PBPWMGINFWMY

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:1-11, NRSV)

God who started a good work in you will bring it to completion! God will not leave you unfinished!

When I was on internship we went to confirmation camp, as most congregations do, however my supervisor wrote the curriculum they had been using for many years. The first day all of us got name tags that said:

PBPWMGINFWMY

Now I knew what it stood for since I was helping teach the lessons, but the youth had no idea…

We went through the day talking about how God had created us to be workers in the mission field and that we are each our own creation of God with gifts to help the world see who He is.

It was a lesson much like Paul is telling the Philippians in verse 6 above. It is a lesson all of us can learn and live into and through…

You see the one who has begun a good work in you will see it through to completion and we keep working in you until that day you are fully in the kingdom of God.

You see God is not yet done with any of us and is at work right now in us, so all of us can live out and into the name:

Please Be Patient With Me God Is Not Finished With Me Yet!

So lets be patient with each other, because God is not finished working on us just yet…

God of the living

The same day some Sadducees came to him, saying there is no resurrection; and they asked him a question, saying, ‘Teacher, Moses said, “If a man dies childless, his brother shall marry the widow, and raise up children for his brother.” Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married, and died childless, leaving the widow to his brother. The second did the same, so also the third, down to the seventh. Last of all, the woman herself died. In the resurrection, then, whose wife of the seven will she be? For all of them had married her.’ Jesus answered them, ‘You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is God not of the dead, but of the living.’ And when the crowd heard it, they were astounded at his teaching. (Matthew 22:23-33, NRSV)

God is not a god of the dead, but is God of the living.

You see we confess each week in worship we believe in the resurrection of the dead. You see the truth of our human existence is that we will die. There is nothing we can do to get out of our human death. Our bodies are not able to live for ever, yet we believe we are united with Christ in a death like His, and we will be united with Him in a resurrection like His! We will be with God resurrected and fully with Him!

Now the kingdom of God in its fullness is not something we can know now and is a mystery. We walk as yet by faith, believing in the promises we hold to. Jesus died once and for all so that we all can be with God. We will be resurrected with Him.

For God is not a god of the dead, but God of the living and that living God is living in you and will bring you to the fullness He created you for in eternity with Him!

by grace through faith…

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. (Ephesians 2:1-10, NRSV)

This is the key verse for Lutherans, for you are saved by grace through faith! It is not our doing, and we can not earn it. We can not do anything to buy, bribe, acquire our place in the kingdom, it is a gift of God. And we can not boast that we did it ourselves, it was a gift of God.

You see though that is were we stop reading. That is Ephesians 2:8-9. We end there and I have had several conversations with many of my friends who are not Lutheran about that. And yes it is true, we Lutherans are good at the saved by grace through faith, not by works, so that means I don’t have to do works…

No that is not what it means, you see because 2:10 says “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” We were created for good works, good works that God prepared for us to do before we were here and that would be our way of life!

We are saved by grace through faith, yes it is a gift and there is nothing we can do to earn it, however that gift motivates us to do the good works God created us to do! We can not sit on our hands, because God loves us. The fact that God loves even a wretch like me should motivate me to show the world how much God loves them!

asleep at the sermon…

On the first day of the week, when we met to break bread, Paul was holding a discussion with them; since he intended to leave the next day, he continued speaking until midnight. There were many lamps in the room upstairs where we were meeting. A young man named Eutychus, who was sitting in the window, began to sink off into a deep sleep while Paul talked still longer. Overcome by sleep, he fell to the ground three floors below and was picked up dead. But Paul went down, and bending over him took him in his arms, and said, ‘Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him.’ Then Paul went upstairs, and after he had broken bread and eaten, he continued to converse with them until dawn; then he left. Meanwhile they had taken the boy away alive and were not a little comforted. (Acts 20:7-12, NRSV)

I have always thought that Paul would be a captivating preacher, a wonderful speaker that would hold an audience on the edge of their seats waiting for more. When I am asked the question of name one person that you would like to have time with to converse with, Paul is always in the top 5.

But here we have a story of Paul sharing so much because of his time table that one of those present falls asleep on him. Now truly I can see how this happens. How many of us have fallen asleep in the middle of a fast paced action movie or TV show?

Our lives are so caught up in the fast paced action of life, we fall asleep at the drop of a hat, but Paul’s day was not that way. There was no CSI, or SciFi movies. They gathered to hear stories, and share the things they had heard. They had to use their imaginations to see the moving pictures…

And yet still too much of a good thing can put you right to sleep…

So don’t think you are the first to fall asleep during the preaching. But try not to let our fast paced life make the preaching or discussing of the greatest story ever told to put you to sleep!

Dwell

To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. (Romans 8:6-11, NRSV)

The Spirit lives in you! You are the temple of God and He is always with you!

You see when you were names and claimed by God and He called you beloved child, He took up residence in the hole in your heart where only He can fit.

When we live in the flesh we are not showing forth the Spirit living us, but when we live in the Spirit and think of others first then we are living out the God given life we were created to live into!

Allow the Spirit dwelling in you to be the you you show forth!