Pious Lutheran

Pentecost, Gebhard Fugel, turn of the 20th Century The Work of the Holy Spirit The decline of church attendance is not a crisis The Holy Spirit makes and preserves Christians We do not need to panic, but we trust in the Spirit It’s a fairly common marketing strategy to create a crisis, or a sense of urgency in the hearer, to get them to buy something without much thought. For example, Casey’s is advertising for the summer BBQ pulled pork pizza, with the note: “Savor for a limited time.” They’re not trying to convince you why it would be good to buy this pizza, they’re just instilling a sense of urgency, and that if you don’t buy it now you won’t be able to buy it later, thus creating in you a fear of missing out. This often results in you buying the pizza before you bothered to really think about whether you even wanted pulled pork on your pizza. Now, that’s marketing, but there are times in life where there is a crisis and you need to have a sense of urgency, where you don’t have time...

Christian Martyrs in Colosseum , Konstantin Flavitsky, 1862 Remembering the promises to keep us from falling away The difficulty of faithfulness over time The Spirit who helps us by reminding us of the promises Training for hardship Rejoicing in persecution It’s easy to be a mother for just a few seconds. It’s easy enough to change a few diapers or cook a couple meals for one day. It’s easy enough to be a babysitter and only be responsible for a child for a couple of hours while the kids sleep or watch tv. But the glory of motherhood is that moms take care of their children all day, every day, for years. They don’t quit when the kids are sick and so are they; they don’t quit feeding their kids when they’re tired of cooking; they don’t quit teaching their kids even when the kids seem to never get the message; they don’t quit loving their children even when the kids throw a massive temper tantrum in the most public places. Mother’s don’t quit when it’s hard, and that is why we honor them...

The Alpha and Omega,  Mosaic, Church of St Alphonsus Liguori, Rome, 1908 King Jesus Sits and Reigns Over All Jesus sits upon His throne All His enemies are beneath His feet Jesus is Head over His church If I were to sum up the feast of Ascension in two words, I might say: God Sits. Afterall, we heard that “ The Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down. ” Or in the Introit from Psalm 47 it says “ God sits. ” Or in an additional Psalm appointed for today, Psalm 110, God the Father told God the Son to “ Sit. ” Upon first hearing, that sounds pretty lame. Why would we have a feast to celebrate that God sits down? Wouldn’t we want the opposite?  Considering the state of things today, we’d rather have Jesus stand up and do something! We’d like to see some of those accompanying signs: casting out demons, speaking in tongues, handling serpents, drinking deadly poison and being unharmed, healing the sick. But instead we complain that God is silent,...

The Mealtime Prayer , Fritz von Uhde, 1885 Living the Christian Life with Intentionality Moving from the abstract to the concrete How to be both a hearer and a doer How overcoming the world leads us into action Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! What does it mean to be a Christian? This is a valid question which Christians must be able to answer. Last Sunday I talked a bit about evangelism and why and how we Christians do that. But this question today is one that the hearer needs to have answered. Because if being a christian isn’t any different than not being a Christian, then why would they want to be one? What’s more, before someone becomes a Christian, they need to know what they’re getting themselves into. Before people join a club they need to know the cost and what they’ll have to do. The church is much more than a club, since this is the body of Christ, therefore they must know the cost of discipleship. When great crowds were following Jesus, He turned and...