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January 23, 2024

Psalm 59:16 But I will sing of Your strength; I will sing aloud of Your steadfast love in the morning. For You have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress.

Praying is our faithful action believing that God is listening. We pray because we know that God is present and willing to be heard. How do we find this out? From Jesus. He faithfully and daily spends time with His Father, seeking His will for the day. Jesus tells us that He only does what the Father is doing. His Father wants only that ongoing relationship with us that acknowledges that He knows exactly what we need to be with Him and His creation. Jesus is content not to make things up for His daily life. He knows that whatever His Father thinks is best is good enough for Him.

Making use of a prayer like Luther's Morning Prayer, we have the opportunity to acknowledge God's presence in the past, day and night. Because of that Faithful experience with Him, we boldly ask Him to lead us through the day to come. We humbly, and yet with childlike expectation, look forward to what He has in store for us. We ask for His protection, look forward to what He has in store for us. We ask For His protection from the evil one, who would see us distracted from the Lord and His blessings for us.

We can do all of this kind of praying because God is really present with us. Through the Holy Spirit's power, we speak with God in complete confidence that He loves us so much that nothing - not even our sins, the devil's power, and death - can defeat what He has in store for the day. Bring it on, Lord!!!
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

January 29, 2024

John 4:23-24 But the hour is coming, is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

The Christian life begins when the Holy Spirit, through God's Word, moves us to trust that the Father has forgiven our sin for Jesus' sake. It is sustained when the Spirit uses God's Word to show us our sins, move us to repentance, and announce forgiveness. Where does this happen? Certainly in personal devotions, but especially through other Christians in worship. There, God speaks to us through the pastor when he forgives our sins in Absolution and proclaims the Good News in the sermon. There, God speaks to us when we confess the Good News together in the Creed and sing it together in hymns and songs.  We respond by praising God, offering prayers, and returning to our everyday lives to love our neighbors in our vocations. The Spirit sustains our faith through God's Word.

This explains both why we should attend worship and what worship should be like. God commands us to share His Word with one another so that we grow in faith toward Him and love toward our neighbors. We need to hear His Law so we confess our sins, and we need to hear His Gospel so we cling to His forgiveness. Music, songs, and liturgy should therefore proclaim God's Word to us. Songs without the Gospel do not strengthen faith, and neither do rituals done for their own sake. Where song and ritual proclaim God's Word, however, the Spirit serves us and preserves us in the one true faith.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

January 18, 2024

Mark 9:24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, "I believe; help my unbelief!"

Most people do not like exams. Although if the instructor says, "This will be an open-book exam," that relieves some stress. Luther's Christian Questions can be compared to an open-book exam, and the open book is the Bible.

As in the classroom, we learn things when we take this exam. First, like the father of the demon-possessed boy in Mark 9:24, we learn we need help with our unbelief. The answers we find in our open book tell us of our sinfulness. They remind us that we break God's commands and deserve His punishment. Every time we sin, our unbelief shows through. We find ourselves helpless and can only beg, "Help my unbelief!"

The second thing we learn in our open-book exam is that God loves us, unbelief and all. By grace and through the power of the Holy Spirit, He enables us to believe in Jesus as the only hope for our unbelief. Like the father in Mark 9, we can also cry out, "I believe." We believe in all that God has done in Christ to bring us forgiveness, life, and salvation.

What we learn in our open-book exam about unbelief and our belief impels us to come to the Sacrament of our Savior's body and blood. There we find our beggarly prayer for help answered through the forgiveness of sins. There we find renewal of belief so that it may have more power over our unbelief as we live our lives as Christ's people.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

January 17, 2024

1 Corinthians 11:28 Let a person examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

Do you keep an extra house key hidden underneath a rock, plater, or garden gnome in the front yard? Your home is secure only until someone overturns the stone. Some stones were not meant to be overturned. Some doors were not meant to be opened - at least, not yet. Many of the greatest errors in Christian teaching have been a result of manufacturing answers when God is silent. How can bread and wine also be the very body and blood of our Savior, Jesus Chrust? No one on earth understands how, and only through faith do we believe it. Much Christian frustration has its roots in looking for evidence in the wrong places. As Luther explains, we imagine that a full accounting of sin is sufficient evidence of preparedness for Holy Communion. 

Why should we be surprised to find that we doubt Holy Communion? Without the work of the Holy Spirit, we would not trust in Christ! Therefore, be comforted. Our Heavenly Father knows that we struggle and doubt. Doubt in Holy Communion need not suggest that it is false, but rather that saints are still sinners. Cry out to the Lord, "Help my unbelief!" He will do so. He will cast away doubt and fortify the faith He created. He will do so because He wants you to have the benefits of His work on the cross - forgiveness of sins and life eternal.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

January 16, 2024

Proverbs 22:6  Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

More than a few family refrigerators have displayed, next to pictures and artwork and shopping lists, a list of chores. Everybody in the family is expected to contribute and do their part. That's being a family - loving and serving one another. It's our duty, even if it means cleaning a bathroom or doing the dishes.

The same is true for children of the heavenly Father. In His family, we love and serve one another. In the Catechism, Luther gave God's list of "chores," which he called the Table of Duties. They remind us that our primary question should not be "What's my family supposed to do for me?" but rather "What does God want me to do for my family?"

For parents, God says our duty is to be gentle with our children and teach them God's Word to save their souls. For children, God wants us to honor our parents. For husbands, God gives us the duty of loving our wives and caring for them. And for wives, God says our duty is loving and respecting our husbands.

The strength to serve our earthly family is found in our heavenly family. God our Father loves and cares for us. Jesus, our Brother and the husband of the Church, covers us with GRACE. And the Holy Spirit, our Comforter, works through the Word of God to give us faith. Our triune God promises to be with us as we fulfill the duties He gives us as wives, husbands. children, and parents.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

January 15, 2024

Romans 13:1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies portrays a gruesome picture of what happens when civil order is lost and the beast that lurks within man is not kept at bay. After their plane crashes, boys are stranded on an island. Two leaders arise, Ralph and Jack, who vie for power. As the story unfolds, friends turn on one another, the worst in people is exposed, and "littluns" live out their worst nightmares.

Golding wasn't the first to reveal this side of human nature. Some four hundred years earlier, Martin Luther wrote, "It is the function and honor of worldly government to make men out of wild beasts and to prevent men from becoming wild beasts."

God has given us governing authorities to keep order in His world. How ell this is carried out by those in office may vary, but their job is to protect their people from dangers - foreign and domestic.

In the Lord of the Flies, Jack sets a fire intended to kill Ralph. The fire ends up signaling a naval ship and the boys are rescued. What was intended to kill actually rescued.

When we fail to repress the beast within, when leaders fail to protect those in their charge, when we resemble beasts more than the One in whose image we were created, we can take heart in the cross, we are rescued from the beasts - foreign and domestic - of sin, death, and the devil.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

January 11, 2024

1 Peter 4:10-11  As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one serves by the strength that God supplies - in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.

The rhythms of our living are influenced and directed by the Father through Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. Reading, praying, speaking, thinking about, singing, and living in the Word of God, who is Jesus, will weave His love, grace, mercy, and justice in every single thing we say and do throughout our entire day.

As we gather as God's people, in large groups and in smaller ones, we hear what God speaks to us as people together. We get the opportunity to hear God's Word together and listen to and challenge one another. We get to play, eat, and enjoy life together. Christ's Church, His Body, in all the ways it is expressed locally, is given the gift of shining the light and love of Jesus in practical, creative, and ongoing ways.

As the family of God together, we each have our job, calling, and responsibility in His family. It is a grind. It is such hard work. It is monotonous, ritualistic, and rote, and at the same time it is joyful, celebrative, and surprising. And that's why it is best done together, never alone. But Jesus does not depend on us to do it alone. He, along with His Father and the Holy Spirit, does it right with us. It is His vocation with us. And we get to do ours with Him. What joy this is!
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

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