Category Archives: Peter Kreeft
A Brutal but Blessed Truth…
Devotional Thought of the Day:
1 Descendants of Jacob, I, the LORD, created you and formed your nation. Israel, don’t be afraid. I have rescued you. I have called you by name; now you belong to me. 2 When you cross deep rivers, I will be with you, and you won’t drown. When you walk through fire, you won’t be burned or scorched by the flames. 3 I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, the God who saves you. . Isaiah 43:1-3a (CEV)
A godly man often grows best when his worldly circumstances decay
I had always believed in God’s love and God’s omnipotence. But once I put the two ideas together, saw the unavoidable logical conclusion (Rom 8:28), and applied this truth to my life, I could never again see the world the same way. If God is great (omnipotent) and God is good (loving), then everything that happens is our spiritual food; and we should thank Him for it.
I am not sure I would use the phrase “godly man” to describe myself. Others might, assuming since I am a pastor, I must be. But I know the difference, and so does God.
But I can say, I desire to be a Godly man, and that expresses my broken and sinful heart. I desire it and know how deeply I fall short of it. That God guarantees that I will be, that I am in His eyes because of Jesus is a great theological and often academic exercise, but there are days where theology doesn’t serve, and where my academic strengths fail.
It is then that I realize that even for who would desire godliness, the times of failure can be blessings. Spurgeon is right, even for those like me. Kreeft says it even better – everything that happens to me, whether I am in control of it, or am not, is a result of God’s omnipotence, and more importantly, His love.
That’s hard to say when faced with disease and genetic disorders. It is hard to face for those who suffer from mental illness, and for those who have been affected by the evil of others, or by their own, this is a brutal truth, and one that it is hard to comprehend, and harder to accept.
Even so, as I desire godliness, I must grow to trust, even when I struggle ot accept, that this is true. Even more so, I need to grow in trusting and sensing His presence when the deep waters come, and I feel like I am drowning. Even more so when life feels like Dante is right about the inferno. When the pain and anguish seem to overwhelm, I need ot remember the promise of my baptism, and the discovery that I have made at the altar, that God is with us is not just words, it is a truth that is the purest of blessings, even when faced with the brutality of this world. Even when I am too tired to see it.
He is with us, He calls us by name, for we are His.
Even in the midst of “it”
Lord, help us to know Your presence in our lives, to experience the love that is beyond explanation, the peace which is beyond understanding. Help us not to praise You because You rescued us, but because you made us Yours. Lord, until you let the waters recede, and the fire be quenched, sustain us, and help us to be thankful for Your presence.. 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), 19.
The Problem of “Free Will” is we don’t want it freed….
Devotional Thought of the Day:
Jesus heard them and answered, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor, but sick people do. I didn’t come to invite good people to be my followers. I came to invite sinners.” Mark 2:17
You may say, “Well, did God not endow us with a free will?”19 I reply: To be sure, he gave you a free will. But why do you want to make it your own will? Why not let it remain free? If you do with it whatever you will, it is not a free will, but your own will. God did not give you or anyone else a will of your own. Your own will comes from the devil and from Adam, who transformed the free will received from God into his own. A free will does not want its own way but looks only to God’s will for direction. By so doing it then also remains free, untrammeled and unshackled.
The transmission of the Christian faith consists primarily in proclaiming Jesus Christ in order to lead others to faith in him. From the beginning, the first disciples burned with the desire to proclaim Christ: “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”11 And they invite people of every era to enter into the joy of their communion with Christ:
I had perceived—via God’s grace, not my own wit, surely—that since God is love, we must therefore love God and love whatever God loves; that if we turn to the divine Conductor and follow the wise and loving baton that is His will, His Word, then the music of our life will be a symphony.
Over the years, I have heard people argue over the concept of free will. Some would say we have it, others would simply say we don’t, that God is not only responsible for all of our actions, but He chooses what we will do, in every moment. I’ve heard it blamed for our sinful choices, and for the temptations that we tried to avoid, but gave into and sinned. Somehow people think because God gave us the ability to decide to wreck out lives, He is responsible for their breaking.
Until reading Luther this morning, I never conceived of the idea that free will could mean that it is not “our will”; not “my will” or “your will”, but the ability to simply have a will that is free, and therefore can be influenced by God, A will that Kreeft describes himself realizing that God is love, and therefore we should resonate with His love, and love what He loves. The power of free will then, is not aligning it to our own desires, but letting it be guided, let it resonate with the will of God.
After all, isn’t that the invitation Jesus came to deliver? That those of us who are sinners, will be freed from sin, able to walk with Him?
That is why we train people in the faith; why we make disciples, not converts; why we catechize, answering the real questions of faith, rather than indoctrinate.
It’s not to force one’s will to be Christ’s, it is to help people see that their will, their Spirit, once clean of all sin of all injustice, resonates with Jesus. For we were made in God’s image, and the Spirit causes us to realize this, as we realize the love of God.
This resonance is why salvation, realizing God has removed dampen and distort our lives, is so joyous. A guitar or violin string doesn’t have to be forced to sound, a similar string resonating brings its movement and sound. Just as the word of God resonates with a truly “free will” creating joy where it resounds.
Heavenly Father, please, once again, send the Holy Spirit to remove all that would distort and dampen the will the Holy Spirit has restored. In Jesus’ name! 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), 48
Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 107..
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 16.
The LIGHT Streams Into Our Lives: a sermon based on John 1:10-14
The Light Streams in Our Lives
John 1:10-14
† In Jesus Name †
May the grace, mercy, and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ shock you!
- Kreeft and Love
I just started a new book, one I didn’t know a favorite author named Peter Kreeft wrote. In the introduction, he writes something quite startling,
“God loves you”—isn’t that the most well-worn of clichés? It’s just standard filler for the laziest, most obvious and repetitive homilies. Smile. Yawn. Everybody knows that by now, at least everybody who has ever been in a church or read a Bible.
No. Exactly the opposite. It is not familiar. It is shattering. It changes everything. And most Christians do not realize it.[1]
Even as I encountered this in my readings this week, It took me a moment to think about it. Do we know what love is? Do we really know understand it, have we experienced it?
Does it shock you when I tell you that God loves you enough that Jesus died, for you! For you Tom, for you Sandy, for you Missy, even for you who are watching this…
God loves you…
Does it still shock you, this love, when you hear the words I speak at Jesus’ command, “Your sins are forgiven you!”
Or when, into your hand, or on your tongue I place the Body of Christ, and the deacon gives you the cup containing His blood? Are you startled then?
If you aren’t, I apologize.
I haven’t revealed to you clearly enough what it means that God is love… and that love is aimed at you.
- Would we recognize Him today? Or would we reject Him?
In the St. John’s gospel, there is something as staggering to hear,
10 He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. 11 He came to his own people, and even they rejected him.
I still don’t understand this, how in the world could they miss Him with the way he taught, so different from all the others. He who brought healing into their lives, He who dared to forgive the vilest of sins.
He who had compassion on the most broken, those haunted by their sin, those possessed by demons, those who couldn’t be faithful to Him, like Peter and James and John…who even doubted when they saw Him risen from the dead and about to ascend to heaven.
How could they not recognize Him? Consider what Peter would write, “For we were not making up clever stories when we told you about the powerful coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We saw his majestic splendor with our own eyes 17 when he received honor and glory from God the Father. The voice from the majestic glory of God said to him, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.”
Yet they did not recognize Him, and I am not sure we do either when we encounter Him in the lives of the people He so dearly loves. And even if we realize it from a theological perspective, that doesn’t mean we realize His love for us.
We need to have Jesus revealed to us, through Word and Sacrament, we have to be reminded of His presence and His love.
His love streams among us
So what does it mean when John’s gospel and Peter’s epistle say that saw His glory, His majestic splendor. What is that they saw, when Jesus came and made His home with them, with us?
Simply put, it is the fact that God is love. And that He loves us- this is what they saw… God, in Christ, had compassion on them, he was charitable towards them. He loved them, just as He loves us.
From Peter Kreeft again (did I start the right week to read this, or what?_
Jesus does not merely give us advice about agape. He gives us agape. He exchanges selves with us: we are put in Him, and He is put in us. He is the Love that “does not insist on its own way”. First Corinthians 13 is a description of Christ. His love can be in us only because He is in us. We attain agape not by trying a little harder but by faith, by believing and thus receiving (Jn 1:12), by letting Him in, letting Him invade us, possess us, haunt us.[2]
This is it, we can love because He loves us.
We are loved. How much? Look at the cross, see what He experienced there, so you can experience His love. Look at the font, where He brings you into Himself, fuses your life to His own. Come to the altar…. And realize how much love it takes to forgive every single sin you have committed. No, how much it cost to forgive just that sin.
All this stuff about Christmas, the gifts, the tree, the flowers, the manger, it is all there to convince you of this.
So that you can believe in Him, trust in Him, and know that you have become the children of God. Shocking isn’t it… You are loved.
God loves you. He wants you with Him, now and forever
I can’t explain it any clearer than that.
God loves you… and always will. AMEN!
[1] Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 11.
[2] Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 85.
I Don’t Think That Word Means What You Think It Means!
Devotional Thoughts for the Day:
16 God is wonderful and glorious. I pray that his Spirit will make you become strong followers 17 and that Christ will live in your hearts because of your faith. Stand firm and be deeply rooted in his love. 18 I pray that you and all of God’s people will understand what is called wide or long or high or deep. 19 I want you to know all about Christ’s love, although it is too wonderful to be measured. Then your lives will be filled with all that God is. Ephesians 3:16-19 (CEV)
How sweet amidst all the uncertainties of life, to know that “the foundation of the Lord standeth sure,” and to have God’s own promise, “My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.” Like dying David, I will sing of this, even though my house be not so with God as my heart desireth.
“God loves you”—isn’t that the most well-worn of clichés? It’s just standard filler for the laziest, most obvious and repetitive homilies. Smile. Yawn. Everybody knows that by now, at least everybody who has ever been in a church or read a Bible.
No. Exactly the opposite. It is not familiar. It is shattering. It changes everything. And most Christians do not realize it.
If hearing God is love doesn’t cause you to step back in shock, and in awe, then perhaps you don’t know who He is, or you don’t understand what love means.
That claim of Peter Kreeft is pretty shocking, and the more I think about it, the more certain I am that he is right.
I wish I knew why we don’t understand that God is love, and that He loves you and me.
The more I think about it, that would be my one desire in life, to be able to make people understand this word “love’ and how it binds God’s heart and soul to ours, how it should become our reason for existence.
For it is how we live, and why we live… …
Think about it.
Not I mean it – for a few minutes.
It should shatter us, it should make us weep, it should make us question why, knowing the depth our sin, and how much we, as Spurgeon wrote, don’t have our house with God as much as we desire.
Yet He still loves us.
We need to explore that, savor that, let it rock us to the very foundations of our lives.
It should shock us, this desire of God to care for us, to be devoted to us, to know us so well, to love us.
Take time each day to think that through, each morning, and evening, and every moment in between that you have a moment.
God is love…and that Love is directed to you. 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), 11.
