What's the Difference Between Helping and Enabling?

During adult Sunday School class this past week, someone asked, "What's the difference between helping people and enabling them?"

Christians aren't the only ones for whom this question is important, of course. But it's especially critical for us.

Why? Because Jesus' great commandment, a summation of the two sections of the Ten Commandments in which Jesus cited passages from the Old Testament books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, says that we are to love God completely and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

The love Jesus commands is not about sentiment. It's a command to actively and practically help others. In His parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus says that a man who provided assistance to a stranger, was the truest neighbor, the one fulfilling the great commandment.

But there are some people who count on Christian compassion to incite Christians to provide assistance that doesn't really help, instead enabling their destructive habits and behaviors. Help is something we're called to provide others; enabling isn't. Compassion may be the primary motive for both helper and enabler, but helping is constructive and enabling is destructive.

How can we tell the difference? Here are a few observations based on my reading of Scripture and my twenty-seven years as a pastor:

• Helping meets a need. Enabling addresses wants.
• Helping lifts people toward maturity. Enabling encourages ongoing immaturity.
• Helping is a bridge to the other person's self-sufficiency. Enabling is an open-ended commitment to co-dependence.
• Helping eliminates the other's distress. Enabling can be as much about eliminating our own distress as that of the other person. Enabling can be a selfish, rather than a selfless, act.
• Helping is always about the other person. Enabling can be about massaging one's own ego or self-righteousness.

To love others means helping them, not enabling them. I've found that examining one's motives based on any of these five points can help us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Happy Saint Nicholas Day

Here.

How to Make Your Life a No Bellyaching Zone

I love this piece based on Psalm 37 by David Branon.

The psalm gives an alternative to the favorite indoor sport for Christians in their church fellowship halls: bellyaching about how bad things are in the world.

Sin has been standard operating procedure on Planet Earth since Adam and Eve bit into the fruit of the knowledge of and good and evil. It was that evil that thought to rid humanity of all accountability to God and all notions of love for God or neighbor by killing off Jesus, though He was truly God and a truly sinless human being. So, the fact that there are bad things--often horrific things--in the world may arouse our compassion and our horror, but never our surprise.

Bellyaching and whining about how great things were in the supposed "good old days" only guts us of joy and robs the world of our witness for the truly better life that can belong to all who trust in Jesus Christ, here and in eternity.

In his beautiful post on Psalm 37, Branon surfaces five things the Psalm says that we can do as believers in Christ to stand subversively against all the hatred, cynicism, selfishness, and adulation of self over others that exists in our world. The list:

• Trust in the Lord and do good.
• Feed on God's faithfulness.
• Delight yourself in God. (I would say, "Enjoy God and His goodness!)
• Commit your way to God. (Turn the keys of your life over to God. Learn to pray, "Thy will be done.")
• Rest in the Lord. (Be confident that God, Who brought everything into being, will have the last say, and it will be good!)

I suggest reading the Psalm and Branon's piece on it often, then jotting down these five points on a card that you can keep with you at all times. When the impulse to bellyache about how horrible things are, pull out the card and let it be a reminder.

And remember Jesus' words:

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

When we trust in Jesus as the final Authority over our lives, we have a lot to be thankful for. I know that I need to be reminded of that. I need to remember that all bellyaching is unnecessary! 

(By the way, here is a link to Psalm 37.) 

Preparing for the Fire

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

2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8
Every few years, there are forest fires out west not caused by the carelessness of campers or the crimes of arsonists. They happen as a result of spontaneous combustion. The fires simply erupt when the trees in forest have become brittle and lifeless.

Foresters tell us this is a good thing. The canopies of dead and dying trees prevent sunlight and rain from reaching any plants or trees trying to take root and grow beneath. Fires take those canopies away.

But often, within days of such massive natural conflagrations end, a TV camera crew will be allowed to go into forests seemingly devastated and dead and find, amid the charred remains of once enormous trees and the still-swirling smoke of the fire, signs of new life: sprigs of mighty oaks or sequoias starting to sprout all around.

Any of you who has ever endured a fire in your home know how destructive fires can be. But, it seems, fires can also be the engines by which new life supplants the dead.

Fire can bring life.

The Bible knows this truth. In fact, the Bible associates fire with God, the giver of all life.

Hebrews 12: 29, for example, finds the Christian preacher who is its author say, “Our God is a consuming fire.”

That phrase “consuming fire” carries with it the notion that our God, like forest fires, consumes or destroys that which is dead or not filled with the life that only He can give.

No wonder then, that the ancient Israelites were afraid of God. Remember when Moses returned from spending time with God on a mountaintop while he and Israelites were in wilderness? Go to Exodus 34, starting on v. 29 pew Bibles and read what it says:

Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. ³⁰When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. 

Moses had been in the presence of God, the consuming fire.

This is why the Old Testament prophets warned the people about what the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, calls the "day of Lord." The day of the Lord is when God will set all things right. Jesus will return. The dead in Jesus will rise. And Jesus will judge all. All that is not of God will be burned in the fires of hell for eternity. Those who have turned from sin and believed in Jesus will live with God for eternity. And Jesus will destroy the old to give rise to new heavens and a new earth in which His kingdom will be fully established for all eternity.

The day of the Lord isn't an occasion to be anticipated casually. It will be wonderful. But it won't be peaches and cream for everyone. Turn to Amos 5:18-20 in the pew Bibles to see what the Old Testament prophet Amos said about the day of the Lord back in the 8th century BC:

Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake. Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?

¹⁹²⁰The Season of Advent is a time when we remember that just as Jesus once came into our world to reveal the glory of God, to die for our sins,and to rise again in order to give life to all Who believe in Him, He is returning when God brings an end to this world and supplants all that is evil and dead with the kingdom of God.

Look at how Peter explains the day of the Lord, the second Advent (or coming) of Jesus, in our second lesson:

...the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.  [After all, things can be seen clearly with fire.]

¹¹Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, ¹²waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? ¹³But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

Our Gospel lesson from Mark, written of events that occurred two-thousand years ago, just before Jesus began His ministry, John the Baptizer points both to Jesus’ first advent (remember advent means coming) and to His advent at the end of this world’s history, when He will judge the living and the dead.

Look at last thing John says in verse 8 of Gospel lesson: “I have baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Matthew indicates that John said not only that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit, but "with the Holy Spirit and fire."

We believe that when we are baptized, the Holy Spirit comes to burn or purge us of all sin and fill us with the life of God. That's exactly what happened on the first Pentecost, you'll remember. Jesus' first followers gathered in prayer, awaiting the risen and ascended Jesus' direction for their lives. As they prayed, the Holy Spirit came on each of them with tongues of fire!

At Christmas, we celebrate and remember the act of deep selflessness and love that caused the mighty God of the universe to lay His glory by in order to live as servant for our salvation. But when Jesus returns, He will come in His full blazing glory.

This is why the prophet Malachi, writing about 430 years before Jesus, considered the day of the Lord and asked, “Who can endure the day of his coming…?...For He is like a refiner's fire...”

The bottom line of all this fire talk is simple. God is not our buddy. God is our Friend, for sure. But God is also our Master, our Lord, our Creator, our King, our Savior. And at the end of history, God intends to destroy all that is not of God, whether it resides within us as believers or in the unbelieving universe around us.

God has already come into the lives of Christians with the fire of His Holy Spirit, of course. But, the fact is that most Christians only toy with God. They like to bank the fire of God, turning Him into a pilot light they can turn up when things are going badly and they need help and then turn down whenever having God in their lives is inconvenient.

A pastor friend of mine once said that "The problem with Church is that we're afraid of the Holy Spirit." The fear he was talking about isn't the holy awe we all should have before almighty God.  Rather, the fear we have of God most of the time is the fear of turning over the keys of our lives to the God we know in Jesus. We want to be in control. Our inborn human arrogance, our sin, makes us want to leave God out of our lives, to leave God standing in a corner until we're ready to call Him.

But this approach to God will never do on the day of the Lord, when all that is within us and all around us not of God will be dissolved in the fire of His holiness.


Years ago, I heard the true story of a group of engineers and their wives having dinner together. The talk turned to all the projects the engineers had been working on: bridges, buildings, towers, water treatment facilities. The whole talk seemed to be turning into an ode to their accomplishments. But then, one of the engineers, thinking of the day of the Lord, put things in perspective. "Some day," he said, "all of this will burn."

So, how can we be ready for Jesus’ second great advent? Three ways, I think.

First: We repent for sin. We let God’s holy fire burn away all that is not pleasing to Him, all our sin.

As we've said before, repentance is not a "one and done" proposition. Just as was true of the crowds who came to be baptized by John, we prepare the way of the Lord into our lives and into the lives of those we touch by engaging daily in repentance.

In repentance, we submit to God’s holy fire putting torch to all our sin, egotism, selfishness. We say, "Thy will be done."

It's in repentant believers, long before the return of Jesus, that God begins the process of replacing the dead and sinful in us with His life. One of my favorite passages of Scripture, 2 Corinthians 5:17, says, "If anyone is in Christ Jesus, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new." We make way for the new life Christ wants to give us each day through repentance.

Second: We trust in the Lord. That is, we believe in Jesus Christ. We trust that Christ, the fiery light of the world, will guide us from here to eternity. This is essential. The Bible teaches that we are saved not by our works, but by our faith--our belief, our trust--in, our surrender to Jesus Christ.

Our eternal destinies, whether we will be with God or the devil, depend on whether we entrust our lives to Christ. In Luke 18:7, after saying that He would make things right—bring God’s justice to those who call on Him, Jesus asks chilling question: “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith?”

When we believe in Jesus Christ, our priorities are no longer the most important thing to us. God’s priorities are. I’ve told the true story before of the experience of a woman Ann and I came to know years ago through her daughter, Valerie. When Valerie was two years old, she got away from the watchful eye of her mother, as two year olds can do, and made her way to the family pool and, without a soul in sight, then fell to the very bottom.

Now, you should know by way of background that just two years before, another daughter, just one year older than Valerie, had died from leukemia. From that moment, this woman made Valerie the center of her universe. She did everything for Valerie, at the expense of her husband and their marriage, all her friendships, her work, everything.

When Valerie was found in the pool, some time had passed and her life hung in the balance. She was taken to a hospital ER. Valerie's mother was understandably hysterical. She went to a room in the hospital and began screaming at God: "Not again! Not again! You can't do this to me again!"

Finally, she had no more words and, sobbing in silence, she heard within herself the voice of God: "You shall have no gods before me."

She realized at that moment that she had made Valerie her god. All was done for Valerie. You see, if we make the things we see--whether it's a loved one, our families, our jobs, our finances, our possessions, our status--the most important things in our lives, we can fool ourselves into thinking that we have control.

What God was telling that woman was simple, "Stand aside. Let me be your God. I can take care of Valerie. I can take care you. I can take care of everything, now and for eternity."

When Jesus returns, all the worldly things we have thought so important, including our pretense of control, will die. Only that which is under the Lordship of Jesus will stand. Jesus tells us, "Even in the face of things you will not understand until you see me face to face, believe in Me."

Third: We share Good News with others. We pass on the life-giving fire of our crucified and risen Jesus to others.

In our second lesson, Peter says that God is not slow about day of Jesus’ return, but is patient. God is waiting for not only the Church to repent and believe in Christ, but for world to repent and believe in Christ. God is giving all of us the chance to get our lives in order and get in sync with Him.

Our job—the job of every Christian—is to share that Good News with others. Jesus has given each of us the Great Commission to go and make disciples.

Paul writes about that commission when he asks about those who need to know and believe in Jesus: “But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent?”

Jesus sends us to be His witnesses to everyone we know, because everyone we know is someone Jesus wants with Him for eternity.

Repentance, belief, and witnessing for Christ. This is the lifestyle of "holiness and godliness" that Peter describes in our second lesson. These are the things we need to be about as prepare the way for Jesus' second advent.  

One day, Peter says at the very end of our lesson for today, God's righteousness will be at home in all of God’s universe.

Until that day, may God’s righteousness be at home in us.

And until that day, may we live in God’s grace through lifestyles of repentance, belief, and witness. Amen

A Great Organization

Earlier today, my son Philip and I attended a presentation in Farmersville, Ohio today about the World Mission Prayer League (WMPL).

This is a Lutheran organization committed to both praying for and sending missionaries to share the Good News of Jesus Christ in "underreached" parts of the world.* Underreached areas are those where people have had no chance to learn about Jesus Christ.

At present, roughly one-third of all the people on earth have never heard the Name of Jesus Christ or the Good News about new life for all who turn from sin and believe in Him.

And approximately 66,000 people die EACH DAY who have never been told about Jesus!

This simply cannot be allowed to continue!

Too many are dying without knowing that "everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved" (Acts 2:21). 

WMPL helps Lutheran Christians pray together and joins in prayer with other Christians committed to Christ's Great Commission to "make disciples of all nations."

It also sends missionaries to 20 countries at present, each country in parts of the world that have been largely unreached by the Gospel heretofore. (Most in the so-called 10/40 Window.)

WMPL never asks for money. With allowances for numbers of children, its entire staff, including its director as well as missionaries, is provided with the same salary and benefits. People who give the organization money do so from a commitment to reaching the unsaved for Jesus Christ.

Go to the WMPL web site, here, and see how you can become a prayer partner with this worthy organization.

Thanks to my colleague and friend, Pastor Larry Lindstrom and the people of Saint Andrew Lutheran Church for hosting this get-together with WMPL director Chuck Lindquist!

*WMPL has respectful ties with other evangelical Christian groups, by the way.

The Miracle of Christmas

Here.

'The Widow Maker' and Me

Earlier today, I went to the James Cancer Center at Ohio State for an evaluative appointment.

In October, a small melanoma was removed from my left leg. In about a week, I'll have an outpatient procedure to remove surrounding tissue.

I was impressed by the staff at the James and the ease with which I was registered.

In addition to the doctor, I also met with a nurse practitioner. She looked at the wallet cards I carry identifying me as someone with both a stent and a defibrillator and said, "Do you know that the heart attack you had is what we call 'the widow maker'? It's a miracle you're alive. God must have plans for you."

Miracles still happen. Why God chose to work this miracle on me, I don't know and no doubt won't know until I see Him face to face.

But I pray that I will make the most of this life God has given to me.

In any case, to God be all the glory!

Confidence in the Midst of the Questions

[This was shared during the funeral for Dorothy, a member of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. Dorothy was 98 years old at the time of her passing.]

John 14:1-7
In the past four years, I’ve gotten to know Dorothy fairly well. Not as well as you who are her family and friends who loved her and knew her best, of course. But I came to know something of her personality and of her character.

I can tell you that Dorothy loved her family. In the nearly monthly visits we shared, no visit went by without Dorothy telling me about how her parents taught her to believe in Christ and how that belief sustained her even when she went through bleak times.

She always loved telling me about her husband Alec, his kindness, his sense of humor, and the life they shared. (She also told me that Alec, eleven years her senior, used to say that he raised her.)*

She loved to talk about her boys, Greg and Kirk. “I was so grateful to have them,” she would say, “that I spoiled them and I don’t think that it hurt them at all.” Then, she would always tell me how wonderful they were.

I came to know that she appreciated her family and her friends--like Bessie, with whom she had a more than eighty year friendship, loved Logan, and enjoyed baseball, especially the Pittsburgh Pirates.

And, almost from our first visit, Dorothy also conveyed the strong message that she was a red-hot Democrat. She still thought that Franklin Roosevelt was the greatest and, though John Edwards had been her first choice in the most recent election, came also to be a fan of Barack Obama. She was ready always to discuss current events with me when I arrived. 

Above all, I learned that Dorothy was a person of deep faith in Jesus Christ.

But during almost every one of our visits, Dorothy seemed to return to the same question again and again. “Why am I still here?” she would ask.

Sometimes, I would honestly say that while only God could answer that question, I could say that I was personally glad that she was around. Dorothy and her faith inspired me and I told her so. She was surprised to know that I found her inspiring, but my answer never pleased her. She was ready to leave this life and though she respected and accepted that her life was in God’s hands, she found God’s logic hard to comprehend.

Dorothy had these thoughts not because she was morbid, but because she had a deep and confident faith. She knew well the words Jesus spoke to His disciples that we read a short while ago. He says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places...I go to prepare a place for you...And...I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

Dorothy knew this promise.

She knew that Jesus had prepared a place for her, just as He had for every believer she’d known and cherished most—Alec, her parents, and others.

She knew that Jesus’ death on the cross, where He took the punishment for sin we all deserve, was not the end of His story.

On the Sunday following His Good Friday death, Jesus rose from the dead and even today offers to all of us what we cannot and could never find on our own—not through religion, not through worldly achievement, not through satisfying personal relationships, not through our own efforts to combine what we think is best in all the world’s religions and philosophies.

Jesus offers us the only way for any of us to connect with God, the source of life.

Here’s how Jesus puts it in our reading from John's gospel in the New Testament: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Jesus made the same point in His conversation with a man named Nicodemus. “For God so loved the world,” Jesus said, “that he gave his only Son [Jesus Himself], so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Several months after Jesus was killed on a cross and then raised again to life by God the Father, two of Jesus’ disciples could confidently say of Jesus, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

Jesus saves us from the ravages of sin, death, aging and all that bedevils us here. This world, as wonderful and as blessed as it can be, is not all that God has in mind for us!

He wants to give us new and everlasting life in direct fellowship with Him, a life so abundant, so full, so rich and real that we can hardly imagine it now.

In the midst of her battles with depression, in the midst of her frustration with the way advancing years had robbed her of feeling productive, and even in the midst of her questions about why God was keeping her on this earth, always, always, Dorothy believed in Christ. She had confidence in the midst of her questions.

She knew that Christ has prepared a place for all who believe in Him to be with Him and all the saints for all eternity. All tears will be dried and there will be joy and purpose and productivity and peace.

I never knew a person with a clearer focus on heaven than Dorothy had and today, God be praised, she is with the Lord and all His saints, including Alec and her parents.

I loved getting to know Dorothy. I’m excited that one day, because of the grace God gives to all who repent of sin and trust in Christ alone, I will get to see her once again.

To all of you who knew and loved Dorothy best, I can say with confidence that, just as He did for Dorothy, Christ has prepared a place for you and I’m sure that Dorothy is waiting for you, too.

Trust in Christ as Dorothy did and you will live each day on this earth in the certainty of an eternity of happy reunions and of endless joy. Knowing that, through Christ, you have life with God in eternity, can imbue each day you live here with a purpose and hope and joy you can find nowhere else!

May God’s purpose, hope, and joy be yours today and always. Amen

*Most people knew Dorothy's husband as Alex. But she always referred to him as Alec.

Three Gifts for Those Who Wait

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

1 Corinthians 1:3-9
How would you react if someone you trusted told you that by this time tomorrow, your life on this earth would be over? How would knowing the exact time of your death affect the way you lived? What would it do to your relationship with God?

Chances are, if you're as wise as I think you are, you’d spend some of the next twenty-four hours repenting for sin, affirming your faith in Christ, and, to the extent you could, living a life of love for God and love for others.

But, how would you react if at the twenty-third hour, the same trusted person who had told you that you had one day to live said, “Actually, you may have more than one hour left. You will die, but the time left is indefinite”? Would that seem like a reprieve from a death sentence or permission to ease up on the faith you so fervently confessed just the day before?

When people in the first century AD came to faith in Christ, many assumed that Christ would be returning soon to judge the living and the dead and to fully establish His kingdom.

They even had a term for the day when Jesus would do all this. They called it the parousia, a Greek word meaning presence, arrival, or even official visit.

But as the early Church grew, the years went by, Christians were persecuted, and the first believers died, Christians grew restless. They felt like the parousia had been delayed and they wondered what the hang-up was.

Why, they wondered, was Jesus waiting so long?

And how could they keep on in faith with the return of Jesus now off in some indeterminate future?

We Christians in 2011 may not spend much time considering when Jesus will be coming back. But we do know all about the frustration of not seeing the things for which we’ve hoped and prayed when we want to see them. Delayed gratification is as hard for us as it was for the first Christians.

The Advent season we begin today is one in which we wait for the arrival of Christmas.

It's also a time when we remember that, like those first Christians, we await the moment when we will see Jesus face to face. It may be long years from now. It may be in a few moments. It may be when Jesus returns to the earth. It may be when we leave the earth.

But whenever it may be, we face the same question: How do we live until we meet the crucified and risen Jesus face to face? All of the second lessons of this Advent season focus on this question.

Today’s lesson, from 1 Corinthians, reminds us that until we see Jesus, God gives us three special gifts.

First, verse 4 says that “the grace of God has been given [to us[ in Christ Jesus.” In Christ, God gives the gift of grace.

Grace is the charitable attitude that God has for every human being. But it’s more than mere sentiment. The most famous passage of Scripture, John 3:16, shows us that God acts on His attitude of grace. God the Father sent God the Son Jesus to live a simple life in the Judean hills, then to die as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, then to rise so that all who trust in Him will have what none of us deserve: new and everlasting life with God.

The word we translate as grace is, in the original Greek of the New Testament, charitas, from which we get our English word, charity. While we wait to see Jesus face to face, we can live each day in the charitable grace of God.

God will forgive the genuinely repentant.

He will help those who humbly admit their need of Him.

He will empower us to love Him and to love others with acts of service and kindness.


While we await Jesus' return, God gives us grace.

In verse 7, Paul says of believers in Jesus Christ that none are “lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God gives believers in Jesus Christ spiritual gifts.

Being a follower of Jesus Christ is not a solo proposition. Some people say that they can worship God just as well on the golf course as they do in worship on a Sunday morning. While I know that God's Name probably gets used more on a golf course than it does in a church building, I don't agree.

Just as we’re going to be part of a great company of believers in eternity, God means for us to be part of a great company of believers—the Church—here and now.

And to each and every one us of God parcels out spiritual gifts with which He expects us to make ourselves useful to His purposes and to His Church as long as we draw breath.

A few months ago, I was waiting for a prescription to be filled at Riverside Hospital in Columbus. I was in my collar, having gone there after visiting Janice and my own doctor. I was reading a magazine at a table, waiting. A janitor came in and went about his business quietly. I wasn’t going to say anything. I’d decided that, to the extent it was possible for anyone in a collar, I wanted to be anonymous.

But then, God gave me a nudge. “Talk to that person,” God seemed to tell me. I don’t always like it when God does that! I put my magazine down and decided to do the bare minimum in obeying God's nudge. I looked at the guy and said: “Hi.”

The janitor stood up and, with a beaming smile, returned my greeting. “Are you a priest or a pastor?” he asked. I explained that I was a Lutheran pastor.

That began a conversation in which he told me some of his life story. Two years ago, this man, Daniel, and his wife fled Ethiopia, where they had faced persecution for their faith in Christ. Today, Daniel and his wife work different shifts at the hospital, both as janitors, so that one of them can be at home for their son at all times.

Now, most people in Daniel’s position, having escaped a life of deprivation and fear, would content themselves with trying to work up to a better position and scratch together the money to buy a house and secure educations for their children. That, after all, is what we call the American Dream and there’s nothing wrong with it. And maybe that figures in the thinking of Daniel and his wife.

But what he spent time telling me about was the growing church of which he’s a part, where 300 Ethiopian Christians and more gather to worship God each Sunday, and all the service and evangelism they’re doing together in the northern tier of Columbus.

He also told me about the ministry he’s taken on at Riverside, a ministry he's so excited about that he's recruited his supervisor to help with it. Every day during his breaks, he and his supervisor go to the hospital chapel and pray for the intensive care patients and for anyone else aware of their ministry who asks for prayer.

All Christians are called to “pray without ceasing,” of course. But my guess is that Daniel has the spiritual gift of intercession, the special passion God gives to some Christians to not only pray extensively for others, but also to persuade others in doing the same thing.

Spiritual gifts aren’t what God gives you to make a living, they’re what God gives you to be fully alive in Christ.

What spiritual gift has God given to you to honor God, to tell others about Jesus, and to encourage and build up Christ’s Church?

God’s Word says that you’ve got at least spiritual gift, maybe more, and using your gift is one way God wants you to spend the time between now and when you see Jesus face to face.

Verse 8 of our lesson says that the risen and ascended Jesus will “strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” As we wait to see Jesus face to face, God gives us the power for holy living.

This doesn’t mean that you and I will be perfect. Only God is perfect.

But, as we live in relationship with Jesus, daily owning our sins, putting our lives before Him for examination, and seeking His help for living more like Him today than we did yesterday, His power for holy living will invade our lives.

One method I use to stay close to Christ and His power in my life is the ACTS method for daily prayer.

ACTS is an acronym for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. (A supplication is a request. But if we used request in the acronym, it wouldn't spell out ACTS.)

By praying each day in this way, I try to keep my priorities straight.

With adoration, I begin my prayers by praising God for Who He is.

In confession, I admit my sins and ask God to show me others of which I’m unaware. I seek forgiveness in Christ’s Name and receive the power of the Holy Spirit to live differently.

In thanksgiving, I name and thank God for my blessings. My wife. My kids. My life and the new life I have through Jesus. My work. My extended family. This church. And, most of all, for Jesus Christ. 

Finally, after I’ve transacted this business, I feel free to offer supplications, my requests. I invite God into all the people’s lives and circumstances for which I pray.

I pray for our sick.

I pray for those who mourn.

I pray that God would help every member of Saint Matthew to experience and enjoy God’s presence with them that day; that God would cause our congregation to grow in faith, in numbers, in generosity, and in joy.

I pray for my family and friends.

I pray for myself.

Like your days, folks, mine can get busy. But what I have learned is that the busier I get, the more I need to pray and that the more I pray, the more actual good I get done each day.

When we make requests in Jesus’ Name, it’s like turning the tap of heaven onto every person and circumstance for which we pray. As someone has said, "When we work, we work; when we pray, God works."

We don’t know when we will see Jesus face to face. But until we do, our second lesson for the day reminds us that among all the many gifts God gives us to use until we see Him are:

• His grace,
• Spiritual gifts, and 
• the power for holy living. 

If you feel that any of these things are missing in your life right now, I can assure you that it isn’t because God hasn’t given them to you. If the problem isn’t with the Sender, it must be with the Receiver. (Speaking for myself, when I get honest with God, I see just how often I get in the way of God giving me gifts He wants me to have. Don't let that happen to you!)

Psalm 46:10 tells us to “be still and know” that God is our God. So, sometime this week, hop off the merry-go-round and take a little quiet time with just God and you.

You might pray, “God, I find it hard to believe, but I know that Your Word teaches that You want me to live in the certainty of Your grace; that You have given me spiritual gifts by which I can honor You, encourage Your Church, and tell others about Jesus; and that You give me the power to lead a life marked by Your forgiveness and presence in all I do. Help me to experience this kind of living, Lord, until I see you face to face. Get me off the rat race and help me live in Your power each day.”

Keep praying that prayer and I promise, God will surprise you with the answers He brings into your life. Amen

"It's Not Your Birthday"

That's the title of this post from Allen White. He considers the hypermaterialism with which we usually celebrate Christmas and makes four good suggestions for changing things:

• 1. Set a budget for your Christmas spending.
• 2. Buy presents for your loved ones.
• 3. Buy a present for Jesus.
• 4. Take time to reflect on the meaning of Christmas on December 25.

Specific to suggestion #3 above, it's worth remembering this past Sunday's Gospel lesson. In it, Jesus portrays the day when, having returned to earth, He will judge all people.

Jesus is served, we see, when we give food to the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, provide clothing for the naked, care for the sick, and visit the imprisoned.

When we provide for those who can't possibly return the favor, we "buy a present for Jesus." So, donate or volunteer at a local food bank. Or, give to Lutheran World Relief or World Vision. Honor Jesus, Who gave His life for You on a cross. Buy a present for Jesus this Christmas.

The world and we ourselves are better when we do that.

"Finding Hope"

That's the name of this inspiring piece, which contains this important reminder:

No follower of Christ should feel reluctant to seek counsel for depression. Nor should we feel that faith and prayer are too simplistic to help. There is always hope in God!

Powerful Story

Here.

10 Things to Be Thankful For

Here.

Relentless Shepherd (Christ the King Sunday)

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

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
In his book, Too Busy Not to Pray, Bill Hybels tells about a day at his church in the Chicago area when lots of people were baptized. All were adult converts, many of them people who had spent years walking without God or away from God. But on this day they found themselves welcomed into the Lord’s family, the way little McKenzie was at our baptismal font a few Sundays ago.

Hybels was understandably excited. But after the service, he found a woman crying in a church stairwell.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “No,” she answered. “I’m struggling. My mother was baptized today.”

Hybels wondered what the problem was. The woman went on, “I prayed for her every day for twenty years.”

Hybels still couldn’t understand the woman’s tears.

“I’m crying,” she said, “because I came so close—so close—to giving up on her…at five years, I said, Who needs this? God isn’t listening. After ten years I said, Why am I wasting my breath? After nineteen years, I said, I’m just a fool. But I…just kept praying, even though my faith was weak. I kept praying…and she was baptized today. I will never doubt the power of prayer again.”

We can rightly be impressed by that woman’s perseverance in prayer.

But, even more impressive to me is the perseverance of the God to Whom she prayed.

The Bible teaches us that it’s God Who gives us the capacity to believe despite our doubts. It was God who incited that woman to keep praying for her mom when she felt like giving up. It was God Who never gave up on her mother as a hopelessly lost sinner.

The God ultimately revealed to the world in Jesus Christ is absolutely relentless in reaching out to us, in caring about us, in desiring a relationship with us. He will go to any lengths to make those things happen.

Just how far God goes can be seen in our first lesson for this morning, Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24.

Ezekiel lived six centuries before the birth of Jesus. He was part of a group of Jews, the elite of their country, captured and sent to Babylon to serve the king there as bureaucrats and courtiers in 597 BC.

When he was thirty, while living in Babylon, God called Ezekiel to be a prophet.

The work God gives to prophets is thankless. That was especially true for Ezekiel. God gave him a succession of messages, mostly for his fellow Jewish exiles in Babylon, that they didn’t want to hear at all.

That’s because, in Babylon, the exiles led fairly cushy lives. Sure, they no longer lived in the land God had given their ancestors, but their bellies were full, they had roofs over their heads, and they enjoyed luxuries. (It's amazing how cheaply we'll sell out what's important, even God, for our creature comforts!)

So, when God sent Ezekiel to tell his fellow exiles that their homeland would soon be crushed and that all of God’s people would be scattered and hounded by enemies unless they and all the people back home turned from sin and trusted in God once more, Ezekiel’s fellow exiles laughed it off. Many went to hear him just to be entertained.

The exiles were like many churchgoers who like the sound of the pastor’s voice or the playing or singing of musicians, but have no intention of surrendering their lives and wills to Christ.

So, the exiles, like their countrymen back home, kept worshiping other gods, acceding to the sacrifice of children to those gods (a horrific form of child abuse), mistreating the foreigners in their midst, ignoring the needs of widows, stealing from one another, violating each others’ wives, and depending on the military power of foreign allies rather than on God alone.

God’s people had moved so far away from a relationship with God that, through Ezekiel, God said unless they repented and trusted in Him alone, He would soon wipe Israel, Jerusalem, and the temple off the map. God would execute judgment on His people and do it through a conquering foreign power whose kings and people didn’t even believe in Him.

God incited Ezekiel to persevere in sharing this message because God was so relentless in His love for His people: Though His people jilted Him over and over, God still wanted them back.

Ezekiel’s exile audience laughed off these prophecies until 586 BC, when Babylon overran God’s people, destroyed the temple, and sent the Jews running in terror. The laughing stopped.

Long before this point, a reasonable person would say that God would have been justified in giving up on Israel…and on the whole sorry human race, for that matter.

But as long as we have breath, God will never give up on us.

God won’t give up on you.

After Israel was destroyed, God gave Ezekiel prophecies of hope. Punishment for past sin doesn’t have to be the end of the human story. Weeping and gnashing of teeth in hell doesn’t have to be the final, eternal destiny of human beings.

“As I live,” God instructed Ezekiel to prophesy, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel?”

Even in prophecies God ordered Ezekiel to share with foreign nations, God showed Himself to be relentless in His desire that all people—Jews and Gentiles—to turn to Him and live.

It’s because of this very desire on God’s part that Jesus has commissioned we Christians to make disciples of all nations.

In our lesson, we see that God presents Ezekiel with a vision of a new future God wants to give Israel and all people. To people all over the world, scattered by their sins and the sins committed against them in this fallen world, in verse 11 of our lesson God says: "I Myself will search for My sheep and will seek them out.”

And in verse 23, God says that the shepherd will also be a descendant of David.

Six hundred years before Jesus’ birth, God said that He would be the Shepherd King Who would come to His own people as a humble human servant in order to take us to Himself once again.

Jesus, of course, God in human flesh, is the same Shepherd King Who spoke through Ezekiel and six hundred years later would Himself say, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.”

In my work as a pastor, I find there are two major ways people look at God that keep them from trusting their lives and concerns to God.

The first way was expressed by a woman in a former congregation when she told me that she never prayed. “I don’t think that I could ever ask God for anything," she said. "I wouldn’t want to bother him.” She thought that God was too big, too busy, and too important to care about her.

Another wrong way that people look at God is to see God as powerless. A member of my extended family once told me, “Look, Mark, God may have started this world up. But He’s done all that He can. It’s up to us to keep it going.”

But on this Christ the King Sunday, we affirm that God is neither too busy for us nor too powerless to help us!

For sure, there are things that happen to us in this fallen and imperfect world that we can’t explain. But we still affirm that God cares about us and has the power to give us life with God that never ends.

God is our Shepherd King, so relentless in His love for us that He searches us out no matter how lost we may be, so persevering in His love that He takes on our humanity and though sinless Himself, willingly receives the punishment for sin we deserve, then rises from death to give new and everlasting life to all who believe in Him.

Maybe today you feel that, like the Israel of Ezekiel’s day, you’ve wandered too far from God.

Maybe your life feels rudderless or you realize that you’ve fallen into patterns of sin that are walling you off from God. God wants to be your Shepherd King.

No matter where we are spiritually, whether we are mature believers, as I hope one day to become, or people far away from God, we can always use more of Jesus.

All of us would do well to take as our own a simple prayer that Johann von Staupitz taught a young monk named Martin Luther when Luther felt far from God. The prayer goes like this: “Lord Jesus, I am Yours; save me.” “Lord Jesus, I am Yours; save me.”

Say that prayer with me right now, so that you’ll remember it later: “Lord Jesus, I am Yours; save me.”

God, the Shepherd King Who we know through Jesus, will take to Himself anyone who so surrenders to Him!

He can forgive our sins.

He can give us the power to resist the temptations that threaten to take over our lives.

He can heal our hurts and lighten our burdens.

He can set us free to be more than the mere products of our environments, our genetics, or our sinful impulses.

He can move all who surrender to Him toward becoming the people God means for us to be: free and hopeful, faithful and in sync with our Maker, no longer imprisoned by our past and confident that our future is in the hands of Christ!

As long as we are still on this earth, God will never give up on finding us, saving us, and making us His own.

And He will never tire of keeping us as His own for all eternity! Jesus Christ, God enfleshed, is our Shepherd King!

In Jesus Christ our King, fully God and fully human, we meet a God Who understands us and all that we go through. He is never too busy to hear from us. And He is big enough and great enough to give us new life now and in eternity.

That’s worth remembering not just on this last day of the Church Year, but every day of our lives. Amen

Growing Older?

Take more chances.

A Few Words with My Fellow Christians (I hope my non-Christian friends will eavesdrop)

Today's Our Daily Bread post and the powerful passage of Scripture on which it's based, has me reflecting and now, sharing with you.

The Biblical passage is one of my absolute favorites. The first century preacher and evangelist Paul is speaking at a site in ancient Athens known as the Areopagus. People went there to exchange ideas and gossip all the time. It was to Athens what the local bar, a favorite restaurant, the break room at work, or Internet sites like Twitter and Facebook, are today.

Paul wanted to tell people about how, through the centuries, God had revealed Himself and His will for the human race, first through Israel and ultimately through a son of Israel, Jesus.

Jesus, he said, also happened to be God Himself. After dying, Paul asserted, Jesus was raised from the dead as a sign that God would one day take full control of all creation and judge humanity based on whether they have welcomed Jesus with faith or rejected His authority over them. (Actually, Jesus will just be affirming the judgment people make about Him.)

But, in addressing this heavy issue, Paul didn't start out by reciting a bunch of Bible verses or lore from his own religious or ethnic heritage.

He met the people where they were, reciting the words of one of their very own poets.

Just as Martin Luther translated the Bible into German so that his people could know God for themselves and just as he translated and reformed the Mass so that people could participate with understanding in the worship of God, we modern Christians need to understand "where people are coming from" in order to help them know the God Who meets our greatest needs through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Christians need to be intentional in forming respectful friendships with all people. After all, we're commanded to love our neighbor, no matter what.

In addition, because we're commanded to love all people, God's Word commands (and privileges) us to share the new, eternal life that belongs to all who turn from sin and trust in the crucified and risen Jesus.

That's what Paul did.

We can do this ourselves with the non-Christian friends we make in our lives.

Knowing that they're NFL fans, we might ask our friends, "What did you think of the Jets getting Tebowed last night?"

Or, to a Lady Gaga fan, we might say, "I think she's right when she says that we're all 'born that way.' The question for me, though, is whether just because we're born that way, does it mean we should stay that way?"

Or, to the movie buff, we might authentically ask, "My wife and I are thinking of going to a move tonight. Any recommendations?"

Or we might simply and truthfully ask them about their spouses, their families, their work.

We might ask how they're doing as they grieve the recent loss of a family member. It's sometimes amazing to me hear people say, "You're the first person who's mentioned [their loved one] in weeks."

Christians don't do these things to be "ambulance chasers" who earn heavenly brownie points by piling up "good works" or by trapping hapless victims into following Jesus.

We do these things because Christ calls us to love our neighbor, tells us that when we do, we're really loving God, and because we know that our friends, like us, crave being treated with respect and love and concern.

We do these things because they're right.

And we do these things to share Christ with others. It's God's will for us to share our Best Friend with our other friends. Our Best Friend is the God you and I have met and know in Jesus Christ!

So, fellow Christians...

• Establish relationships. 
• Display authentic humility. 
• Own personal ignorance. 
• Let your friends see that you grapple with the issues of life, many of which may have you stumped, in the certainty that, despite mysteries and your faults and shortcomings, you have a relationship with Christ that helps you live today in confidence and to face tomorrow with hope. 

The conversations in which these things happen ought to unfold naturally, respectfully, and without judgment or unkindness. The New Testament says, "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence" (1 Peter 3:15-16).

I've been able to have lots of these conversations with spiritually-disconnected friends over the years. Only a few have culminated in people turning from sin and trusting in Christ. But I do know that God has used conversations like these and conversations these friends have with other people, life events, and other things--to nudge people closer to Jesus Christ.

Only God can open a person to Christ. And He does it, not by force, but by gentle persuasion.

But God can use us all as instruments by which He turns an enemy of God, bound for eternal separation from God, into a person of faith in Christ, living life in the power of God's amazing grace.

When we show sensitivity and concern for the interests and needs of others, they see a Christ-follower and stereotypes of Christians as arrogant, self-righteous, and closed-minded are challenged.

They see our hopefulness and wonder whether they couldn't appropriate the same way of life themselves.

Over time, they may become open to the message that Paul ended with in first-century Athens, Greece: "God overlooks it [our ignorance of Him and His will for our lives] as long as you don't know any better—but that time is past. The unknown is now known since Paul has told them about the God revealed through the history of Israel], and he's calling for a radical life-change. He has set a day when the entire human race will be judged and everything set right. And he has already appointed the judge, confirming him before everyone by raising him from the dead" (Acts 17:30-31, The Message].

Let's love our neighbors so much that it will become unthinkable to us--maybe keep us up nights praying for them--that they could face a Christless eternity or that they need to struggle through this life without the incredible comfort of knowing the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

Pray about it. Then find those little "wrinkles in time," when you might, naturally, give an account for all the hope that you have through Christ!

Jesus, Slip 'n Slides, and the Purpose of Your Life

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

Matthew 25:14-30
A young man came to see me. “I know that Jesus loves me and that I’m saved by grace through my faith in Christ,” he said, “but what exactly is the purpose of my life?”

The short answer is that you and I are alive for only one purpose: To glorify God.

In Isaiah 43:7, God says, “Everyone who is called by My Name…I created for My glory.”

We most glorify God though, not when we look at the Bible’s portrayal of holy living, like we see in the Ten Commandments or in Jesus’ Beatitudes and then grit our teeth and strive to be good and holy people, whether it makes us or others miserable or not.

We most glorify God when we enjoy God and use His gifts to us in ways that honor Him.

Following Jesus from here to eternity presents its challenges. But there will be no joy in living with Christ if we think we must face those challenges on our own or in our own power.

The Lord Who saved us by going to the cross for us will also be glorified within us (and we will enjoy His company), if we will begin to learn one simple prayer of faith: “Lord, live within me and give me joy so that You are glorified.”

“Lord, live within me and give me joy so that You are glorified.”  

The parable Jesus tells in today’s Gospel lesson is the story of two men who didn’t grit their teeth to do the right thing, but who remembered the goodness of their master and so enjoyed and used the blessings of the master.

It’s also the story of a third man who ignored the blessings given to him by his master, relying on his own personal sense of what was right and wrong, and so, denied himself a continuing relationship with him.

You know the story. A master, clearly a stand-in for God the Son, Jesus, is about to go on a journey. As we read Jesus’ story, we understand the “journey” Jesus is talking about. Since the crucified and risen Jesus ascended into heaven, we know that He has been enthroned in heaven, giving His followers millennia to share the Good News that all who turn from sin and believe in the crucified and risen God of all creation, will not perish in eternal separation from God, but will have eternal life with God!

There will be a day though when the millennia cease and Jesus returns here to judge the living and the dead and to establish His eternal kingdom in the new heaven and the new earth.

Anticipating his journey, the master in Jesus’ parable entrusts some of his money to three different servants. Even the measly single talent—a unit of money—the master gave the third servant could be worth between 20 and 600 years of a day laborer’s wages!

In the same way, God entrusts a fortune of blessings to every human being. It’s called being alive.

And that’s just the start for followers of Jesus Christ! Jesus expended His life on the cross so that all we fallen, sinful, imperfect human beings can, like the thief who was crucified next to Jesus on the cross, acknowledge our sin, turn from that sin, and turn to Him Jesus in faith to live with God for eternity.

What a gift! Living lives that joyfully express gratitude for these two gifts--the gift of life and the gift of life made new that comes to us by grace through faith in Christ--is not a burden. It’s joy, pure it’s-so-great-to-be-alive-that-I’m-belly-flopping-downhill-on-a-Slip-and-Slide-joy!

If you’ve ever done a Slip and Slide, you know that as much fun as it can be, there will often be a few painful bruises as a result of throwing yourself to the ground with abandon. I've even been known to throw myself onto a Slip and Slide in my adult years and every time I have, I've ended up with bruises and sore spots and friction burns.

Throw yourself with similar abandon into the life of following Jesus and you’ll get bruised too. Maybe more than bruised.

Today is an international day of prayer for the persecuted church around the world. There are Christians today who live in 52 nations in which it is illegal to confess that Jesus is Lord. (That's a huge percentage of the globe's 196 countries!)

Many Christian believers are losing their lives or being tossed into jails right now because they believe in Jesus. I think of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani mother of five condemned to death for blasphemy--for which there is no law on the books--against Allah simply because she is a follower of Jesus Christ. She is just one of many Christians throughout the world for whom it isn't safe to confess belief in Jesus!

Other Chrisitans, in safer places, feel afraid to follow Jesus because of what their friends, their neighbors, their bosses, or their family members may say about them.

But anyone who dares to follow Jesus is bound to be attacked by more than just flesh and blood enemies. Follow Jesus and you will be bruised by Satan, who hates no human being more than the one who seeks to follow Jesus.*

A woman told me a few weeks ago that she cannot speak with her father about her relationship with Christ. “He thinks I’m crazy,” she told me. That's hard!

But all who are bruised for believing in Jesus need to remember the words of James in the New Testament: “My sisters and brothers, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking for nothing”—or, as I would put it, you will be completely ready for everything in this life and the world to come!

In Jesus’ parable, the master came back, as Jesus one day will return to the earth, and, like Jesus on judgment day, the master demanded an accounting for how the servants had used all he had given to them.

The master was delighted to see that the first two men had enjoyed and used their gifts and so brought glory to his name.

The last man, not so much. His failure to honor and enjoy either his gifts or the giver brought him total separation from the master, just as happens to those who refuse to honor or enjoy Jesus, the Giver of the best gifts of all.

In his book, The Purpose Driven Life, Pastor Rick Warren gives five portraits of what people who glorify God look like.

First, they worship God all the time. As Warren puts it, “Worship is a lifestyle of enjoying God, loving Him, and giving ourselves to be used for His purposes.”

Second, they love other believers. Long before Jesus walked the earth, God had already commanded all people to love God and to love neighbors. But just before His crucifixion, Jesus told believers, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you…”

Jesus’ sacrificial love for us brought us eternity with God and He commands us to love our fellow believers in exactly the same way.

Echoing Jesus' command, Paul writes in the New Testament: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” That's sacrificial love.

I know that I can only love like that by relying on the supernatural power of God’s Holy Spirit, asking God to love others I find unlovable through me.

Loving sacrificially does not mean that we become spineless yes-women or yes-men.

It doesn’t mean that we go along with sin.

Jesus shows that sacrificial love must be tough in confronting evil, even when we find it among fellow believers. When Peter chastised Jesus for insisting that He must go to Jerusalem to be crucified, then rise from the dead, in order to claim an eternal kingdom, Jesus was blunt. “Get behind Me, Satan,” He told Peter.

Sacrificial love will always speak and live out the truth in Christian love toward our fellow believers, even when the truth isn’t pleasant.

Third, they glorify God by allowing Him to shape them into the likeness of Jesus. The New Testament teaches that it’s God’s aim for all of us to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus. Submitting to God reshaping us into the likeness of Jesus is a difficult process that doesn’t end this side of our resurrection.

Submission to Christ means that the Word of God and the will of God must always trump our preferences, our emotions, our reason, and our experiences.

This is something we are at risk of totally forgetting in North American Christianity and for which we must repent or risk losing all connection to Jesus. Like our Savior in the garden at Gethsemane, we must be committed to daily telling God, “Nonetheless, not my will, but Thine alone be done.”

Fourth, we glorify God by serving others with our gifts. No matter what our gifts or our limitations, God has gifted every Christian to glorify God by serving others in some way or another.

Finally, Warren says, we glorify God by telling others about Jesus. As some readers of my blog know, this past week I heard a colleague tell the true story of a contractor he recently met in Ethiopia, a lay member of the Lutheran Mekane Yesus Church. This contractor takes on big jobs in various parts of his country.

Along with the rest of the work crews at any site, he also hires two pastors for every project. Every morning, the pastors lead worship among the crew before the start of the workday. After that, the pastors go into the nearby towns to see if there are any needs they can address, any prayers they can offer, any people who might want to know about Jesus and the new life He offers.

If there’s a group of people in that community who want to be part of a new Lutheran congregation, this contractor will then also pay the salary of one of the pastors for an additional year in order to develop the new church.

Sometimes, this guy gets flak for his witness for Christ from local government authorities or from leading people in the community. He always meets the skeptics, gives them Bibles, invites them to read the Bibles, and, if after they’ve read some of God’s Word, they still have questions about why he does what he does, he offers to meet them again.

It's because of committed lay Christians like this man that the Lutheran Church in Ethiopia gained 300,000 new members between 2009 and 2010. It already has 1-million more members than our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. And, recognizing how desperately America needs Jesus Christ, the Lutherans in Ethiopia are about to send missionaries to the United States.

Not all of us can do what that contractor does to tell others about Christ. But each of us can do something to tell others about Jesus, even something as simple as using one the “This meal’s on us!” cards you can still find in the back of the sanctuary.

We can be like the first two men in Jesus’ parable. We can use the gifts our Master has given to us to glorify God and joyfully use our gifts.

We do this when we worship God in our daily lives, love our fellow believers, ask God’s help to become more like Jesus, use our gifts to serve others, and tell others about Jesus and the new and everlasting life only He can give to those who turn from sin and believe in Him.

Today, I want to close with one simple question. Who among us is willing to belly flop with utter abandon to enjoy and follow Jesus Christ?

If you are, I promise you that Jesus will always be there to catch you...and you will glorify God!

Amen!

*Ephesians 6:10-12, in the New Testament, explains this well:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. ¹¹¹²

"Word of God, Speak"

Less of me; more of God. Not my thoughts, feelings, and experiences; but God's Word alone!

This song expresses so much about the desire of every imperfect, saved, and grateful follower of Christ to live the life of an authentic disciple, who wants to mean it when praying, "Thy will be done."

The song is called, Word of God, Speak, performed by MercyMe.



By the way, Saint Matthew folks, the chorus of this song will serve as our Gospel Verse prior to the the announcement of the Gospel lesson, during the Sundays of Advent.

The Contractor Who Does More Than Put Up Buildings!

I mentioned here that today I heard a colleague who has frequent contact with the Lutherans in Ethiopia tell two true and inspiring stories of faithfulness from that rapidly growing church body. I told one of the stories in that linked piece. Here's the other one.

Several months ago, while in Ethiopia, my colleague met a Lutheran layperson who owns a construction firm. Every time this man and his firm start a project in a community, he also hires two pastors along with all of construction workers he hires for the job. Every morning, before work begins, the pastors conduct a worship service on the site.

That sounded great to my colleague. But, he asked, what do they do the rest of the day?

The two pastors go into the town and look for people who need help, whether it's prayer or some physical need, and address them. If a group of people comes to believe in Christ through the work of the pastors, after the construction job is completed, the owner will provide one of the pastors pay for one year as the pastor works to get a new congregation started.

If any local authorities question this businessperson's practices, he goes to them and hands them a Bible. He tells the authorities, respectfully, that this book will explain why he does the things he does. He asks them to read it and, in a few weeks, if they have any further questions, to get in touch with him for conversation. These conversations, like the visits of the two pastors who work with the construction projects, allow the business owner to tell public officials about Christ.

The congregational starts spawned by this man's method receive no financing from the denominational hierarchy, but initially only from one committed Christian who looks for ways to spread the gospel, the good news, of new life for all who repent for sin and believe in Jesus Christ through his business.

Not every follower of Christ can bankroll church starts, of course. But we all can be prayerfully on the lookout for ways of spreading the gospel. Learn from the example of this contemporary Ethiopian Lutheran saint: Ask God to help you share Jesus Christ every single day!

Lesson Learned from Ethiopia

I heard two true stories from Ethiopia today, both told by a colleague who has frequent contact with the Lutheran body there, the Mekane Yesus Church.

The first involved a theologian of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the body of which I'm a member and which has wandered so far from God, Christ, and the authority of Scripture. This ELCA theologian was invited to teach a class on the Gospels at an Ethiopian Lutheran seminary.

One class was devoted to discussing the miracles of Jesus. The professor told the class of Ethiopian seminarians that his wife had a doctorate in Chemistry and had confidently assured him that it would have been physically impossible to change water to wine, as the Gospel of John says that Jesus did during a wedding in the village of Cana. All the miracles, he went on to say, were added into the New Testament narrative to buttress the first century Church's claims that Jesus is God-enfleshed and Savior of the world.

One student wasn't sure that he'd correctly heard the American theologian. So, he asked the visiting professor to repeat what he'd said. The professor did so.

The student closed his book and walked out of the class room, as did all the other Ethiopian seminarians.

The professor was mystified. This had never happened to him in the States.

Soon, the president of the seminary came by to confirm what had happened. He, like the students was offended by the professor's assertion, and asked the professor if he believed in the Trinity, the teaching supported by Scripture that God is one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

"Yes," the professor replied.

Then why, the seminary president wondered, would he teach something totally contrary to God's revealed truth about the Trinity in the Bible?

The doctrine of the Trinity affirms that God the Father is the Creator of the universe, the One Who invented chemistry. The doctrine also says that Jesus is God the Son. If God the Father is Lord over the chemical elements of the universe, how could anyone say that God the Son couldn't be Lord over those same chemicals to perform a miracle which affirmed His identity as God on earth?

In too much of the mainline North American churches, we've gotten to the point where we think we're smarter than God and have the right to rescind the clear witness of Scripture. We put too much stock in our own intellects, emotions, and experiences, rather than in what God has revealed through His Word over the centuries. That's why views like that of the ELCA professor who went to Ethiopia are widespread among bishops, pastors, theologians, and even church members in our denomination.

To confess that, "Jesus is Lord" is to say that God is greater, wiser, and smarter than I am.

To confess that Jesus is Lord is to say that when His revelation conflicts with what I think or feel or have experienced, what God teaches in His Word wins the conflict.  Period. End of story.

A Lord Who can't turn water into wine--or kill the power of sin and death for all who believe that He died and rose to life again--isn't worth following, no different from any of the fallible human beings, from football coaches to CEOs, from theologians to reality show participants, that people often hold up as examples or heroes. (Or whose prominence they invoke as an excuse for believing or doing what they want to do, whether their beliefs or actions agree with God's will or revealed truth or not.)

Fortunately, the Church in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is teaching the rest of us who have forgotten what it means to say that Jesus is Lord. Thank God!

I pray that all of us in my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (and all Christians in North America and western Europe) will learn and live this truth, too. We need to connect to God again! The world needs for us to connect to God again.