Laura passed. Tears filled his eyes and his throat was choked with emotion. But he turned to me with a smile on his face and chuckle in his voice when he said, “It was her Advent, pastor. Laura is with Jesus now.” In the midst of tragedy, because of Jesus Christ, Vern knew he (and Laura) had something to smile about! They were in on God’s punchline!

One way to read the events of the first Christmas that we celebrate tonight is to see them as one wonderful punchline that God wants all the world to get.

In our Gospel lesson from Luke, we’re told that the emperor in Rome decided that everyone under the domain of the Roman Empire needed to be counted in a census. Judea, composed of God’s people, the Jews, had been conquered by Rome decades earlier. So, the people of Judea, including the couple God had chosen to act as foster parents to Jesus, had to submit to the census. In ancient times, a census, especially when those being counted were a conquered people, was designed to find who could be conscripted into the military and forced labor and to let the extortionist tax collectors know where they could find all their victims. A census was a way for corrupt dictators to flex their power.

That’s what Caesar Augustus, the Roman Emperor, thought he was doing in ordering this particular census. He surely had no knowledge of the words of God spoken through the prophet Micah 740 years earlier: “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are one the littlest clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for Me One Who is to rule Israel, Whose origin is from old, from ancient days…” The Messiah, the Anointed King, the Christ, repeatedly promised by God through the prophets, was to be born in Bethlehem, a tiny town about five miles from Jerusalem.

The promises of a Messiah had been forgotten or dismissed as myth by many Jews by the time the Roman emperor issued orders for a census. But not by God! God never forgets His promises!

Now, the Jews had a custom: Whenever they had a census, they were counted not in the places where they resided, but in their ancestral homes. So, though Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth, they went to be counted—registered—in the ancestral home of both their families, Bethlehem, about sixty miles away.

The trip, in first-century Judea, would have been routine. People from all over the country ordinarily traveled to nearby Jerusalem several times a year for the great festivals of their faith, like Passover.

But there’s nothing routine about a woman nine months pregnant making such a trip over such hard terrain!

And yet, as Mary and Joseph left Nazareth and headed for Bethlehem, they may have smiled. An emperor in faraway Rome who would never know their names thought that he was exercising power, moving millions of people around like so many checkers on a game board. He had no idea that, unwittingly, by his orders, he was placing Mary exactly where God wanted her to be to fulfill the ancient promise of a Savior.

Luke tells what happened next simply: “So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger…”

When, some time after Jesus’ birth, shepherds arrived with the story of how an angel had told them that the Messiah had been born, Mary and Joseph may have smiled again, knowing that, whatever the obstacles, however much heartache or time may pass between the delivery of God’s promises and their fulfillment, and no matter how people may fool themselves with ideas that they’re in control or that their sins don’t matter or that they don’t need God’s help, there are really only two ways that the affairs of the world can go (you've heard me say it before): Either God gets His way or God gets His way!

Be still. God is in control!

The truth that God is in ultimate control of the universe is sometimes hard for us to believe or to see.

It may be hard for you to see it tonight.

You may be facing financial hard times and wonder what use God is in dealing with them.

You may be dealing with health issues, grieving the loss of a loved one, experiencing discord in your family, or battling an addiction and feel that God is far away or even useless.

You may look at the world, with its injustices, natural disasters, and selfishness and even think that God is out of the picture, that we’re all on our own. But don’t you believe any of those lies!

On the first Christmas, God let a simple couple from Nazareth in on the most wonderful joke of all. No matter how far sin seems to have spun the world out of God’s hands, no matter what tragedies may befall us, no matter how arrogantly those who think they have power may act, God is still in charge.

God can put a baby into the womb of a virgin.

God can let emperors think they’re in control while working His good and gracious will through their orders.

And, in Jesus Christ, you can know that God still cares about you.

God still holds those who believe in Him in the palm of His hands.

And God can sustain you through the tough times of this life when nothing makes sense by giving You the certainty that His grace and mercy for You will always prevail!

We can rest assured in God, or as the New Testament book of James calls Him, “the Father of lights, with Whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

The God we know in Jesus Christ “is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

And this is the God Who tells us that He so loved the world—that He so loved you—that “He gave His only Son [Jesus], so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish [may not go to hell, the place of no life] but may have eternal life.”

God is still in control. This fact was underscored again when, hree decades after the first Christmas. Pilate, an emissary from the Roman Emperor, in Judea, the preachers and teachers of Judea, and people gathered in Jerusalem from the far corners of the known world, all agreed that Jesus, the One Whose birth the angels sang at Christmas, had to die. In nailing Jesus to a cross, they tried to declare their independence from God. They sought to assert human control over life and death, the present and the future. On that Good Friday when Jesus was executed, those who had believed in Him were sure that the promises of God had only been a dream. They thought that they could never be happy again, that life was, in the words of an English writer, “nasty, brutish, and short.” And then Jesus’ dead body was placed in a tomb.

But on Easter, God once more showed that He was in control. Jesus rose from the dead to claim forgiveness and new life for all who turn from sin and entrust their lives to Him.

Tonight, you may feel alone. To you, the Jesus Who was born on Christmas, died on Good Friday, and rose from the dead, says, “Remember, I am with you always.”

You may feel that your sins are too great for God to forgive. God’s Word says that in Jesus, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have One Who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” In Jesus, we see that God is “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” We see that though we are, “are stained red with sin, [God] will wash [us] as clean as snow.”

Tonight, you may feel that the pain of grief or relational discord you feel is unbearable. But God’s Word says that when we suffer, emptied of arrogance or self-sufficiency, Christ’s power is perfected in us. God replaces our weakness with His strength and we can face anything.

And tonight, you may think that your eternal future is bleak and that death is the end of things. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.” And God’s Word promises that in eternity, God “will wipe every tear from [believers'] eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more…”

No matter how far from God you may have felt when you walked in here tonight, you can walk away from here knowing that the God Who came into our world at Christmas and Who will return one day to fully establish His eternal kingdom, will never leave your nor forsake you.

Christmas, the feast of Jesus’ birth, can be a moment of rebirth and renewal for you, whether you’ve followed Christ your whole life, had a distant, Christmas-and-Easter relationship with Christ, or never in your life bowed down and confessed that Jesus the Messiah is your Lord and your God and your King.

You see, God wants you to be “in on the joke.” He wants you to let Him love you and make you new, now, and He wants you to be with Him for all eternity. He wants all of us to experience intimacy with Him and the incredible comfort and power that belongs to all who surrender and dare to believe in Him.

If you want any of those things tonight, please bow your heads now and silently affirm that the prayer I’m about to offer is your prayer, too:

Gracious Father God, we thank You that You have never given up on us or on Your promises to us. We thank You that on the first Christmas You sent Jesus, God the Son, to live life as we do, to experience all that we experience, to die on our behalf, and to rise from death, so that You can give forgiveness and new life to all who believe in Jesus. We thank You that Your Holy Spirit is here with us right now, in good and bad times, in moments of clarity and in times of confounding mystery, convincing us that Your promises are true, that You want to be with us always, that You want to reshape our characters and make us more like Jesus, and that, at the ends of our days, whenever they come, You will be waiting for us with open arms and infinite love. We ask You to fill us with joy, peace, and hope, no matter the condition of our health, our emotions, or our pocketbooks. As Jesus lived for us, help us to live for You only, tonight and always. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen

Merry Christmas, everybody!

"Calculating Christmas"

I thought I knew how the date for Christmas was set. But I may have been wrong. Read this interesting article.

Are Bishops Necessary?

From today's devotional in Our Daily Bread: "Caring for God’s people includes feeding them spiritually, leading them gently, and warning them firmly. Leaders in the church are to be motivated by the incalculable price Christ paid on the cross."

These are important words.

But here are a few additional thoughts triggered by the Bible passage on which the devotion is based, Acts 2:22-32. (You might want to go read it now. Go ahead! I'll wait here for you to do it.)


The word translated in the New Revised Standard Version rendering of the passage, as "overseers," is, in the original Greek, "episcopos." Episcopos is a compound word composed of the prefix, "epi," meaning "over," and "skopos" (from which we get words like telescope and microscope) and means "see."

So, an episcopos, is an overseer, someone who, in the church, sees over the spiritual needs of a congregation or a group of individual Christians.

The word "episcopos" came to be rendered in English as "bishop" and has come to be applied to clergy persons who oversee the work of groups of congregations and pastors, whether those groups are referred to as synods, conferences, districts, or dioceses.

However, the New Testament has no reference to persons bearing the title "bishop" or "episcopos" functioning in this way.*

When the New Testament refers to "overseers" or "bishops," it has in mind what we would today call "pastors." Pastors, in the New Testament context, could be the shepherds of congregations or serve the shepherding role among groups of believers within a larger body.

The New Testament doesn't lay out any particular system for individual congregations or groups of congregations to organize themselves. Biblically, we are free in Christ to be organized in any way that seems practical, helping us to pursue our common mission as believers in Christ.

The Lutheran Confessions are similarly indifferent to how congregations or groups of congregations are organized. Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession, an expression of how Lutheran Christians understand God, the Bible, and Christian faith, says, "It is sufficient for the true unity of the Christian church that the Gospel be preached in conformity with a pure understanding of it and that the sacraments be administered in accordance with the divine Word."

Lutherans have always believed that authority over the actions of the Church aren't governed by human beings, but by God, as mediated to us through God's Word, the Bible. Part 1 of the Formula of Concord, another basic Lutheran confessional statement, says, "We believe, teach, and confess that the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged...Other writings of ancient and modern teachers, whatever their names, should not be put on a par with Holy Scripture. Every single one of them should be subordinated to the Scriptures..." [italics are mine]

It's fine for denominational groups, such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) of which I am a part, to have bishops, so long as that's agreeable to those within the ELCA. But the Bible only knows "bishops" (overseers) as pastors. Bishops over a synod or a diocese are in a category Martin Luther called "adiaphora," an element of church life that has nothing to do with and is unnecessary for, our salvation.

*You will notice that the word episcopos is very much like the term Episcopalian. That's because the Episcopal Church, part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, traces its organizational structure back to that of the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, and other Christian traditions, operate with an episcopal system. This means that they are governed largely by bishops. Most notably, bishops in all of these traditions assign pastors to congregations, rather than congregations prayerfully deciding who to call to be their pastors. 

Under episcopal structures, to varying degrees, bishops also are deemed to be the ultimate authorities within the regions, dioceses, synods, or districts in which they serve, over the faith and practice of the Church. So, for example, when some bishops in the the Episcopal Church-USA, authorized the ordination of practicing homosexuals, some Episcopal parishes chose to place themselves under the authority of bishops of other dioceses, ones in which the bishops adhered to differing understandings of the underlying Biblical issues.