1 Timothy 4:4-5  For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

So much of the Christian life is bound up in setting aside the self and letting God be good. As Luther explains here, it is an arrogant presumption to claim as ours what belongs to God alone. What vanity to believe that God needs what we can offer! Such thinking is rooted in pride and fear - I will share what I have and God will regard it favorably. Or if I do not give to God, He will withdraw His blessings or punish me. Even the praise God expects in response to His blessings is for our good. Gratitude reminds us of the giver. The practice of thanksgiving and praise is communication with the heavenly Father. Both fill the human heart with joy and deprive it of fear.

God's wish for communication reflects His larger desire - to know and have intimacy with sinners. When we recognize God's benevolence, we learn what He is like. When we share what God has given with those in need, we further grasp what Jesus did for us. As Paul explains in 1 Timothy 4, Christian prayer and praise are not holy by themselves; they are made so in the blood of Jesus Christ. God sent Jesus so that He could know sinners and restore the intimacy our disobedience destroyed in the Garden of Eden. Through faith in Jesus, we receive not merely clothing, food, house, and home, but the unchangeable love of the Father and everlasting sonship in His house.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,
 

Psalm 121:2,7  My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth....The Lord will keep you from all evil; He will keep your life.

God governs all the seas. In the beginning, He told the waves where they would halt (Job 38:11). On the boat with His disciples, Jesus told the water to be still. But what about hurricanes and tsunamis? Why does God occasionally allow the sea to go past its bounds? According to Luther, God does it because He loves us! He lets the sea escape once in a while to remind us that He is governor.

What a strange way to look at evils! When some little evil attacks us, Luther says we should "dearly...love God" for it. That's not our usual play. We often take evil as an occasion to question God or become angry with Him. Certainly there is a time to voice our complaint to God, as many saints do in the Scriptures. Yet an evil may just as well be our reminder to give thanks and praises to God for His otherwise vigilant defense.

If God were not governor of all things, where would we be? Just how many evils would Satan attack us with if God were not attending to us with His holy angels? Sufferings will most certainly come. But when they do, we'll remember how small they are compared to the daily blessings God sends. The worst evil, death, has already been told to halt its "proud waves" (Job 38:11) by Jesus' resurrection from the dead. We can trust Him to defend and guard us in every other evil.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Matthew 6:26,28-29  Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?...And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil or spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Easter morning, a mother and her daughters dressed up and walked to church. It was snowing when they returned, but the girls didn't mind the cold. The Easter lilies and story of Jesus' resurrection were all they could think about. When they reached their house, they found a white package on their step. Inside the package was a ham. The girls were confused. Ham seemed like a silly thing to find on the step. The mother began to cry. Her young girls asked why ham made her sad. She explained, "I'm crying because our God is so good. I had nothing to serve for dinner, but God provided exactly what we needed."

Like the birds of the air, the young girls weren't anxious about what they would eat, but their mom did worry. She knew it was her job to feed her family, but she didn't have the resources to do it herself. What she did have was a God who provides and did so that day through the generosity of a neighbor.
 

This true story is only one example of God's amazing care for His creation. The Lord gives us what we need, whether that be food for our tables, roofs over our heads, or a friend's text on a bad day. We are tempted to worry about life, but God, who made heaven and earth, listens to our every cry and sustains us and all creation. Through times of abundance or scarcity, chaos or peace, He gives us what we need.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Psalm 139:13-14  For You formed my inward parts; You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works; my soul knows it very well.
 

He's on His hands and knees, moving the very grains of sand into the curves and forms that would soon change into flesh and bone. He gently caresses with His fingers the muscles, organs, and skin that will allow this man, and ultimately a woman, to move with grace and flair in His creation. He leans over and, into the very nostrils He has carved out, breathes not just physical air that inflates the man's lungs and activates the blood that pulses through the man's body but even His very spirit into this man, and ultimately into that woman. They, the very image of God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - will imitate their Creator in love and power.

He gives us all that we need to be the ones who provide care and leadership in His creation. He calls us to follow Him in His creativity and in how He cares. We, the very real modern-day 4-D image of God, are called to serve as co-caretakers in our day and age.

When we sin and cross that line of selfishly believing we don't need God to continue this work, He does not abandon us. When we sin and actively harm or neglect His creation, He enters into it Himself, redeeming us through Jesus. He restores our very body and soul by His grace and gives us faith to once again join Him in His creative and sustaining work. May we in joy follow Him well!

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,
 

Colossians 2:9-10  For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in Him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

During the 2000 presidential election, the phrase "fuzzy math" entered the national vocabulary. It was used by politicians to attack opponents' positions based on numbers that just didn't seem to add up. At first glance, the Holy Trinity seems to be a good example of fuzzy math. How can 1 father + 1 Son + 1 Holy Spirit = 1 God? It doesn't add up. Even great minds like St. Augustine and Luther failed in their attempts to do the math.

Unlike politicians who use numbers to cloak, conceal, and confuse, God uses this complex equation to unveil, uncover, and unravel one of the great mysteries of Christian doctrine. Scripture is filled with passages detailing the existence and distinct role of each person of the Trinity. God the Father is the beginning and end of all creation. God the Son comes to earth as a human being to be sacrificed and resurrected for our salvation. God the Holy Spirit dwells with believers on earth to grow and sustain faith. The equation becomes fuzzy when we factor in Scripture's mention of there being only one God. Yet even in this seeming contradiction, God exposes and uncovers the root cause of sin that Satan recognizes and regularly exploits. We human beings want to be equal to God. The mystery of the Holy Trinity brings us humbly to our knees to confront and confess our own weakness. It turn our eyes to the kingdom of God, where we know all mysteries will one day be revealed.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Ephesians 3:18-19  May you have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
 

Our God is no generic, least-common-denominator deity. Ours is a very particular God who did particular deeds for a particular reason. He created us from dust and His own breath. He redeemed us through the blood of His Son, Jesus. He pours out His Spirit on us to make us members of His household and heirs of eternal life. All this He does because He loves us with a love that is both undying as eternity and dies to give us life. His love and His deeds distinguish Him from every pretender to His throne, and they give us an eternal place around His throne.

It is therefore vitally important that we be very clear who our God is. Saying, "I believe in God," is not specific enough. Many non-Christians say the very same thing. The Apostles' Creed helps us get specific. We believe in one God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe in the God who created all things, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We believe in His only Son, our Lord, who gave His life to redeem us from sin, death, and the devil and who rose in glory on the third day. We believe in the Holy Spirit, whose divine power creates faith where there was none and warms our cold hearts. When we confess the Creed, we confess this God in all His uniqueness. It is this God alone whom we confess, because it is this God alone who saves.

--Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Psalm 147:10-11  His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor His pleasure in the legs of a man, but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in His steadfast love.

Fear is a word most of us would like to obliterate from the Bible. It is easy to believe that it has no place because of our grace-based vantage point in Christ Jesus. Luther helps us to understand the proper place of fear in his writing on the Close of the Commandments. Like everything else that is both overtly theological and also experienced tangibly in some way in our daily world and lives, fear is best understood from a Law-and-Gospel perspective. We wouldn't really dessert with no dinner; we'd be left hungry ten minutes later. And we wouldn't really like a life with no dessert either; then we would miss the sweetness gifted to us by God. Like dessert, fear has two sides. Fear creates images that are uncomfortable for us. However, throwing it off all together, removing it from our experiences, would leave us with less intimacy with God, less understanding of His holiness, His omniscience, and His richness.

God is big. God is perfect. God is jealous. He fills all time and space. We do not want to remove the sweetness of all of this by obliterating the fear included in these attributes. Instead, we embrace the reality of a great, big, powerful God over the universe through the Gospel truth of His plans and purposes in sending Jesus Christ, His dear Son, as our Savior and Redeemer. Jesus stands as Advocate for us. We see God through a Jesus lens. We see even fear through Christ alone.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,