Home

Weekly Devotional

September 28, 2009

God’s Peace be with you all.

 Hebrews 11:1-6  Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  ² Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval.  ³ By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.  ⁴ By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain's. Through this he received approval as righteous, God himself giving approval to his gifts; he died, but through his faith he still speaks.  ⁵ By faith Enoch was taken so that he did not experience death; and "he was not found, because God had taken him." For it was attested before he was taken away that "he had pleased God."  ⁶ And without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

One of the comments I heard at several of the Cottage Meetings was “people always ask if Lutheran’s are Christians.”  Well, we all know the answer to that, but not everyone out there does.  When asked that question, or one similar, I think it would be easy to simply answer: “yes, we are Christian.”  But at the same time, we need to qualify and clarify that answer..  Being a Lutheran means that we are justified by God’s grace through our faith.  In other words, we are saved by the love of God, and not by the good works that we do.  The good works are instead an expression of our love for God and our chance to show it.

What then, does it mean that we are justified by grace through faith?  What exactly is our faith?  Hebrews 11 gives us the perfect definition of faith, as you can read above.  But faith can also mean trust and commitment.  In his book Evangelism for “normal” People, John Bowen related faith in this way.  Faith that is based in trust and commitment is the type of faith that Jesus often talks about and relates to.  Bowen says that faith is not a “fancy word for superstition”, but instead is at the core of our lives.  This is the type of faith that we are talking about when we say that we are justified by grace through faith.  It is a core conviction that we all share and one that cannot be taken away without changing our faith.. 

For the next few weeks, I plan to do my weekly devotions using parts of Bowen’s book.  As we move forward through the remainder of this year, I hope that bits and pieces of it can be useful to all of you.  We are at a place where evangelism has to happen (I think it already does, just in different ways than what we actually call “evangelism”) for us to be in a safer place.  However, being in a safer place means stepping outside the box into unsafe territory.  There is not a more perfect time to ask God through prayer to be with us than at this moment. 

In our prayers this week: 

Ann, Doris, Mary Netta, Kim, Lisa, Robert, Evelyn, Michael, and St. John’s Lutheran Church.  Also, for October, we as a congregation and conference will be praying for Reformation Lutheran in Lancaster. 

God’s Peace,

Pastor Judson