God's word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path
2020 april 1 sanctify them in the truth
Daily Devotions for the Church Family Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Theme for the Week of March 30 - April 4
“Almighty God – Our Sanctifier”
“Sanctify them in the truth; Your Word is truth.”
John 17:17
Theme for the Week of March 30 - April 4
“Almighty God – Our Sanctifier”
“Sanctify them in the truth; Your Word is truth.”
John 17:17
In a period of three years, from 1501 to 1504, the great sculptor Michelangelo created a masterpiece of David out of marble. It stands in Florence, Italy today as an example of what can happen when an ordinary object is patiently shaped by the touch of a master’s hand. The sculpture started out as a large chunk of marble. Even so, in the mind of Michelangelo there was a clear image of the finished project: the sculpted likeness of David, the future king of Israel. Michelangelo selected a large piece of marble suitable for carving; then he began ….. chipping away all that was not needed, everything that impeded viewing the image that he intended to display to the world. What remained when he was done is truly a masterpiece.
In an even more glorious manner, God our heavenly Father has taken flawed sinners like you and me; raw and unimpressive spiritually, and by means of His holy Word of Truth, the Spirit of God daily shapes us so that what is not needed falls away and everything that impedes the image and likeness of God from being revealed is removed.
As we learned on Sunday, to “sanctify” means to ‘make holy’ or to ‘set apart’ for God’s higher purposes. Ever since the fall of human kind with the first sin in the Garden of Eden, God has been at work to purify for Himself the individual souls whom He has predestined for salvation and life everlasting with Him. You and I are “on the list.” The work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is meant to use every situation and circumstance, both pleasurable and painful, to accomplish this goal…. setting us apart for Him as Heh shapes us into His image and likeness.
In this process, God our heavenly Father does not spare our ‘feelings.’ His loving goal for you and me is so valuable and eternally significant that He will even lead us into sorrow and loss and pain in order that by His grace we will come forth as sculpted and polished marble which reflects the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. Yet He does this while securely holding you and me in His loving arms and sustaining us by His Word of Truth. God’s Word, the Bible, enables us to see the Big Picture and to know that He is with us through it all.
This earthly life is not meant to be a Disney vacation. It is meant to draw us to our God and to prepare us and our loved ones for eternity with God. So as we face the trials of life, the Holy Spirit reveals through His Word how we may grow into all that God wants us to be as His children.
If we want to see the ‘finished work’ of what the Holy Spirit is sculpting us to become or look like, we must look into the face of Jesus Christ. Paul tells us that “He is the image of the invisible God.” As children of God, this is what we are becoming, a fuller and fuller likeness of Jesus. It will take suffering and loss, pain and sacrifice. Yet in the end, it will have been worth it all. And, in the meantime, we will have the blessed assurance that God is with us every step of the way, every stroke of the chisel, ….. supporting us, encouraging us, comforting us, giving us strength and hope as we move toward the finish line.
Gracious God and Father, we praise You that Your love for us is greater than our sin. We thank You that Your Spirit is continually at work in our lives through the truth of Your Word and in the circumstances of our lives to draw us into Your loving arms. In this season of danger and uncertainty, remind us through Your Word that we belong to You, having been purchased by the precious blood of Your Son. Therefore, quicken our hearts to believe that we are of infinite value to You. Therefore, You are our faithful Protector and Provider, working to keep Your promises and accomplish Your will and purpose for each one of us and our loved ones.
Have mercy upon this nation and the whole world. Provide a vaccine for the corona virus and the proper care of those who are presently sick so that we may be spared the loss of life which is being predicted by our health authorities. Yet through it all, open the hearts of all people toward You so that we may see our desperate need for You ….. not only in times of crisis, but also when life is normal and more predictable.
We ask that You would intervene with a powerful shield of protection upon all who are called by their vocations to assist and serve the sick: doctors, nurses, emergency responders, policemen and firemen, medical assistants and specialists, custodial workers, the National Guard and our military personnel. Bless also those working on medications, cures, and vaccines to restore health and prevent the further spread of the virus, giving them the wisdom and insight and knowledge and understanding to do this work as they are inspired and led by You. Bless those who are working to create and distribute personal protective supplies for the medical personnel and respiration devices for the sick.
Grant wisdom to our leaders to plan and implement procedures that will provide for the needs of the people while stemming the spread of the virus. Bring conviction to all people, especially to the rebellious and self-indulgent, to maintain proper hand hygiene, social distance and the elimination of all unnecessary physical contact with people around them.
Stir the hearts of people to care for their neighbors in safe and wise and meaningful ways. Move all those whose trust is in You to pray, doing so with the assurance that You are a hearing God who wisely and compassionately answers the prayers of His children, in accordance with our needs. Move us to meditate upon Your Word daily, so that we may be fed with the spiritual food that increases our faith in You, our hope in You, and our love for you. O Holy Spirit, engrave Your truth upon our hearts so that we may consistently believe and live as the children of God whom You called us to be and are now working in us to reflect in our attitudes and actions. All this and whatever else You see that we need, we ask that You would grant, in Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.
In an even more glorious manner, God our heavenly Father has taken flawed sinners like you and me; raw and unimpressive spiritually, and by means of His holy Word of Truth, the Spirit of God daily shapes us so that what is not needed falls away and everything that impedes the image and likeness of God from being revealed is removed.
As we learned on Sunday, to “sanctify” means to ‘make holy’ or to ‘set apart’ for God’s higher purposes. Ever since the fall of human kind with the first sin in the Garden of Eden, God has been at work to purify for Himself the individual souls whom He has predestined for salvation and life everlasting with Him. You and I are “on the list.” The work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is meant to use every situation and circumstance, both pleasurable and painful, to accomplish this goal…. setting us apart for Him as Heh shapes us into His image and likeness.
In this process, God our heavenly Father does not spare our ‘feelings.’ His loving goal for you and me is so valuable and eternally significant that He will even lead us into sorrow and loss and pain in order that by His grace we will come forth as sculpted and polished marble which reflects the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. Yet He does this while securely holding you and me in His loving arms and sustaining us by His Word of Truth. God’s Word, the Bible, enables us to see the Big Picture and to know that He is with us through it all.
This earthly life is not meant to be a Disney vacation. It is meant to draw us to our God and to prepare us and our loved ones for eternity with God. So as we face the trials of life, the Holy Spirit reveals through His Word how we may grow into all that God wants us to be as His children.
If we want to see the ‘finished work’ of what the Holy Spirit is sculpting us to become or look like, we must look into the face of Jesus Christ. Paul tells us that “He is the image of the invisible God.” As children of God, this is what we are becoming, a fuller and fuller likeness of Jesus. It will take suffering and loss, pain and sacrifice. Yet in the end, it will have been worth it all. And, in the meantime, we will have the blessed assurance that God is with us every step of the way, every stroke of the chisel, ….. supporting us, encouraging us, comforting us, giving us strength and hope as we move toward the finish line.
Gracious God and Father, we praise You that Your love for us is greater than our sin. We thank You that Your Spirit is continually at work in our lives through the truth of Your Word and in the circumstances of our lives to draw us into Your loving arms. In this season of danger and uncertainty, remind us through Your Word that we belong to You, having been purchased by the precious blood of Your Son. Therefore, quicken our hearts to believe that we are of infinite value to You. Therefore, You are our faithful Protector and Provider, working to keep Your promises and accomplish Your will and purpose for each one of us and our loved ones.
Have mercy upon this nation and the whole world. Provide a vaccine for the corona virus and the proper care of those who are presently sick so that we may be spared the loss of life which is being predicted by our health authorities. Yet through it all, open the hearts of all people toward You so that we may see our desperate need for You ….. not only in times of crisis, but also when life is normal and more predictable.
We ask that You would intervene with a powerful shield of protection upon all who are called by their vocations to assist and serve the sick: doctors, nurses, emergency responders, policemen and firemen, medical assistants and specialists, custodial workers, the National Guard and our military personnel. Bless also those working on medications, cures, and vaccines to restore health and prevent the further spread of the virus, giving them the wisdom and insight and knowledge and understanding to do this work as they are inspired and led by You. Bless those who are working to create and distribute personal protective supplies for the medical personnel and respiration devices for the sick.
Grant wisdom to our leaders to plan and implement procedures that will provide for the needs of the people while stemming the spread of the virus. Bring conviction to all people, especially to the rebellious and self-indulgent, to maintain proper hand hygiene, social distance and the elimination of all unnecessary physical contact with people around them.
Stir the hearts of people to care for their neighbors in safe and wise and meaningful ways. Move all those whose trust is in You to pray, doing so with the assurance that You are a hearing God who wisely and compassionately answers the prayers of His children, in accordance with our needs. Move us to meditate upon Your Word daily, so that we may be fed with the spiritual food that increases our faith in You, our hope in You, and our love for you. O Holy Spirit, engrave Your truth upon our hearts so that we may consistently believe and live as the children of God whom You called us to be and are now working in us to reflect in our attitudes and actions. All this and whatever else You see that we need, we ask that You would grant, in Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.
2020 March 31 you did not choose me, but i chose you
Daily Devotions for the Church Family Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Theme for the Week of March 30 - April 4
“Almighty God – Our Sanctifier”
“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go
and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide,
so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”
John 15:16
Theme for the Week of March 30 - April 4
“Almighty God – Our Sanctifier”
“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go
and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide,
so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”
John 15:16
When Jan and I selected our present dog from the breeder of golden-doodles in Reedsburg, WI, we did not select the biggest or the strongest of the puppies in the litter. “Holly” was actually the smallest and the weakest one of the bunch. Yet she was the one that we chose. We loved her from the beginning …. And with love also came the puddles and poor in the house before she was trained, as well as the multitude of times we had to call her back when she strayed from our yard. She is ours and we are hers.
On an eternally more glorious scale, we did not choose God to be our God; He chose us and gave you and me the abilities and opportunities to reflect who we now are and whose we now are. Many denominations of Christianity teach that you ‘have to make a decision’ for Christ. In contrast to this humanly credited action, the Bible reveals that it was God who first chose us! [Paul points out our human inability to ‘choose’ God when he writes that “you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked” (Ephesians 2:1-2).]
So then, how does God choose us to be his restored and revived children when we were spiritually dead and alienated from Him? Martin Luther gives us such an insight when he writes in the Small Catechism, “I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified me with His Spirit.”
If we are spiritually dead, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 2, we must be given spiritual life. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. [Recall how in the Creed we declare that the Holy Spirit is ‘the Lord, the Giver of life.’ ] God breathes life back into our lifeless spirits and makes us spiritual beings again …. When we had been spiritually lifeless! And how does He do this? It is by means of the Holy Spirit bringing the truth of the Gospel to you and me …. so that we are able to both understand it and believe it. This kind of faith, however, isn’t just a mere agreement with statements about God; it permits and compels us to depend on God to do what He says He will do and for us to do what God commands us to do because we ‘trust’ that this is the only way to live our life in God’s presence as His children.
Oh, how glorious a life we have: that the very Spirit of Almighty God has come to us, spoken His life-giving Word to us, and now lives in us so that we may be all that God has chosen us to be and become!
Gracious heavenly Father, we thank You for the gift of Your Holy Spirit and the spiritual life that He has brought to us so that we may know You as our faithful God and Father, and trust in Jesus Christ Your Son as our loving Savior and Lord. Grant that by Your grace, we may live each day with this wonderful identity as children of God.
Confident that You hear us for Jesus’ sake, we pray Your blessing of protection upon us and each of our loved ones according to Your good and gracious will. Shield us from the corona virus and from all danger and harm and evil. Give to us all that we need for our bodies and souls, and infuse our spirits with the strength which comes from meditating upon Your Word of truth as we are guided by Your Spirit of truth.
On an eternally more glorious scale, we did not choose God to be our God; He chose us and gave you and me the abilities and opportunities to reflect who we now are and whose we now are. Many denominations of Christianity teach that you ‘have to make a decision’ for Christ. In contrast to this humanly credited action, the Bible reveals that it was God who first chose us! [Paul points out our human inability to ‘choose’ God when he writes that “you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked” (Ephesians 2:1-2).]
So then, how does God choose us to be his restored and revived children when we were spiritually dead and alienated from Him? Martin Luther gives us such an insight when he writes in the Small Catechism, “I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified me with His Spirit.”
If we are spiritually dead, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 2, we must be given spiritual life. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. [Recall how in the Creed we declare that the Holy Spirit is ‘the Lord, the Giver of life.’ ] God breathes life back into our lifeless spirits and makes us spiritual beings again …. When we had been spiritually lifeless! And how does He do this? It is by means of the Holy Spirit bringing the truth of the Gospel to you and me …. so that we are able to both understand it and believe it. This kind of faith, however, isn’t just a mere agreement with statements about God; it permits and compels us to depend on God to do what He says He will do and for us to do what God commands us to do because we ‘trust’ that this is the only way to live our life in God’s presence as His children.
Oh, how glorious a life we have: that the very Spirit of Almighty God has come to us, spoken His life-giving Word to us, and now lives in us so that we may be all that God has chosen us to be and become!
Gracious heavenly Father, we thank You for the gift of Your Holy Spirit and the spiritual life that He has brought to us so that we may know You as our faithful God and Father, and trust in Jesus Christ Your Son as our loving Savior and Lord. Grant that by Your grace, we may live each day with this wonderful identity as children of God.
Confident that You hear us for Jesus’ sake, we pray Your blessing of protection upon us and each of our loved ones according to Your good and gracious will. Shield us from the corona virus and from all danger and harm and evil. Give to us all that we need for our bodies and souls, and infuse our spirits with the strength which comes from meditating upon Your Word of truth as we are guided by Your Spirit of truth.
2020 march 30 advice from Martin Luther during this covid-19 pandemic
If Martin Luther were here today, what advice would he provide for us
as we face this Corona Virus Pandemic?
as we face this Corona Virus Pandemic?
Back in 1527, a deadly plague hit Martin Luther’s town of Wittenberg and he wrote a letter to a friend (Volume 43, Pg. 132: Whether One Should Flee from a Deadly Plague – To Rev. Dr. John Hess), explaining how churches should deal with such complicated circumstances.
“I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance inflict and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me however I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely as stated above. See this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy and does not tempt God.”
Luther’s first response was to pray …. asking the Lord for His protection.
Secondly, he would take the practical step of doing as much as possible to rid his home of the germs that could spread the disease.
Thirdly, Luther would get any medicine that helped and then distribute it to the afflicted, the vulnerable, and to himself.
Fourthly, he would minimize the risk of contracting the disease or spreading it if he should get it … by avoiding places where other people are present. [Not to do so, Luther calls ‘negligence.’]
Luther recognized the sovereign power of almighty God. Thus, if God had determined that Luther be taken from this world by means of the Plague, he could not hide from it. Faith in God compelled him to believe that his life was in God’s hands; and he was not afraid to die if that should be God’s will.
Luther also recognized his own personal responsibility. Thus, if faith in God compelled him to care for his neighbor in need, he would prayerfully and willingly provide any help he could offer even if this would increase his risk of getting the disease.
Luther was sure that such a plan was in accord with God’s will and purpose. It was ruled by faith in God and loved for his neighbor. It was not influenced either by fear [which is to doubt God’s loving care] or by fool-hearty recklessness of life [which is to tempt God to save us from our own foolish choices.]
We would do well to follow such spiritual and practical wisdom.
May God’s peace and protection rest upon us and our loved ones. Let us call upon Him earnestly and often; for He has promised to hear when we call and to help us in every time of need. This is still our Father’s world!
“I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance inflict and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me however I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely as stated above. See this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy and does not tempt God.”
Luther’s first response was to pray …. asking the Lord for His protection.
Secondly, he would take the practical step of doing as much as possible to rid his home of the germs that could spread the disease.
Thirdly, Luther would get any medicine that helped and then distribute it to the afflicted, the vulnerable, and to himself.
Fourthly, he would minimize the risk of contracting the disease or spreading it if he should get it … by avoiding places where other people are present. [Not to do so, Luther calls ‘negligence.’]
Luther recognized the sovereign power of almighty God. Thus, if God had determined that Luther be taken from this world by means of the Plague, he could not hide from it. Faith in God compelled him to believe that his life was in God’s hands; and he was not afraid to die if that should be God’s will.
Luther also recognized his own personal responsibility. Thus, if faith in God compelled him to care for his neighbor in need, he would prayerfully and willingly provide any help he could offer even if this would increase his risk of getting the disease.
Luther was sure that such a plan was in accord with God’s will and purpose. It was ruled by faith in God and loved for his neighbor. It was not influenced either by fear [which is to doubt God’s loving care] or by fool-hearty recklessness of life [which is to tempt God to save us from our own foolish choices.]
We would do well to follow such spiritual and practical wisdom.
May God’s peace and protection rest upon us and our loved ones. Let us call upon Him earnestly and often; for He has promised to hear when we call and to help us in every time of need. This is still our Father’s world!
