Category Archives: Peter Kreeft
Why Should I Give Thanks? For what?
11 Then you and your family must celebrate by eating a meal at the place of worship to thank the LORD your God for giving you such a good harvest. And remember to invite the Levites and the foreigners who live in your town. Deut. 26:11 CEV
But anyone who has been forgiven for only a little will show only a little love.”
48 Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”
49 Some other guests started saying to one another, “Who is this who dares to forgive sins?”
50 But Jesus told the woman, “Because of your faith, you are now saved.t May God give you peace!” Luke 7:47-50 CEV
Agape also looks at the true, real, and objective good of the beloved rather than at subjective feelings, whether of the lover or of the beloved. It looks at needs rather than wants.
I imagine that when Simon the Pharisee invited Jesus to a special dinner, he thought he was doing Jesus a favor. Give the homeless but popular Rabbi some food, introduce him to some powerful people. give him a chance to get a leg up in life.
Simon may have even thought he might learn a thing to use in a lesson he would teach later. If you would have asked him if he was thankful for the presence of Jesus in his home, he would probably just.. stare at you, as if you were on some planet.
I wonder if we treat God the same way.
We do our devotions, we try not to sin, we go to church and even give some money, and God should be thankful to us. We would never say it, but we often treat God like He should be thankful for us!
So like Simon, we forget what God is doing in our lives, we forget how much He loves us.
The people of God were told that after they made their sacrifice of the first blessings of the harvest, they were to eat a meal to give thanks to God for the harvest. Eat of the very things God provided in the harvest, but here is the point, to thank God for what He provided! They were to be so thankful, that they invited others to share in the feast- others that God may not have provided for at all.
That’s where Kreeft’s comment intersects with this thought. We have to realize that God has enough wisdom to know where and how to answer our prayers. More importantly, that His love looks at the objective good, and provides for what we need, not just the things that will make us wise, or content.
Including the forgiveness of all of our sin, and in doing so, revealing to us the love and interest God has in our life. I don’t think we can see what to be thankful for, that He is providing in our lives. But realize what that forgiveness opens up for us, what it reveals to us, that is the beginning of realizing what it means when you hear, “The Lord is with you!”
So let’s have a feast, in the presence of God, and give thanks for all He has done!
AMEN!
(Don’t forget to invite a foreigner and those who don’t get the same provision you do!)
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 67.
Almost Tempted to…but I can’t…
Devotional Thoughts of the Day:
After the LORD helps you wipe out these nations and conquer their land, don’t think he did it because you are such good people. You aren’t good—you are stubborn! Deut 9:4-6 CEV
Liturgy does not come about through regulation. One of the weaknesses of the postconciliar liturgical reform can doubtless be traced to the armchair strategy of academics, drawing up things on paper which, in fact, would presuppose years of organic growth.
It ought to grow and become firmer amid good works as well as temptations and dangers, so that we become ever stronger in the conviction that God cares for us, forgives us, and hears us for Christ’s sake. No one learns this without many severe struggles. How often our aroused conscience tempts us to despair when it shows our old or new sins or the uncleanness of our nature! This handwriting is not erased without a great conflict in which experience testifies how difficlt a thing faith is.
Sigmund Freud is a good example. In Civilization and Its Discontents, he argues against altruistic love as the meaning of life and the key to happiness by saying simply, “But not all men are worthy of love.” No, indeed they are not. Agape is quite defenseless against this objection. The love we are talking about goes beyond reason, and a rationalist like Freud just does not see it. We who take agape for granted because of our Christian education should realize its precariousness. There is simply no effective rational answer to the challenge: “But give me a reason why I should love someone who does not deserve it.” Love is the highest thing. There can be no higher reason to justify it.
Fourth, some say, “I would indeed have confidence that my prayer would be answered if I were worthy and possessed merit.” I reply: If you refuse to pray until you know or feel yourself worthy and fit you need never pray any more. For as was said before, our prayer must not be based upon or depend upon our worthiness or that of our prayer, but on the unwavering truth of the divine promise
The People of the “poor”—those who, humble and meek, rely solely on their God’s mysterious plans, who await the justice, not of men but of the Messiah—are in the end the great achievement of the Holy Spirit’s hidden mission during the time of the promises that prepare for Christ’s coming.
It has never happened before. From every book I read a section of in my devotional reading, something struck me important enough to put down, to consider, and to process my thoughts all together. (Spurgeon will be a later blog…but His is impressive too)
Tempting to just leave the quotes here for you to read.
They are that significant, at least to me.
But I do this to process through these works of scripture, and of other believers who struggle with faith. So I need to struggle, to let these words wrestle with my soul.
The reading from the Old Testament sets it all up and confirms what I (and probably one or two of you already know.
We aren’t good enough.
We sin, We screw up, we get hurt and contain the resentment inside us.
And if we expect God to be on our side because we are good American Christians who have better morals and values than the rest of the world, we are the most deceived people to ever live.
Kreeft and Luther tell us in following quotes that knowing this is okay. We don’t have to justify God’s loving us. God isn’t unreasonable or illogical, but His ways are beyond ours, His ways are the purest, deepest, highest love. God listens to us, our needs, our groans, our pleas, not based on how worthy we are – in fact, that is the beauty of His logic.
That is where the Catholic Catechism and Lutheran Confessions come to play, noting our struggle, noting the need for humility, noting the Holy Spirit’s miracle in bringing us to depend on God, even when our minds are convinced we cannot. If I could add another 2000 words, I would explore that more. We have got to understand that the struggle to have faith in God, when we know our brokenness, is part of the journey of faith, the journey to depend on God who is there, working in our lives. That faith isn’t some random intellectual decision that fires off, it is a miracle. It happens because of an encounter with God that goes beyond our ability to explain.
That is why Liturgy cannot be drawn up or manipulated by those in ivory offices, those disconnected from the altar where Christ’s Body and Blood come to feed the people of God. Pope Benedict is right on in that quote. Or, as Pascal noted, “GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob! not of the philosophers and of the learned. Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.” The worship service needs to see people encounter God, be in awe of Him, afraid, and yet comforted by His love and mercy.
That can’t be observed, that can’t be experienced in some far off place in St. Louis or Rome. It happens here, where the struggle is, where we need to know He loves us, even as we are not worthy of that love. That is the message our church services, our Liturgy needs to develop by resonating it deep into the souls of the people of God.
In your soul and mine. (gulp)
Yes, this is about us… and that should stagger you… for it does stagger me.
You may never consider yourself lovable by God. You may never think you are good or worthy or holy enough for Him to listen to your prayers, to laugh and cry with you…
That doesn’t matter… HE DOES.
Joseph Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 81.
Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), 160–161.
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 60–61.
Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 42: Devotional Writings I, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 42 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 88–89.
Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 189.
A Lesson Observed, watching a 13-year-old learn to love and serve…
Devotional Thought of the Day:
1 Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. 2 Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
Ephesians 5:1-2 (MSG)
Are you told to distribute to the poor? Do it, not because charity is a burden which you dare not shirk, but because Jesus teaches, “Give to him that asketh of thee.” Does the Word say, “Love God with all your heart”? Look at the commandment and reply, “Ah! commandment, Christ hath fulfilled thee already—I have no need, therefore, to fulfil thee for my salvation, but I rejoice to yield obedience to thee because God is my Father now and he has a claim upon me, which I would not dispute.” May the Holy Ghost make your heart obedient to the constraining power of Christ’s love, that your prayer may be, “Make me to go in the path of thy commandments; for therein do I delight.” Grace is the mother and nurse of holiness, and not the apologist of sin.
This brings up a second popular misunderstanding, closely related to the first. It is easy to have love for humanity, but it is hard to have it for one’s neighbor. For the mass of humanity is not here on my doorstep, my neighbor is. Humanity never surprises you, never disappoints you, never bugs you. Humanity is as safe as a picture in a museum. It is just that: a mental picture in the museum of the mind.
Jesus never once told us to love humanity. If preachers tell you that he did, they are serving up their own recipe instead of Jesus’. The only Jesus we know, the Jesus of the Gospels, told us to love as he did; that is, to touch and serve the specific individuals we meet. Jesus did not come to earth for the sake of humanity. He came for you and for me.
I didn’t do my devotional reading earlier this morning, because I was watching my son, and truly amazed at what he experienced.
At the invitation of a brother of a friend, 7 people from my church went about 30-40 minutes up the freeway to go help distribute food at a food bank. And while I worked on one table, William was coordinating the food at another table.
His reaction to help some 240 households have food for a week? “Dad, can we come back next week, no every week?” He was even willing to get up early and ride his bike if need be. ( I don’t think he understands what a forty-mile ride would be like!
It didn’t matter! Putting faces to people he was helping, helping them know what they could have, talking them into healthy choices, that was his entire desire!
That’s the kind of love that Kreeft (purple letters) is talking about. Not living humanity, but loving individual humans. Touching and serving specific individuals. Even the ones who bug you, disappoint you, even shock you. Even those you have to lovingly remind that there are limits to the food.
Love them.. each of them.
Spurgeon also knew some of what my son learned. He was indifferent about going, or maybe just tired. He learned to love what he was doing, and that is the desire to go back. Not to impress me, not to impress God, but because loving people is actually something you can enjoy. It shows the “claim of God” on us, and that is why obeying the command is so energizing, so enjoyable, so fulfilling. (Even when it isn’t, it is!)
Which brings us back to scripture. I am pretty sure my son wasn’t planning on getting something back when he was enjoying himself. That wasn’t his intent. But he did… something more valuable than much of anything else he could have gotten today. In the same way, God’s true love isn’t self-seeking, yet His love instills and compels us to love in return. To love Him, and to love people we interact with.
And that is contagious! Ask my son!
Heavenly Father, continue to show us how to love those around us…and to help them see that You love them. In Jesus’ name, we pray! AMEN!
C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 54.
The Thing I Need You to Know About My Religion…
Devotional Thought of the Day:
My dear friends, as a follower of our Lord Jesus Christ, I beg you to get along with each other. Don’t take sides. Always try to agree in what you think. 1 Cor. 1:10 CEV
18 The message about the cross doesn’t make any sense to lost people. But for those of us who are being saved, it is God’s power at work. 1 Cor. 1:18 CEV
Finally, we praise His kingdom, His power, and His glory because they are nothing but the reign of love. “Why do you speak of nothing else?” “Because there is nothing else.” John the Beloved Disciple knew the point of it all.
I have heard from people that don’t yet trust God that the church tries to control people’s beliefs. That we try to indoctrinate people on everything from pseudo-science ot politics and ethics. Although I haven’t heard this in years, last week I heard it twice. One person at the table we were sharing at a music trade show was talking on this concept, looked up and saw my color. We both were a little embarrassed!
If only changing people’s minds about Jesus and the church was that easy!
Actually, I am glad it isn’t.
It causes me to focus on what is the most important thing, in fact, the one thing I need you to know. It is also the secret of getting a church, full of people with different thoughts, beliefs, agendas to get along with each other, and agree.
For if they understand this message of the cross, then everything else falls into place.
But to many people, it does seem foolish, unbelievable, moronic even.
Here it is, the one thing I need you to know about my religion, about my faith.
God loves you!
That is the message of the cross. The creator of the universe loves you, and the cross is His demonstration of how much He loves you!
You may question why it is true! I question why He loves me, it doesn’t make sense.
You may question what this means, or how it happens, been there as well.
You may even question that He exists, or whether He knows you exist. I have had, and occasionally still have those days as well.
But at the end of the day, you can depend on this, He loves You.
Enough to heal your brokenness, enough to show you mercy, enough to comfort your tears and dance for joy when you spend time with Him.
God loves you…
That’s what I need you to know…for everything in Christianity finds its origin in that love.
Can’t force you to know it, can only invite you to experience it…
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 47.
What Should Make Christianity…. different?
Devotional Thought of the Day:
I tell you that this poor widow has put in more than all the others. 44 Everyone else gave what they didn’t need. But she is very poor and gave everything she had. Now she doesn’t have a cent to live on. Mark 12:43-44 CEV
By the words “to save” we understand the whole of the great work of salvation, from the first holy desire onward to complete sanctification. The words are multum in parro: indeed, here is all mercy in one word. Christ is not only “mighty to save” those who repent, but he is able to make men repent. He will carry those to heaven who believe; but he is, moreover, mighty to give men new hearts and to work faith in them. He is mighty to make the man who hates holiness love it, and to constrain the despiser of his name to bend the knee before him. Nay, this is not all the meaning, for the divine power is equally seen in the after-work. The life of a believer is a series of miracles wrought by “the Mighty God.”
The pagan knew the fact that our hearts are restless, but he did not know the reason. Christianity supplies the reason, the key to the lock, the answer to the puzzle pondered by the great philosophers Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, even by Qoheleth in the book of Ecclesiastes. All these thinkers believed in a God, but they were not happy because they did not know God was love. Socrates worshipped the unknown God whom he would not name and knew he did not know. Plato’s God was impersonal truth and goodness. Aristotle’s God was a cosmic first mover who could be known and loved but who did not know or love us. Cicero’s God was only a vague object of “piety”. And the God of Ecclesiastes sat unmoving and unknown in Heaven while man’s life on earth remained “vanity of vanities, all is vanity”
172 Augustine says very clearly, “All the commandments of God are kept when what is not kept is forgiven.”1 Therefore even in good works he requires our faith that for Christ’s sake we please God and that the works in themselves do not have the value to please God.
173 Against the Pelagians, Jerome writes, “We are righteous, therefore, when we confess that we are sinners; and our righteousness does not consist in our own merit, but in God’s mercy.”
The novel Christian reality is this: Christ’s Resurrection enables man genuinely to rejoice. All history until Christ has been a fruitless search for this joy. That is why the Christian liturgy—Eucharist—is, of its essence, the Feast of the Resurrection, Mysterium Paschae. As such it bears within it the mystery of the Cross, which is the inner presupposition of the Resurrection.
This morning I came across some very powerful quotes in my reading. I love them, whether it is from a soon to be pope (Ratzinger), an incredible philosopher (Kreeft), a group of rebels (the early Lutherans), or a British pastor who was perhaps, the first mega-church pastor.
They all point to one thing, the fact that Christianity is different. Philosophers tried to point to him, but they couldn’t understand God. That the Eucharist does, more clearly perhaps than anything else, for we encounter and experience Jesus there. In the mercy of God which makes our broken lives perfect as God grants to us repentance and sanctification – as He completely saves us.
What an incredible concept, this salvation.
But do we really comprehend this blessing, this gift?
I do not think we do, at least not always.
How about this explanation. We (the church) are like children at Christmas, more interested in playing with the box our present came in than actually enjoying the present.
Salvation, the complete work of God is so large a gift, we cannot understand it. But we can experience it, and it does more than change us. Jesus does more than give us life, He is that life. That is what makes Christianity different, it is the religion that is more than a relationship, for a relationship cannot begin to express what living in Christ is like.
The old lady with the two pennies experienced it. She wasn’t impressed with the box, she simply enjoyed walking with God, and gave what she had that others would as well.
We don’t even know her name, and she could care less.
She was with God, and among His people, as broken, as misdirected, as….unfocused on what she knew and responded to…
May we be more like her….. and enjoy living in Christ, as the children the Father loves.
C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 39–40.
Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), 130–131.
Joseph Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 65.
The Mystery that Underlies Worship, and Makes it Worth It!
Devotional Thought of the day:
7 No, the wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God—his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began.
1 Corinthians 2:7 (NLT2)
Christianity is both. It is full of mysteries like the Trinity, creation, the Incarnation, atonement, providence, and eschatology. In fact, it is the most mysterious religion in the world. It is not at all obvious, not what we would expect. That is what all the heresies have been: what the human mind naturally expected. Yet Christianity is also supremely simple. John was right. There is, in the last analysis, only one thing: the love of God.
Here is common ground for a discussion of the structure of liturgy. Strictly speaking we should say that liturgy, of its nature, has a festal character.2 If we can agree on this starting point, the issue then becomes: What makes a feast a feast? Evidently, for the view in question, the festal quality is guaranteed by the concrete “community” experience of a group of people who have grown together into this community.
As much as I hate the idea of worship wars, or the ability of both sides to ignore the blessings of their perceived antagonists, I love to talk about worship. Even more, I love worshipping God, with his people. It can be done with choirs and pipe organs, it can be done with a band and people facilitating the singing of the congregation, it is done with a half dozen people and a guitar. Or people singing acapella.
There is no need for worship wars, not when there is so much to celebrate, as the people of God are gathered together.
This is the point that Pope Benedict speaks of, this moment where the community is formed. The feast is not because of the many incredible mysteries we fail to completely understand. Those mysteries, which Kreeft lists, are mere supplements to the true mystery, the truth that binds us all together.
What one thing Peter Kreeft says is the only thing. the love of God! (for us!)
This is our ultimate glory, this is our ultimate joy, this is what we celebrate, for as it is revealed, as the truth of it sets up inside our souls, worship and celebration is the result.
If we are more focused on the realization that God loves us, this staggering, beyond the experience of being truly loved, then worship is empowered to be something more than a pattern, a habit, a time set aside to make sure we are good with God.
It becomes a dance… it becomes a life-giving time of restoration and healing. It becomes the core of our worship, more important than being liturgical or contemporary. More important than being perfect, for all that falls aside with this thought.
“we are loved!”
Heavenly Father, as You gather us together, help us to remember this glorious truth. All we shall hear, say, sing, pray, and even our silence, Lord, may we realize that You love us. AMEN!
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 35.
Joseph Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 62–63.
That’s an odd word….
Devotional Thought of the Day:
17 My strength, I will make music for you, for my stronghold is God, the God who loves me faithfully. Psalm 59:17 (NJB)
what more canst thou hope for than the fulfillment of this great promise, “I will be their God”? This is the masterpiece of all the promises; its enjoyment makes a heaven below, and will make a heaven above. Dwell in the light of thy Lord, and let thy soul be always ravished with his love.
It is Karl Barth’s answer to the questioner who asked him, “Professor Barth, you have written dozens of great books, and many of us think you are the greatest theologian in the world. Of all your many ideas, what is the most profound thought you have ever had?” Without a second’s hesitation, the great theologian replied, “Jesus loves me.”
It is refreshing to read words of pastors from other eras in the church. Especially when those words haven’t been translated, and even cleansed in recent decades. Even so, sometimes how things are said are shocking, they set us back, and cause us to process what we read.
Such an occurrence took place as I was reading from Spurgeon this morning.
Ravished?
That seems such an odd word to use regarding the love of God. Whether it is used in the sense of carrying someone away (after pillaging their village) or causing an incredible level of intense delight (https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/ravish ), it just doesn’t seem right or maybe a better word, considering Spurgeon’s roots – proper.
But maybe that is precisely what is missing from Christianity today. We are missing a sense of the incredible idea of being raptured ( a synonym), not in the sense of eschatology. Instead, in the sense that as we realize we are loved by God, everything else is left behind, that the delight, the joy, the wonder of being loved transform where we are, and it is no longer the place we thought we were.
You see that kind of sentiment in the great preachers and saints throughout history. John Chrysostom, Pascal, Saint Theresa, St Josemaria, Luther, all expressed that kind of experience, as they experienced the love of God. It is what mystics search after, these moments of transcendence, these moments of uncontrollable, heavenly bliss.
It is only from dwelling in that love that we can minister to others. It is the only hope we have when we have been broken by the sin of the world and shattered by our own sin. To let our soul be ravished by the love of God, as He takes us out of the brokenness, transforming us and giving us a new perspective on the world in which we dwell.
The world we dwell in, as we live in Him, and He in us. Completely loved and adored, beyond our imagination, beyond our understanding. Rather than trying to figure it out, perhaps it is better to acknowledge it, and the peace we gain from His presence. The Lord loves you! And even as you find delight in that, the realization should hit you, He delights in it as well!
C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 34.
Stop Defending Yourself!!!
Photo by Victoria Borodinova on Pexels.com
Devotional Thought of the Day:
But if we confess our sins to God, he can always be trusted to forgive us and take our sins away. 1 John 1:9 CEV
We need not worry about success because our love is guaranteed success, even if it does not move our neighbor to respond. For if we are one with Christ as members of His body, then our love is part of Christ’s love. It is not just an imitation from afar but a participation from within. And Christ’s love is guaranteed success, even though it was crucified in us and often continues to be crucified by the world. It is guaranteed success not because of its intentions or goals, but because of where it comes from: the Son’s perfect obedience to the Father.
671 “Jesus remains silent.”—Iesus autem tacebat. Why do you speak, to console yourself or to explain yourself? Say nothing. Seek joy in contempt: you’ll always receive less than you deserve. Can you, by any chance, ask: Quid enim mali feci?—“What evil have I done?”
Defending ourselves has become a national past-time it seems.
Some of us do so by going on the offensive and pointing out the flaws in others. Unless we are brave, we do this by social media. That way we add another layer of defensive offense to our armored position.
Others of us just back to the old ways, and attempt to rationalize and justify whatever it is we have done wrong. To explain why it was better to do it “our” way. We might even blame it on God, projecting some command, twisting it, to make us look better. After all, we were just obeying orders!
Maybe we fear that taking the silent approach simply confirms our guilt and the shame that goes along with it. But surely, we aren’t that concerned with what “they” think?
Escriva notes that we will earn less contempt than we deserve, and I believe that is true. Kreeft points us to the fact that if we are crucified for being wrong, let it be crucified for loving others. Hard concepts to act upon, and yet, that is what we do.
This is completely logical! If we are accused of anything else but loving God and those around us, we deserve the scorn. If we are accused of doing that which is truly loving, then we are in the same situation as Jesus, and are assured that HIs sacrifice was used by the Father, so would ours be. He wins when that happens, and because we dwell in Him, so we win as well!
Either way, defending ourselves is worth so little…
So what if we are guilty, what if they are right? What if we are the ones who have done wrong?
1 John says it is simple to take care of that…
Let God absolve you, go to your pastor or priest, and let them tell you what you need to hear, what devours the guilt and shame, leaving behind joy and freedom. And the ability to know the same love that nourishes our very soul, which enables us to love sacrificially. Even if the sacrifice is our very lives.
So either we are loving as we should, proving God is with us, or we are corrected by our error and absolved to love as we should.
Either way, defending ourselves would simply get in the way…
Rejoce, the Lord is with you, and He will take care of the situation!
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 26.
Escriva, Josemaria. The Way . Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Why I Don’t Care How Fast Your Church is Growing (or Shrinking)
The church, is always in the midst of a storm… but safe in Him
Devotional Thought of the Day:
27 I will live there with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. 28 When I place my Temple there to be among them forever, then the nations will know that I, the LORD, have chosen Israel to be my own people.” Ezekiel 37:27-28 (TEV)
I want you to know that God has never yet punished the world more harshly than by allowing blind and ignorant leaders to exist, who destroy us by withholding the Word of God and our bread. Let the Turks be Turks. This plague surpasses them. Woe unto us for not realizing this and praying for it to cease!
On the other hand, God has never been more gracious to the world than when he granted it well-informed and devoted spiritual leaders, who supplied this Word daily and abundantly. Christendom, and every Christian soul, is born in and through the Word of God.
The whole point of justification by faith is God’s scandalous, crazy, and wonderful gift of love.
Luther’s words are scathing, brutal, and today are as true as they ever have been.
O sure, we have more pastors with higher education perhaps, more and more of my friends are getting Doctor of Ministry and Ph.D./Th.D degrees. I am going for one myself.
So why am I saying that we are in a period where church leaders are blind and ignorant?
I think it is because we are spending most of our time on things besides the gospel. We are trying to find the answers to the declining church attendance, the aging church, how to fight the decline in morality, the sociological and political jungles out there. We hear the latest Barna report,, the latest Pew Research Study, the latest from our favorite religious blogger/vlogger/podcast and we treat our parishioners to our newfound wisdom, our conservative theological acumen, or our theory on how to get our churches to grow and be relevant while staying confessionally centered.
We might even wax eloquently on the core doctrine of Justification by Faith!
Yet we forget the point of justification is to return us to God, to cause us to walk in the presence of God. To realize, using Dr. Kreeft’s words, that God is scandalous, and crazy, as He loves us!
I don’t care if your church is growing 40 percent a year, or declining as you weed out the refuse. If pastors and church leaders aren’t revealing to people the wonderful, crazy, scandalous love of God for them, their work is a curse! Whether the church is 2000 people on Sunday morning, or 24 faithful, confessional, traditional people.
We have to get back to preaching about God’s love for us broken people. It has to be our message. We have to reveal to them that love as we preach and teach, as we give voice to God’s forgiving them (a wonderful, crazy, scandalous thing on its own,) as we give them the Body and Blood to eat and drink.
Pastors, do these things – we know they bring life to our people. People, pray for your pastors, ask them to focus on revealing God’s love for you, constantly. You are in this all together, and you are not alone. For the scandalous, crazy, wonderful God who loves you, is with you! AMEN!
Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 42: Devotional Writings I, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 42 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 55–56.
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 25.
Last Blog of the Year: Is it time to finally grow up?
Devotional Thought of the decade
11 When I was a little child I talked and felt and thought like a little child. Now that I am a man my childish speech and feeling and thought have no further significance for me. 12 At present we are men looking at puzzling reflections in a mirror. The time will come when we shall see reality whole and face to face! At present all I know is a little fraction of the truth, but the time will come when I shall know it as fully as God now knows me! 1 Corinthians 13:11-12 (Phillips NT)4
1 You have been raised to life with Christ, so set your hearts on the things that are in heaven, where Christ sits on his throne at the right side of God. 2 Keep your minds fixed on things there, not on things here on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 Your real life is Christ and when he appears, then you too will appear with him and share his glory! Colossians 3:1-4 (TEV)
All my life I search for this unique, individual self—my true self—and yet I never fully find it. Only God knows it fully, for He designed it. And only God can give it to me because He created it and is creating it right now, sculpting it with all the tools of heredity and environment that make up my life. None of us knows who we really are once we stop fooling ourselves. That knowledge and that destiny await us in our home. Our home is in Heaven because our true identity as individuals is waiting for us there. The character’s identity is found in the author’s mind and nowhere else.
While I have no need for my childish speech, feelings, and thoughts, this passage from 1 Corinthians 13 also makes it clear that I am not capable of the kind of understanding I would expect of someone who is more.. mature. My ability to know reality and what is true is limited, and it will be until Jesus comes for us.
I struggle with that limitation, as much as I did as a 12-16-year-old when I thought I knew everything, or at least was making progress towards that audacious goal! Like Peter Kreeft, I wanted to know who I was, and there were a lot of struggles on the way.
To be honest, I am not sure who I am… I could define myself as a musician, a pastor, a husband, a father, a son, and someone who suffers with Marfan’s Syndrome and probably am on the Asperger’s Spectrum as well.
None of those things really define me, and I can’t yet know who I am, only God knows. He is, as Kreeft acknowledges, still working on me, crafter me as a master craftsman only can. (He is doing the same for YOU, by the way!)
Before I became a precocious teenager, I was far more content with not knowing everything, I was content with just learning, just experiencing, and I need to do that more in the next year. I need to be satisfied with less control, with having less wisdom than I think I need, to simply walking and living with God. That is where I am truly content anyway.
Content playing the keyboard, content with my head in a book, learning what I can. Content teaching people what I really know well, that “the Lord is with YOU!” Really content as I put in people’s hands the Body of Christ. Content as I see these things have an impact that only God can be responsible for, as He brings them to maturity, as they learn to depend on Him.
That’s is something I can’t control, I can’t plan for it to happen. I can work on the opportunities, but it is something that I have to trust in God to make happen. To trust Him as a child does, and perhaps like a much older person, who has wisdom.
God is with you…
and in 2020, come share in His feast!
and let us sing His praises together…
the rest will work itself out.
God’s peace from 2019…
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 22–23.
