lead your hearts

But we always must thank God for you, brothers and sisters who are loved by God. This is because he chose you from the beginning to be the first crop of the harvest. This brought salvation, through your dedication to God by the Spirit and through your belief in the truth. God called all of you through our good news so you could possess the honor of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold on to the traditions we taught you, whether we taught you in person or through our letter. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and a good hope. May he encourage your hearts and give you strength in every good thing you do or say. Finally, brothers and sisters, pray for us so that the Lord’s message will spread quickly and be honored, just like it happened with you. Pray too that we will be rescued from inappropriate and evil people since everyone that we meet won’t respond with faith. But the Lord is faithful and will give you strength and protect you from the evil one. We are confident about you in the Lord—that you are doing and will keep doing what we tell you to do. May the Lord lead your hearts to express God’s love and Christ’s endurance. (2 Thessalonians 2:13-3:5, CEB)

Stand firm to what was taught. Whose teaching are we standing firm in?

Somethings I know I was taught was not the truth but was a twisting of the truth for a power struggle. So how do we know what to stand firm in?

When the Lord leads your heart to express God’s love and Christ’s endurance that is what you stand firm in.

Christ’s endurance to live among the people who thought it was about rules and following the guidelines, rather than loving. To live and endure the endless self-gratification of people.

God’s love is love for all people. Share that with the world and hold on to Christ in the moments where the world says your love is wrong.

Loving People. Loving God.

sent

So when we couldn’t stand it any longer, we thought it was a good idea to stay on in Athens by ourselves, and we sent you Timothy, who is our brother and God’s coworker in the good news about Christ. We sent him to strengthen and encourage you in your faithfulness. We didn’t want any of you to be shaken by these problems. You know very well that we were meant to go through this. In fact, when we were with you, we kept on predicting that we were going to face problems exactly like what happened, as you know. That’s why I sent Timothy to find out about your faithfulness when I couldn’t stand it anymore. I was worried that the tempter might have tempted you so that our work would have been a waste of time. (1 Thessalonians 3:1-5, CEB)

Sometimes we can’t be where we want to be. Circumstances in life cause issues that do not need to be put on others and keep us from being with those that we care about.

In this moment, Paul sends Timothy to be his eyes and ears to find out about those he loves. Paul can’t be there so he sends a trusted friend.

We are all sent by God to be a trusted friend to those around us.

Show love, and be concerned for the needs of those around you.

Grace and mercy should flow from your life.

Report to God about what you see and share God’s love always.

Loving People. Loving God.

Hope

Therefore, since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand through him, and we boast in the hope of God’s glory. But not only that! We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. While we were still weak, at the right moment, Christ died for ungodly people. It isn’t often that someone will die for a righteous person, though maybe someone might dare to die for a good person. But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us. (Romans 5:1-8, CEB)

Hope is what gets us through.

Hope in the faithfulness of Jesus.

Who showed us how to love, even those who put him to death.

And through that life we are brought into relationship with God.

Hope. Trust it. Believe it.

Hope if life.

Loving People. Loving God.

Lip Service

The Pharisees and some legal experts from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus. They saw some of his disciples eating food with unclean hands. (They were eating without first ritually purifying their hands through washing. The Pharisees and all the Jews don’t eat without first washing their hands carefully. This is a way of observing the rules handed down by the elders. Upon returning from the marketplace, they don’t eat without first immersing themselves. They observe many other rules that have been handed down, such as the washing of cups, jugs, pans, and sleeping mats.) So the Pharisees and legal experts asked Jesus, “Why are your disciples not living according to the rules handed down by the elders but instead eat food with ritually unclean hands?” He replied, “Isaiah really knew what he was talking about when he prophesied about you hypocrites. He wrote, This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far away from me. Their worship of me is empty since they teach instructions that are human words. You ignore God’s commandment while holding on to rules created by humans and handed down to you.” Jesus continued, “Clearly, you are experts at rejecting God’s commandment in order to establish these rules. Moses said, Honor your father and your mother, and The person who speaks against father or mother will certainly be put to death. But you say, ‘If you tell your father or mother, “Everything I’m expected to contribute to you is corban(that is, a gift I’m giving to God),” then you are no longer required to care for your father or mother.’ In this way you do away with God’s word in favor of the rules handed down to you, which you pass on to others. And you do a lot of other things just like that.” (Mark 7:1-13, CEB)

Do you give God lip service?

Meaning are you following rules of religion in order to make it look like you are a follower of Christ?

Rules are not meant to make us pure. God already did that. We can not follow rules to get into the good graces of God. We are in God’s good graces and we show that to the world by loving those around us.

Love makes the world go round, not a list of requirements to do things right.

Loving People. Loving God.

whose way

“This is the same Moses whom they rejected when they asked, ‘Who appointed you as our leader and judge?’ This is the Moses whom God sent as leader and deliverer. God did this with the help of the angel who appeared before him in the bush. This man led them out after he performed wonders and signs in Egypt at the Red Sea and for forty years in the wilderness. This is the Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your own people.’ This is the one who was in the assembly in the wilderness with our ancestors and with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai. He is the one who received life-giving words to give to us. He’s also the one whom our ancestors refused to obey. Instead, they pushed him aside and, in their thoughts and desires, returned to Egypt. They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods that will lead us. As for this Moses who led us out of Egypt, we don’t know what’s happened to him!’ That’s when they made an idol in the shape of a calf, offered a sacrifice to it, and began to celebrate what they had made with their own hands. So God turned away from them and handed them over to worship the stars in the sky, just as it is written in the scroll of the Prophets: Did you bring sacrifices and offerings to me for forty years in the wilderness, house of Israel? No! Instead, you took the tent of Moloch with you, and the star of your god Rephan, the images that you made in order to worship them. Therefore, I will send you far away, farther than Babylon. (Acts 7:35-43, CEB)

When you do something what is your motivation?

Do you do good so the people you help will help you in return?

Do you follow Christ because you know you will be rewarded for that?

Do you look to God because you know there will be love in return?

When we go after our own desires and want God to interact with us in the way we imagine, we are not seeking God but an idol for who we want God to be.

God will do things in God’s own way. And we should not do things to please God, as God is already pleased with us.

Do good to show love, grace, and mercy, not for anything in return, but for the sake of loving.

Loving People. Loving God.

Hope gives us

Therefore, brothers and sisters who are partners in the heavenly calling, think about Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession. Jesus was faithful to the one who appointed him just like Moses was faithful in God’s house. But he deserves greater glory than Moses in the same way that the builder of the house deserves more honor than the house itself. Every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant in order to affirm the things that would be spoken later. But Jesus was faithful over God’s house as a Son. We are his house if we hold on to the confidence and the pride that our hope gives us. (Hebrews 3:1-6, CEB)

We are his house if we hold on to the confidence and the pride that our hope gives us.

We are Jesus’ house if. If sounds like something I have to do and as a Lutheran I have an issue with that. I am saved by grace through Christ’s faithfulness and it is not my doing.

But yet we need to finish that sentence. If we hold on to the confidence and the pride that our hope gives us.

Our hope gives us. It is not my doing, but my understanding and acceptance of the promise. The hope that Jesus will do what Jesus said he would do.

Hope.

Faith, Hope, and Love make the world go round…

Loving People. Loving God.

Mercy

At that time Jesus went through the wheat fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry so they were picking heads of wheat and eating them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are breaking the Sabbath law.” But he said to them, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and those with him were hungry? He went into God’s house and broke the law by eating the bread of the presence, which only the priests were allowed to eat. Or haven’t you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple treat the Sabbath as any other day and are still innocent? But I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what this means, I want mercy and not sacrifice, you wouldn’t have condemned the innocent. The Human One is Lord of the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12:1-8, CEB)

I want mercy and not sacrifice,

Mercy is more important than the law or sacrifices.

Helping the hungry not be hungry is more important than following a rule.

When in doubt show mercy.

Loving People. Loving God.

Do good and share

Keep loving each other like family. Don’t neglect to open up your homes to guests, because by doing this some have been hosts to angels without knowing it. Remember prisoners as if you were in prison with them, and people who are mistreated as if you were in their place. Marriage must be honored in every respect, with no cheating on the relationship, because God will judge the sexually immoral person and the person who commits adultery. Your way of life should be free from the love of money, and you should be content with what you have. After all, he has said, I will never leave you or abandon you. This is why we can confidently say, The Lord is my helper, and I won’t be afraid. What can people do to me? Remember your leaders who spoke God’s word to you. Imitate their faith as you consider the way their lives turned out. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever! Don’t be misled by the many strange teachings out there. It’s a good thing for the heart to be strengthened by grace rather than by food. Food doesn’t help those who live in this context. We have an altar, and those who serve as priests in the meeting tent don’t have the right to eat from it. The blood of the animals is carried into the holy of holies by the high priest as an offering for sin, and their bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy with his own blood. So now, let’s go to him outside the camp, bearing his shame. We don’t have a permanent city here, but rather we are looking for the city that is still to come. So let’s continually offer up a sacrifice of praise through him, which is the fruit from our lips that confess his name. Don’t forget to do good and to share what you have because God is pleased with these kinds of sacrifices. (Hebrews 13:1-16, CEB)

What can the world do to us, when we have God as our helper?

Honestly, we have the best helper ever in the creator of the cosmos. Nothing can happen to us.

And what should this lead us to do?

To be good to all people, and invite them in and give them what they need, for we can not take anything with us when we leave this place and go to be with God for all time.

We need to share what we have been blessed with because God gave it to us to use to share God’s love.

So love as you go and do good to all.

Loving People. Loving God.

Fear of God…

Don’t be tied up as equal partners with people who don’t believe. What does righteousness share with that which is outside the Law? What relationship does light have with darkness? What harmony does Christ have with Satan? What does a believer have in common with someone who doesn’t believe? What agreement can there be between God’s temple and idols? Because we are the temple of the living God. Just as God said, I live with them, and I will move among them. I will be their God, and they will be my people. Therefore, come out from among them and be separated, says the Lord. Don’t touch what is unclean. Then I will welcome you. I will be a father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. My dear friends, since we have these promises, let’s cleanse ourselves from anything that contaminates our body or spirit so that we make our holiness complete in the fear of God. Make room in your hearts for us. We didn’t do anything wrong to anyone. We didn’t ruin anyone. We didn’t take advantage of anyone. (2 Corinthians 6:14-7:2, CEB)

I have to say as I started reading this passage I was struck and wondered the book it came from. And then I saw it was authentic Paul.

Righteousness covers that outside the Law and yet we are not subject to the Law. Light shows ud darkness and darkness helps us see the light. Harmony is an interesting choice for Jesus and Satan, and a believer can actually have a lot in common with someone who doesn’t believe. And what exactly are we believing?

We are called to be salt for the earth and a light on a hill. We need to be involved with the lives of those around us to share the light and love of God in everything we do. Now I also see that could mean we are not equal partners with someone who if not a follower of the way of Christ, and yet there are equal partners in many congregations where one or both doesn’t follow the way of Christ.

I was also struck by the fifth to last sentence, “we make our holiness complete in the fear of God.” We make our holiness complete in the fear of God. Is God somethign we shoudl fear? Is the chance we would be sent away from God the reason to make God happy? Are we supposed to only love others because we are afraid of what God will do to us?

God is inhabitating with us and that allows us to be in the world and not of it. Share God’s love as you go and help all see that they are loved.

Loving People. Loving God.

Faith

The promise to Abraham and to his descendants, that he would inherit the world, didn’t come through the Law but through the righteousness that comes from faith. If they inherit because of the Law, then faith has no effect and the promise has been canceled. The Law brings about wrath. But when there isn’t any law, there isn’t any violation of the law. That’s why the inheritance comes through faith, so that it will be on the basis of God’s grace. In that way, the promise is secure for all of Abraham’s descendants, not just for those who are related by Law but also for those who are related by the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all of us. As it is written: I have appointed you to be the father of many nations. So Abraham is our father in the eyes of God in whom he had faith, the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that don’t exist into existence. When it was beyond hope, he had faith in the hope that he would become the father of many nations, in keeping with the promise God spoke to him: That’s how many descendants you will have. Without losing faith, Abraham, who was nearly 100 years old, took into account his own body, which was as good as dead, and Sarah’s womb, which was dead. He didn’t hesitate with a lack of faith in God’s promise, but he grew strong in faith and gave glory to God. He was fully convinced that God was able to do what he promised. Therefore, it was credited to him as righteousness. But the scripture that says it was credited to him wasn’t written only for Abraham’s sake. It was written also for our sake, because it is going to be credited to us too. It will be credited to those of us who have faith in the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was handed over because of our mistakes, and he was raised to meet the requirements of righteousness for us. (Romans 4:13-25, CEB)

The promise to Abraham didn’t come through the law.

Abraham was not counted righteous because of his adherence to the rules that some say we have to follow. Abraham was counted righteous because of his faith. His trust. His belief in God.

The law doesn’t make us right, it only helps to show how bad we actually are. And if we understand the commandments Jesus gave us, following the rules should be easy. Love God, Love neighbor. But even that we get wrong.

Thankfully we are made right because God chose to. We can trust that promise and know we are in the kindom.

Loving People. Loving God.