Attitude Check

"Woe is me.  I am ruined.  For I am a man of unclean lips and  I live among a people of unclean lips...

Here am I!  Send Me!"

Isaiah 6:5-8

I have never been very good at fishing.  I have wanted to like fishing.  I have tried to like fishing.  I have sought to learn how to fish.  It has never worked for me.  The problem is my attitude.  I don’t like the slimy stuff you use as bait.  Putting worms on hooks grosses me out.  I feel the same about taking fish off the hook.   Cleaning the fish?  Are you kidding?  Then there is all the sitting and waiting.  I just don’t have that kind of patience.  The only time I have ever really been successful at fishing is when I have been with someone else. Their attitude made thing different. They love fishing.  To them fishing is the best thing there is and it shows in the way they fish.   Each time they have been gracious enough to do for me all the things I hate – baiting the hooks, taking the fish off the hook, and cleaning the fish.

That got me to wondering – How does our own attitude affect the way we live our lives as believers in Christ?  How does my attitude impact my work as a missionary, a Pastor, a father, a neighbor, a coworker?  Let me give you an example of what I mean.  In one congregation where I have served we had a volunteer working with our teenagers who had no patience with teenagers.  She even told me once, “I just really don’t like this age group.”  Her attitude showed.  The teenagers knew she didn’t like working with them.  Many of them stopped attending.  For me, when I am really discouraged or worried, the result in my ministry is often that I become timid in my sharing of the word, or apathetic towards a certain project, perhaps so fearful of failure that I become fearful of trying.  When I have a complaining attitude about people in the church or my colleagues or those with authority over me, my service as a missionary becomes very negative.

Take a moment to do an attitude check of yourself.  Is witnessing about the faith something you fear?  That attitude will often stifle your witness.  Have you ever had to live or work next to someone you didn’t like?  How did that impact your witness to that person?  Or if that person was a fellow believer whom you didn’t like – how did that impact your ability to work with that person at Church?   Pause for a moment. Consider your own attitudes. How do those attitudes impact your life as a believer?

When I give myself such an attitude check, I find myself in very much the same spiritual condition as the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 6.  He has a vision in which he sees the Lord God “seated on a throne, high and exalted and the train of His robe filled the temple.”  There are angels flying everywhere, “calling to one another, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory.’  At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.”  Isaiah is terrified.  He knows he has no business being there in the Lord’s presence.  “’Woe to me!’ he cried. ‘I am ruined.  I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.’”  When I consider my life according to God’s law, I come to the same conclusion.  With the resentment, negativity or even anger that I harbor in my heart or that too often escapes my lips – I too must cry, “Wow to me!  I am ruined!”

Isaiah was correct in his assessment of himself.  Yet he goes on from there to become one of the great prophets of the Old Testament.  What happened?  Quite simply God’s grace is what happened.  In response to Isaiah’s cry of repentance “one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin is atoned for.’”  The Lord’s gracious forgiveness changes everything.  You see the change in what happens next.  The Lord calls out, “Whom shall I send?  Who will go or us?”  Isaiah’s “Woe to me” is gone.  The fear, the worry, the guilt has all been washed away in the tide of God’s forgiveness and grace. He has a new attitude.  “Here am I! Send me!”

That grace is not simply offered to Isaiah.  God loves the whole world so much that He gave more than a hot coal taken from the altar. He gave His one and only Son Jesus.  “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself…”  He was delivered over to death for the sins of the world and then raised to life again to bring life and immortality to life.   That love includes you and me.

Because of what Jesus did for us, every Sunday at every Divine service we replay Isaiah’s encounter with the Lord Almighty.  The first thing we do in worship is to confess our sins.  We are essentially saying the same thing that Isaiah said. “Woe to me.  I am ruined.  For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips.”  No, God doesn’t answer by sending you a six winged seraph. He sends us another sinner just like you, one called to be a Pastor, called to say to us these wonderful words, “Upon this your confession, I by virtue of my office as a called and ordained servant of the word, announce unto you the grace of God and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  Then as if wanting to add an exclamation point to that, at the Lord’s Supper you are given the very body and blood of your savior (in with and under the bread and wine) to eat and drink for the forgiveness of sins. 

God is so gracious. We never deserve to be loved by Him and yet He does love us.  As His grace and forgiveness transformed Isaiah, so He does the same for you and me.  God’s grace is why you and I can go joyfully about lives as believers in Christ – whether in the role of father, employee, pastor, teacher, parent, etc.  God’s grace is the fertile soil that produces the eager missionary attitude, the one that answers, “Here am I!  Send me!”

Don't Forget to Breathe

John 20:22

“He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Man am I out of breath. You wouldn’t think that climbing a set of steps would leave me out of breath.  I know I could lose a few… well a lot.   But hey I have been working out pretty much every morning for a few years.  In Texas I belonged to Lifetime fitness.  I went every day to work out.  In Germany I walk 5 – 10 kilometers every day.  Why in the world would I be out of breath after a few steps?  Our Doctor explained it.  He said, “It’s not your weight.  It’s not how much you work out.  What happens when people climb steps is that they hold their breath.  Don’t forget to breath!”

That’s also great spiritual advice. That’s why I want to focus on these words that Jesus spoke to His disciples.  “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”   Let me share a couple of things about this passage.  First, you need to know that the words for “breath” and “Spirit” are the same word in both the Greek and the Hebrew.   Secondly, this isn’t the first time God has done this.  When God was first creating the world “the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”  Adam was only a clump of dirt until God breathed life into him.  See how important breathing is.  When we don’t breathe, we don’t live.   What does it tell us that Jesus now repeats this action as He ordains the Apostles for their ministry?  He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  It’s so obvious.   The breath of God’s Spirit is as important to our spiritual life as physical breathing is to our physical life.  Luther wrote it in the Small Catechism, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel…”  God through baptism breathed His life giving Spirit into our lives and we became living breathing children of God.  

The thing about breathing is that it is essential that you never stop.  You want to live then don’t forget to breathe.  Now you would think that is a silly thing to say.  Who would forget to breathe?  Well I do.  I have sleep apnea. That means that while I am sleeping I stop breathing.  When that happens my brain sends out all sorts of signals to get me breathing again.  That’s why I sleep with a CPAP machine.  It blows air into my nose to keep me breathing.  It’s a very simple solution to a very dangerous problem. 

Just as dangerous to our spiritual life is our tendency to forget to breath spiritually.  We live busy lives in a busy world.  We are so busy doing things – at home, at school, at work, in our kid’s activities, even at Church that we forget to breath.  We fail to take time to breath in the Spirit of God daily!  We skip our devotion time.  We short change prayer.  We are too busy to read our Bibles.  When we forget to breathe it does great harm. I know from personal experience.  It was the year before we got an Associate at Lamb of God.  It was happening again before I took the call to Germany.  I was so busy doing ministry that I had no time for God to breath His life into me.  The result was I had nothing to give.  I had no time for people.  I was cranky.  I was worn out. 

That’s why God desires daily to breathe His Spirit into our lives.  When Jesus died and rose again He began a new creation. That’s why the first thing He did after rising again was the same thing He did when He first created Adam in the Garden.  He breathed into His disciples the breath of new life and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”   He did the same thing in you at baptism.  That’s the work He continues every day as He speaks to you His word… as He feeds you weekly with His body and blood in bread and wine at Holy Communion. That is what He is doing when He invites you to come to Him daily in prayer… when He invites you to confess and repent your sins and then speaks to you His word of forgiveness.  We get rid of 71% of the waste inside in our body by exhaling. Then when we breathe in the fresh air we receive the most important renewal and refreshment our bodies need.  The same is true when we repent.  As we confess to God our sins, we give to Him our spiritual waste.  As he forgives us, He breathes into us the new, renewing life of His Spirit.  God is oxygen of faith. If you forget to breathe in God’s new life, eventually all you will have inside is the sin that pollutes you. 

Linda and I love to go to Colorado.  We love hiking the mountain trails. Now it is the nature of every hike in the mountains of Colorado that you spend a lot of time climbing up steep inclines. In that high altitude if you just put your head down and keep climbing you aren’t going to make it very far.  You will be out of breath and unable to go on.  But if you stop regularly to drink water… to enjoy the view… to breath, you will make it to the end of the trail.  That’s how it is with your walk with God.

The most important thing you can do is take the time, stop along the way, to pray… study His word… be fed at His table… breathe deeply the Spirit of God… The best advice for walking the up the high mountains and into the deep valleys of life is this – Don’t forget to breathe!  Amen!

Hurry up and wait!

Luke 24:49

“I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

“Hurry up and Wait!”  That is a curious American expression.  People usually use it when they are frustrated.  Someone has rushed them to some event, insisting that they absolutely had to be there on time or they would miss everything.  So they rush around, going out of the way to get where they are going on time.  Yet when they get there everyone else is late or they have to wait in a long line or their host is running behind.  No one else seems to have put in the effort that they did.  After hurrying to get there they have no choice but to sit and wait for everyone else – Hence the phrase – “Hurry up and wait!”

In another sense, that is exactly what Jesus instructs His disciples to do at His Ascension.   Before He left He laid out God’s plan.  “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day… Then He gives them and to us a mission… a huge mission to undertake. Repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in My name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”  Then just in case the disciples or you or I might be wondering where to start Jesus laid that out too.  “I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”  That’s right!  That’s the first step in God’s plan – Hurry up and wait!    That just doesn’t seem right, does it?    If there is a bunch to be done, I want something to do.  I want to get moving.  Sitting around and waiting drives me nuts.  On busy days the first activity to get dropped is quiet time and devotions.  I want to spring into action. Yet here Jesus says it, The first thing you do is “Stay in the city!” 

There are three very good reasons why this is where our part in God’s work always begins.  First, since it’s God’s work, it needs to be done God’s way.  Many Bible stories come to mind but I will share just one..  Its about Paul when he wanted to go further into Asia to proclaim the Gospel. The Spirit wouldn’t allow him.  He wanted to do God’s work.  How could that not be what God wanted?  But then Paul had a dream of a Macedonian Man inviting them to come to Greece.  They went.  There in Philippi a woman came to faith. This woman named Lydia was from the region God had stopped Paul from entering.  She would be God’s instrument in carrying the Gospel to that part of Asia.  That’s why you hurry up and wait.  God’s work needs to be done God’s way.

Second, God’s work needs to be done in God’s time.  God’s timing is always better than ours.  We see this no where more clearly than in the life of Jesus.  It wasn’t until all the prophecies were in place… until world history had come to the time of the Romans with peace, with good roads and one language – all of which would make for the easy spreading of the Gospel… it wasn’t until “the fullness of time” that God sent forth His Son.   In His life Jesus kept saying that “His hour had not yet come.”  It wasn’t until all was ready, his work done, his disciples trained that Jesus went to Jerusalem to be crucified for our sins and be raised the third day.  We saw this at Lamb of God.  For a long time we couldn’t figure out why God kept putting up roadblocks to moving forward with building the Community Life Center. But then the economy tanked.  God knew what we didn’t.  Three years later it was time and the building went up without a hitch.  God’s work needs to be done in God’s time.  There’s a reason why Jesus told them to stay in the city.  

Third, God’s work needs to be done in God’s power.  We tend to be like a plan.  We are attracted to a process.   Give me 7 principles of a healthy marriage… or ten steps for sharing my faith my neighbor… or 5 keys to make our church grow.  Those things may indeed be helpful… but by themselves they are simply instruments of the law… They tell us what we should be doing yet have no power to help us do them.  Give us a process and we think, “I can do it…”  But we can’t.  You and I can’t bring someone to faith. We can’t change a heart.  Only God’s Spirit can do it.  That’s the way it was even with Jesus.  Look how He saved the world.  He set aside His power.    He surrendered to His enemies.  He refused to call for those 12 legions of angels.  He let them lie about him at His trial.  He refused to fight back.  It was when He did nothing except hang on a cross and die that He conquered sin. It was when His father raised Him from the dead that He conquered death.  He put Himself in His Father’s hands… lived by faith in His Father’s love… counted on His Father’s power.  That’s how God’s mission is accomplished – by faith… by His power… by His Spirit.. 

That’s the first step in the mission God calls us… as we seek His will for our life… as we make decisions is to Hurry up and Wait on Him.  Look to Him.  Pray. Then pray again.  Then pray some more.  “Stay in the City until you have been clothed with power from on high.”  No need to worry.  No need to hurry.  Just wait.  God has promised, ‘God’s Work done God’s way in God’s time by God’s power will never fail!”  Amen!

Never Abandoned

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

John 14:16-18

I’ll never forget it.  One night when I was in High School my friends and I made the pilgrimage down to the Medinah Temple in Chicago to see a presentation by the Moody Bible institute.  We drove in two cars because one of my buddies had to bring his little brother and sister along.  Afterwards we all agreed to meet back home in the suburbs. When we got there we noticed that our buddy didn’t have his little brother and sister with him. We asked him if he had dropped them at home.  His jaw dropped.  He suddenly realized that he had forgotten them.  He had gone to get his car but he hadn’t come back to pick them up.  He’d left his little brother and sister standing there on the street corner, in the City of Chicago, alone, at night.  Can you imagine how abandoned they must have felt? 

I wonder if that’s not a little of what the disciple’s felt as they watched Jesus ascend into heaven.  They had just gotten Him back from the dead.   He gave them this huge mission to go into all the world.  Then He left!  As they stood there watching him disappear into the clouds they must have felt some sense of abandonment.  I imagine we have all experienced it.  It’s the feeling of panic experienced by the little child in the store who looks up and can’t find his parents.  It’s the feeling of loneliness experienced by the grandmother whose kids and grandkids don’t come to visit. She told me, “It’s like I have been put on a shelf and been forgotten.”  Abandonment is part of the grief that follows the death of a husband or wife.  Spouses and children often feel abandoned at the time of divorce.  The man who had rheumatoid arthritus, who asked me if this was God punishing him  – he felt abandoned.  Or there is the young teenage boy who came to me one night because he wanted to commit suicide.  His father had abused him.  While living with grandparents his girl friend became pregnant.  After the child was born, her parents refused to let him see her or the child.  When he moved back home, his mother kicked him out.  He felt abandoned.  It can be a lonely feeling to face a tough decision, to have to be the one to tell your boss something he doesn’t want to hear… We all know the feeling somehow.   

The question asked me by the shut in reveals the true nature of abandonment.  “What did I do to deserve this?”  That’s the real fear – that you are being punished. As one person put it, “When you are doing something wrong and trying to hide it, you feel cutoff from everyone. You seek to hide the truth from people, especially from people you love.  You put on a mask, You pretend that everything is fine. All the while inside you feel terrible.  The guilt eats away at you.  You feel like no one really knows you.  You can’t talk to anyone. You can’t trust anyone.  You feel all alone.  You’re not even sure God wants you.   

Thank God for the two great festivals coming up on the calendar – Ascension and Pentecost.  They both hold out to us this promise of Jesus.   “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”  It’s the same promise Jesus makes just before ascending into heaven. “I will be with you always.” We heard that promise in Acts 1 – “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you…”   Indeed that is one reason why He ascends into heaven.  He leaves so that He might give to you and me the gift of His Holy Spirit.  “I will ask the Father,” Jesus promises, “and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”

The word that is here translated “Counselor” is the word “paraclete.”  That word means “One who walks along side.”  What a perfect description of the work of the Holy Spirit.  As we walk through the joys and sorrows, the good and bad times of life God gives us His Holy Spirit to walk along side of us.The Lord sends Him to us in the waters of Holy Baptism.  He speaks to us in every sermon and Bible Class.  He meets us at His table where with bread and wine He gives us the very body and blood of Jesus. The Holy Spirit comes to live and work within us through these means of grace.  Through these means He makes us a part of a loving community – the church.  Through the church He makes sure we are never alone, never abandoned.  I cannot begin to tell you how important that community of believers has been to Linda and me since we moved to Europe so far from home.  The Holy Spirit has “walked along side of us” through the members of Trinity. Let me give you one example.  One of the most daunting tasks facing us when we arrived in Germany was all the paper work we needed to fill out and the steps we needed to take to get legal residence here. Thank God for our church secretary Marion.  She guided us through all of that.  She helped us register our dog, file the applications for residency and get our German Driver’s License.  She literally “walked along side of us” as we filled out each form, went to each new government office.  She helped us navigate what is not an easy process.  Marion is a living example to me of how God “walks along side” of us through our fellow believers – a reminder of His promise, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” Amen!