Monthly Archives: November 2020
Pursuit of Happiness? Don’t try, for it is futile…
Devotional Thought for this Day:
13 “You have said terrible things about me,” says the LORD. “But you say, ‘What do you mean? What have we said against you?’ 14 “You have said, ‘What’s the use of serving God? What have we gained by obeying his commands or by trying to show the LORD of Heaven’s Armies that we are sorry for our sins? 15 From now on we will call the arrogant blessed. For those who do evil get rich, and those who dare God to punish them suffer no harm.’” 16 Then those who feared the LORD spoke with each other, and the LORD listened to what they said. In his presence, a scroll of remembrance was written to record the names of those who feared him and always thought about the honor of his name. 17 “They will be my people,” says the LORD of Heaven’s Armies. “On the day when I act in judgment, they will be my own special treasure. I will spare them as a father spares an obedient child. Malachi 3:13-17 (NLT2)
The true Christian ideal is not to be happy but to be holy. The holy heart alone can be the habitation of the Holy Ghost.
59 All this, then, is the office and work of the Holy Spirit, to begin and daily to increase holiness on earth through these two means, the Christian church and the forgiveness of sins. Then, when we pass from this life, he will instantly perfect our holiness and will eternally preserve us in it by means of the last two parts of this article.
I know it is part of the Declaration of Independence, but I’ve see too many people try to pursue happiness, and get lost in the frustration, and come to the conclusion that being happy is simply an excecise in futility.
That futility leads to the kinds of sin that the reading from Malachi above talks about. If we are pusuing happiness or pleasure for its own sake, we will never find it. Then we will start to question God, as if somehow He was responsible to make us happy, or at least remove the barriers to happiness.
There is a problem in this that the founding father’s of the United States didn’t see two hundred and fifty years ago. Simply put, happiness should not be the goal, it is not the destination or our reason for living.
Happiness is caused by life being lived in the maner it should be… not by something we do, or something we chase. It happens when we find contentment and peace, a side effect of those two things that cannot be pursued as well.
Luther understood this, as he saw the need to reveal the work of the Holy Spirit. That work, strengthening our ability to trust, to depend on Jesus. It is there, dwelling in the presence of God, the Holy Spirit dwelling in ours. that our lives set apart to walk with Him, that we find everything we need, including joy. The joy that comes when we realize our lives, as broken sa they appear, are treasured by God. A joy that goes far beyond mere happiness, that sustains us in the midst of every thing… even the hardest trauma.
A joy that passes all understanding, for our hearts and minds are maintained in Jesus, secure and safe.
A. W. Tozer and Marilynne E. Foster, Tozer on the Holy Spirit: A 366-Day Devotional (Camp Hill, PA: WingSpread, 2007).
Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), 418.
Revival Realized: If Only?…? A sermon on Amos 5:18-24
Revival: Realized
If Only…. ????
† Jesus, Son, Savior †
May the grace and peace of God our Father, and the Lord Jesus bring you such contentment in these times… that the idea of “if only” doesn’t come to mind!
What are you wishing for?
When I read the first verse of the Old Testament reading this week, my thought was simple.
“why didn’t I have Bob preach this week!”
Seriously, hear it again…
“What sorrow awaits you who say, “If only the day of the LORD were here!” You have no idea what you are wishing for.” Amos 5:18
And the passage gets harsher after that!
Why didn’t I have you preach on this one Bob?
I think, especially as we dealt with the trauma of an election, as we deal with the trauma of COVID, as we all deal with other hurts, other grieving, there is a necessity to look toward the second coming – never think I believe otherwise.
This passage doesn’t say that is wrong, but it addresses a major issue, one that we need to address.
And understanding that helps us see the revival that God is working in our midst.
If only… we didn’t say… “if only!”
If you are seeking “if only”… what is missing?
I want you to hear what it means to say, “if only”
That day will bring darkness, not light. 19 In that day you will be like a man who runs from a lion— only to meet a bear. Escaping from the bear, he leans his hand against a wall in his house— and he’s bitten by a snake.
Of course, there is the modern version. When you run from the political discussions, you end up running into another COVID scare, and when you escape that, and rest, you have to deal with a household of people with cabin fever!
The “if only” attitude creates a problem for us, simply because it shows where our faith is, in a weak and even dangerous place. We go looking for God to come back, simply because we want to escape our problems here and now.
I know that desire all to well, but it is so dangerous! For it means that we have forgotten that God has promised everything, including these times, will work out for good, and that nothing can separate us from Him.
Which means sin is having and impact on us. Either the sin of the world weighing us down, or the damage our sin does, hiding the presence of God from our eyes. In fact, it is usually both, both.
Both because we usually don’t react to the sins of others without sinning ourselves. Be honest…. as all the stuff has been going on this week, how many of yousr thoughts were about God providing for you caring for you? How many thoughts, and how many words recognized that God was here, that you were being cared for by God?
And how many were doubting the future, and complaining about the present situations we are enduring?
Those thoughts, those sins, are all sin.
That is the problem with the “if only”!
We are looking for an escape from our situation, that is the reason we want God to come back. Not to dwell in His presence, simply to get out of the problems we are dealing with here.
And that attitude is a lack of trust in God, and a desire to not depend on Him to deal with us. It is one thing to seek salvation from our sin, another to seek being rescued from situations beyond our control, but not beyond God’s.
So how do we learn to trust Him, to depend on His keeping His promises, in such a time as this?
The time for a flood
The answer is a flood….
Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living. Amos 5:24
Going through the motions won’t do it. We can sing loudly, we can memorize the entire liturgy, we can even receive communion every day… but what matters is Go’s justice, and God’s righteousness.
God’s justice, God’s righteousness needs to flood over us.
We need to see the world, and see God’s way of declaring people right with Him as the answer to our lives. We need to see His idea of justice come to be our reality.
The idea where sinners are justified, not faking it, but being justified by the blood of Christ.
To trust God, to know the power of the cross, to be drawn to receive the forgiveness of our sins. To live in the ministry of God reconciling us to Him, and cleansed of sin.
This is what it means for revival to happen in our lives.
We realize the presence of God in our lives, a presence so powerful that we can be righteous, we can look at the sin and realize God has the answer for it.
So instead of sin, we see God’s work, making all things work for good. He is our protection, so we can run to Him, we can bring others to Him.
This is the flood we need! To see that we dwell in God’s presence, no matter what… that this flood is the Holy Spirit coming into out lives, washing away every that is not holy, not pure.
This is revival. Right now, in this moment. This is why we are here… to see the Holy Spirit cleanse us, and so many others! For only He can bring the justice and righteousness we have.
This is a time to rejoice, and to desire God’s presence, now and for eternity.
Not because we want to escape… but because we are content, and at peace in His presence, and desire it more!
For in His presence, we know a peace that is beyond explanation… for Jesus rules our hearts and minds…even as we long to see Him face to face!
AMEN!
What Now? Hope…
Devotional Thought of the Day:
4 On the third dayq Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I will go over there to worship; then we’ll come back to you.” 6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac.r In his hand he took the fire and the knife,s and the two of them walked on together.
7 Then Isaac spoke to his father Abraham and said, “My father.”
And he replied, “Here I am, my son.”
Isaac said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provideG,t the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Then the two of them walked on together. Genesis 22:4-8 CSB
Love also implies hope. The Christian’s vision of our surroundings has to be optimistic. Not the naïve optimism of someone oblivious to the undeniable presence of evil, but that supernatural joy that is founded on a trusting abandonment to the plans of God’s loving Providence and on the free collaboration of people of good will with those plans.
To their mortal eyes He appeared as fire, and may we not safely conclude that those Scripture-taught believers knew at once what it meant? The God who had appeared to them as fire throughout all their long history was now dwelling in them as fire. He had moved from without to the interior of their lives. The Shekinah that had once blazed over the mercy seat now blazed on their foreheads as an external emblem of the fire that had invaded their natures.
This was Deity giving Himself to ransomed men. The flame was the seal of a new union. They were now men and women of the Fire.
I have seen a lot of despair in the last week. Politically among both those expeccted to win, and thosse expeccted to lose. I have seen it as well asthoseewh look at their churches and wonder how the churh will continue to be the church. They look for aswers, they dreamm dreamss, they read book about journeying into the unknown, looking for anything that wilgive them hope to continue their ministry, no matter how different it will look. Some of us, are in despair, because a good friend is ill, another is dealing with the loss of memory, and th ability to express their wisdom. More despair is being adresed by those who have someone dear to thm dying, and even harder, when onperson is being sucked into a ife of sn.
In the midst of this, I have hearpeople cry out, “now what?”
And I cry with them. I have to ask that question, for if I do not, I will not see the answer.
What now?
Hope!
(remember, it is a verb!) Hope, looking forward to the things God has promised.
So, what now? HOPE
You see that hope in Abraham, knowing he was going to sacrifice his son, and yet he says, that they will return together. You see it as he is tying up his son, and utters that God will provide.
No knowledge of how, but clinging to the idea that God cannot go back on his promise!
Hope is not naive! Hope is not to be confused with blind optimism. Hope is not blind to either evil, or the consequences of sin that is so visible in our broken world. It recognizes that, and something more….
It is abandoning our worries, our anxieities, our fears and pains simply because the Holy Spirit has invaded our lives. His presence, an unquenchable fire, causes us to endure…. even as it purifies us. This is where hope comes from, as the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of God’s love for us.
To realize the promises of God, such as this one, “5 Then I, myself, will be a protective wall of fire around Jerusalem, says the LORD. And I will be the glory inside the city!’” Zechariah 2:5 (NLT2)
This is the role of the Spirit in our lives… it is the Spirit who gives us real life… who gives us hope.
So what now? Hope! for the Lord is with you!!
Fazio, Mariano . Last of the Romantics: St. Josemaria in the Twenty-First Century (p. 68). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
A. W. Tozer and Marilynne E. Foster, Tozer on the Holy Spirit: A 366-Day Devotional (Camp Hill, PA: WingSpread, 2007).
Trust God in this…it Will Only Hurt a Moment or Two.
of Marble, what does God see
in you?
Devotion for our Day:
6 The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the hearts of your descendants, and you will love him with all your heart and all your soul so that you will live. Deuteronomy 30:6 (CSBBible)
IT IS SAID THAT MICHELANGELO, contemplating the unworked block of marble that had arrived at his studio, declared, “The statue is there, inside.” His labor consisted of removing the extra material so that the image he had in mind could appear. The day I met the founder of Opus Dei, he used that example to explain to the group of young people that we had to let God work in our souls and consent with docility to his getting rid of whatever was extra so that the face of Christ could appear in our lives: that we were called precisely to be other Christs, Christ himself. And the labor of identifying ourselves with Christ is the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.
So carnal is the body of Christians which composes the conservative wing of the Church, so shockingly irreverent are our public services in some quarters, so degraded are our religious tastes in still others that the need for power could scarcely have been greater at any time in history. I believe we should profit immensely were we to declare a period of silence and self-examination during which each one of us searched his own heart and sought to meet every condition for a real baptism of power from on high.
The Michalangelo discussion came up about a week ago, as I talked with a friend about the need to let God circumcise the church. His response was that it was too graphic. But it is the same concept, and maybe a little less painful than Michelangelo’s solution.
Surgeon or Sculpter?
A very sharp knife, or a chisel and hammer?
The illustration is much the same, God has to reveal who we are, by eliminating all that is not reflective of Jesus. All the sin, all the anxiety, all the resentment, guilt and shame.
To reveal what the Artist sees in us. For God, and God alone, sees the image of Christ in us. It is there, it always has been. Others can surely see all that has been added, all that is marred, all that is disfigured. An in many of our lives, we bear as little resemblance to what God sees as a cube of marble represents the Pieta. (that image is better than the Apostle Paul’s!)
We need to realize God is doing this in our lives. We need to realize He is doing this in the church as well, and I feel, especially the church in America. We desperately need to cut away, chip and hammer at us, so that all that remains is the image of Jesus. Will it hurt? Perhaps, but the Holy Spirit is here to comfort and heal us. You, me, our local churches, the One, Holy, catholic and Apostolic Church.
We need to be still, and know He is the LORD.
The work will only take a moment….
Fazio, Mariano . Last of the Romantics: St. Josemaria in the Twenty-First Century (p. 49). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
A. W. Tozer and Marilynne E. Foster, Tozer on the Holy Spirit: A 366-Day Devotional (Camp Hill, PA: WingSpread, 2007).
Have You Tried Talking WITH Him?
Devotional Thought of the Day:
At that time people began to call on the name of the LORD. Gen. 4:26b
Once the Holy Spirit’s work in our heart begins, grace, forgiveness, cleansing take on a form of almost bodily clearness.
Prayer loses its unmeaning quality and becomes a sweet conversation with Someone actually there. Love for God and for the children of God takes possession of the soul. We feel ourselves near to heaven and it is now the earth and the world that begin to seem unreal.…
Doing some reading for a class I am taking, there was a comment that the number one of the thing pastors can do to sustain good ministry is to engage in regular spiritual discipline. (the Lilly Foundation was credited)
It should be common sense, if our goal is to connect people to God, to help them encounter and experience His love, we need to engaged in that dialogue with Him. That is the sweet conversation Tozer describes, what gives meaning to actual prayer. Without the confidence that God is listening, prayer is simply the recitation of words, a philosophical incantation done ot offer a placebo.
But because the Holy Spirit is there, teaching us to call on God… everything changes.
To deny this, or to neglect it, is tragic, for how can we neglect hat God has created, the ability to talk with Him, as was given in the earliest days, as God gave to men and women the ability to talk with HIm directly.
Luther would note this too, as he explains in the large catechism about prayer. It is part of our lives, not just and after thought. ( I highly suggest reading this!)
The other point Tozer made is based on the reality that is expressed in Colossians 3, “For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:3 (NLT2) Prayer helps us realize that Gid is present, and our relationshp with Him is the basis of reality. Who we are, what we are, we are defined by that relationship with Him, and nothing else is as real as that. Nothing else transforms us that way.
So pray, just start, ask the Spirit to guide you… and rejoice.. for God is listening…
A. W. Tozer and Marilynne E. Foster, Tozer on the Holy Spirit: A 366-Day Devotional (Camp Hill, PA: WingSpread, 2007).
What I Want to Be When I Grow Up….
Devotional Thought of the Day:
1 Take me as your pattern, just as I take Christ for mine.
1 Corinthians 11:1 (NJB)
For the Christian, the Mass also becomes an encounter of love. St. Josemaría lived it this way, and many are the testimonies of those who left renewed after participating in a Mass he celebrated. For example, Antonio Ivars Moreno, a student who attended a Mass celebrated by the founder in Valencia one day in 1939, notes:
“I didn’t miss a word. Not a single gesture. When he celebrated Mass he made all of us there feel that he had penetrated the depths of the great mystery of our Redemption. That Mass was truly the same sacrifice of Calvary without the shedding of blood.”
There was no room for distractions.
20 He kissed the altar, aware that he was kissing Christ himself. During the celebration, he knew himself to be at the center of the universe, of history, contemplated by God the Father and identified with Jesus Christ, the Eternal High Priest. He possessed a very lively awareness of the cosmic meaning of the Eucharist: “When I say Dominus vobiscum (The Lord be with you), even if I am alone with the one assisting me, I say it to the whole Church, to all the creatures of the earth, to the whole of creation, to the birds and the fish, too.”
21 He proclaimed the Word with the conviction that its pages were authentic letters from God to men, inspired by the Holy Spirit. At the moment of the presentation of the gifts, he brought there, together with the bread and wine, many intentions, and made himself spokesman for the sorrows, joys, yearnings, and plans of all humanity, beginning with those of his own spiritual sons and daughters.
When I was young, one of the nuns I had for a teacher sugggested we imitate saints for Halloween, rather than pirates or Spiderman or a police officer, fireman or soldier. The goal was to be able to share with others the saint’s story, and why we chose them.
I used to take the easy way out – and look at St Francis. Good guy, a bit odd, not well understood. I could ge that. I think now, I would choose St. Josemaria, and find a pattern of life in his life, where he was able to pattern his after Jesus’s life.
The above quote I think explains what I would desire more than anything. That people, when attending worship, would realize that they are in the presence of God, and that together, we have penetrated that great mystery of redemption. There are a few things, differences in practice because f thoelogy that need to be considered, but the general quote is that where i wish life could be found.
To be a spokesman for the sorrows, joys, yearnings and plans of all humanity, bringing them to Christ, Letting the Holy Spirit shepherd them, thorugh the word of God, and bring healing to them through the sacraments. What greater role could there be in life?WHat greater pattern to emulate?
TO help people see that God could work through one such as me, assuring them that He will make their lives a masterpiece? (that is the greatest role of the pastor/priest – to prove to people God can work in their lives, because he took wretches like us and has done so in our lives) It isn’t about us, we realize that each time we distribute the Lord’s Supper, each time we baptize a baby, or a 70 year old, or declare Christ’s forgiveness on those who are bring cleansed and renewed by the Spirit.
There is a pattern to long for, to have that impact on people, where they pay attention to the words we utter, because they are used to draw them closer to God….
Lord, I pray thatevery pastor, every priest would serve in such a way that this observation they declare to people is true, “The Lord is with You!” May that declaration convince their weary souls of this, and empower their love for another. AMEN!
Fazio, Mariano . Last of the Romantics: St. Josemaria in the Twenty-First Century (pp. 37-38). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
