Tag Archives: Growing in Faith

Learning about God’s Love

Advent

November 23, 2022

Scripture Reading: Psalm 122

I was glad when they said to me,
   ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’
Our feet are standing
   within your gates, O Jerusalem.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
   ‘May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls,
   and security within your towers.’
For the sake of my relatives and friends
   I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
   I will seek your good. –Psalm 22:1-2, 6-9

I loved singing the first verse of this Psalm as a child. At vacation Bible school, when the teacher called for us, we would run from the playground, line up in a straight row, and march into the building singing I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’ repeatedly until we all were in the building. We then said the pledge of allegiance to the US flag, the Christian flag, and the Bible. We learned Bible stories from a felt board and memorized a new scripture each day. I still must carefully read some scriptures in worship because my memory from the King James version and the NRSV Bible now used in my church do battle in my head while I read. The twenty-third Psalm is the hardest. That one-room building had been the school my father attended during the week and a church on Sunday. It was no longer used as a school shortly after the depression. I was five years old when it closed as a church. It is a hay barn now, but it served its purpose well and has never lost its usefulness.

Fast forward seventy years, I volunteered in the nursery during church last Sunday. Two sweet toddlers played with toy animals on the floor. Later an infant arrived and was placed in a walker festooned with stuffed toys attached on all sides. The older children attend the first part of worship through the Children’s sermon where they hear a story and have a prayer with the congregation and then join the little ones to share in reading a book, having a snack, and doing arts and crafts. They were seamlessly led to help one another share their snacks and art supplies and clean up spilled water while learning to love their neighbor as they loved themselves. I was the visitor. These children knew what to do and where things were stored and felt just as safe and welcomed as I did seventy years ago. Culture changes but God’s love never wavers.

Prayer: Lord, help us maintain a beloved community, not just inside the walls of our churches but throughout the world where all children can thrive as they become the persons you created them to be. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Growing in Relationship with God

Lent

March 25, 2021

Scripture Reading: Hebrews 10:4-10

For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,
‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
   but a body you have prepared for me;
in burnt-offerings and sin-offerings
   you have taken no pleasure.
Then I said, “See, God, I have come to do your will, O God” –Hebrews 10:4-7

Jesus did know his Hebrew Bible. This scripture includes a quote from Psalm 40:6-8, which I used in my devotion yesterday. I recently began working with an advocacy group that has been active for a few years. It is like starting a new job with an entity that has been operational for a long time. We learn and grow from shared experiences, both good and bad. Jesus came to refocus God’s people and got his life-changing point across by his death on the Cross.

Burnt offerings were attempts to worship God with items of value as God’s people tried to build their understanding of God and how to relate to God. As their faith developed, these practices lost their meaningfulness, becoming a routine ritual that no longer fulfilled its purpose of aligning God’s people with God’s will. Hebrew prophets were paving the way for this transition. For example, Jeremiah 31:33 says, But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And Joel 2:13, advises a change of practice to
   rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God,
   for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
   and relents from punishing.

Jesus, too, prepared his disciples for future relations with God, when he said in John 20:19-22, When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.

Prayer: Holy One, breathe on us your Spirit of love as we face our society’s challenges. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Progress

Lent

March 15, 2021

Scripture Reading:
Jeremiah 31:31-34
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Our relationship with God is ongoing, building toward God’s vision of a world ruled by love. God created us to engage actively in improving and growing in wisdom and truth. I was present at the initiations of computers in the workforce. At the agency where I worked, we first started creating digital records by having all our county offices send the hardcopy of everything we did to the state office. Centralized staff inputted the data into a huge computer. Soon we had computers in every county. Eventually, every worker had a computer on their desks and directly entered information. Now clientele can initiate applications directly from a website. Our covenants with God also echoed the progress in our world.

Jeremiah describes a new covenant that requires people to take more responsibility for their actions and results. Our relationship with God remained solid and necessary, but God graced us with the gift of not just following external rules but seeking righteousness in everything we do by planting God’s laws in our hearts. Empowering all God’s people to seek righteousness enables all people to be one with God more quickly.

Just as the Israelites were not always successful in obeying God’s laws, we, today, at times substitute self-righteousness for God’s righteousness, our view of justice for God’s justice. Being responsible for spreading the love of God to all people requires each of us to maintain close connections with God in prayer and meditation, in study, and in interacting with others to see and hear them more clearly. God is described as seeing what is in our hearts. We need to work at understanding others from their perspective as we strive toward oneness.

Prayer: God, expand our empathy so that we can learn how to love your love with all your creation. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Stages of Faith

Epiphany

February 13, 2020

Scripture Reading:
1 Corinthians 3:1-9

And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, ‘I belong to Paul’, and another, ‘I belong to Apollos’, are you not merely human? –1 Corinthians 3:1-4

Infants move from a diet of milk alone to easy-to-digest foods, and finally to whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and sources of protein necessary to develop strong, healthy bodies. Milk does contain important nutrients, but humans literally cannot thrive on milk alone. Just as Jesus said to the devil tempting him in the wilderness, humans cannot live on bread alone*.

James W. Fowler in his book, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning identifies six stages of faith development that describe the positive results of moving through all six phases and the challenges that occur when we get stuck in any one of the stages without growing through the others.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul seems to be identifying people being stuck in one or more of these phases. Perhaps the Corinthians were not understanding well that some people are at different stages than others Just like toddlers learn to walk at different ages, faith develops at different speeds. Rather than battling on who is right and who is wrong or who God loves more than another, we might do well to share our deepest faith experiences so that we can all learn from one another as we grow in truth and faith. We also may need to do some self-examination to see if we have become stuck in our spiritual growth.

Prayer: Lord, make us more aware of where others may be on their spiritual journey as you help us to recognize our own development. Grant us skills in communicating through love at whatever stage we may be. Amen.

*See Matthew 4:4

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Growing in Faith

Kingdom Building

July 27, 2019

Scripture Reading: Luke 11:1-13

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ He said to them, ‘When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
   Your kingdom come.
   Give us each day our daily bread.
   And forgive us our sins,
     for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
   And do not bring us to the time of trial.’ –Luke 11:1-4

The last line of Luke’s version of the prayer Jesus taught us to pray, we now call the Lord’s Prayer, quoted above from the NRSV (as does Matthew’s version in the NRSV), is not the line we are accustomed to saying. The traditional prayer that flows from our mouths so comfortably is from the King James version, And lead us not into temptation.I pray this language nearly every Sunday because that was what I was taught from childhood and my faith tradition continues to use it. I may have even questioned as a child whether God would ever lead me into temptation. I was that kind of child. I still wonder that today. I guess Pope Francis has had the same question and made the audacious decision a couple of months ago to order a change.

In the revision of the New American Bible, the changed text of the Lord’s Prayer will read, “and do not subject us to the final test” (Matthew 6:13, Luke 11:4)*.

The Protestant rendition of the Lord’s Prayer ends with a doxology not included in either Matthew or Luke. We all juggle with the choices of sin, trespasses, and debts. I see no problem with saying comforting words from our childhood when we say the Lord’s Prayer or the twenty-third Psalm for that matter as we memorized them in our youth. Being led into temptation is a constant evil we must confront; being protected from temptation is not a bad thing to ask from God. My guess is that is what most of us thought we were praying when we learned these words.

I do think it is important that we understand that we at times create meanings of scripture that are not in the words themselves and thus we must strive to dig deeply into what are the messages of the Bible based on their original context, our faith history, and  the changing meanings and parsing of words over the centuries.  Think how much our knowledge-base was expanded with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Our faith is a growing and maturing life and our study cannot keep up with that if we allow it to stagnate.

Prayer: Lord, help us Do [our] best to present [ourselves] to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15 NRSV) Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15  KJV) Amen.

*https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/pope-changes-text-of-gloria-lords-prayer

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

God Makes Us Whole

Living in the Spirit
November 24, 2017

Scripture Reading: Ephesians 1:15-23

God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
–Ephesians 1:20-23

Each of God’s children is fearfully and wonderfully made. God acknowledged the goodness of each at the point of creation. Several years ago while on a tour of Scandinavia with my church choir we were invited to a mid-summer celebration in a small Swedish village. Part of the activities included various folk dances in which all were invited to participate. I was impressed by the inclusion of people with special needs whether in a wheelchair or needing guidance because they could not see. I do not recall anything like that happening at such gatherings in the USA. I was pleased to hear on the news recently the opening of a new playground made for all children.

I also read this week a very sad statement regarding women only being made whole through their relationship with a man. Men and women both are made whole through Jesus Christ. Our scripture today speaks to this source of our wholeness. Jesus calls each of us to Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48) Ours is a journey toward being like Christ who gave his very life for our redemption and promised the presence of the Holy Spirit to guide us.

God also created us male and female in God’s own image. Joining two people on this same journey in marriage can enhance growth if both work together with God on their spiritual journey, but only God can fill any voids in our wholeness. We cannot expect salvation from another human being.

Prayer: Lord, thank you for creating each person as unique as the snowflakes. Help us learn to love others just as they are and as you are shaping them to be. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Beliefs and Faith

Living in the Spirit
August 18, 2017

Scripture Reading: Romans 11:1-2a, 29-39

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
‘For who has known the mind of the Lord?
   Or who has been his counselor?’
‘Or who has given a gift to him,
   to receive a gift in return?’
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen. –Romans 11:33-36

Paul celebrates God’s unmeasurable wisdom and knowledge as he ponders the fate of his fellow Jews. Is it too much for us to grasp that we may not fully understand the magnitude of God or God’s love? Do we think our way of being God’s children is the only way? People quote to me John 14:6, Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. I say I do agree with that but quote back to them John 10:16, I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. Probably a fruitless exchange, we are neither likely to stray from our positions.  Paul would tell us, For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:12) This, of course, is from his famous chapter on love. Study and discernment is good unless it hinders our loving God and loving one another.

The older I get, the less important what I believe becomes. I do not know if that is true of others. Maintaining and building a firm relationship with God through Jesus Christ and following the command to love God and love as Jesus loves becomes paramount in my life. Perhaps when I attain perfection in those two actions, beliefs will be clear or unnecessary. Discerning how to live love is a challenge that requires exchanging ideas on faith with others guided by the written word as well as the Word that became flesh. In so doing our structure of faith forms and reforms as we learn and grow. The framework of the structure includes what we believe at the moment. The world was believed to be flat until it was proven round.

I am blessed to learn from people of many faiths, people who question faith, and people with no faith at all. Since I am called to love them all anyway, it is an added value that my understanding of God blossoms in the process of discernment.

Prayer: God, open our hearts and minds to your teachings from whatever source you deem appropriate. Protect us from false prophets. Let your truth speak clearly to us. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Unless Someone Guides Me

PhilipEastertide
April 27, 2015

Scripture Reading: Acts 8:26-40

Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. –Acts 8:26-31 

What does it mean to make disciples?  Merriam Webster describes a disciple as one who receives instruction from another:  one who accepts the doctrines of another and assists in spreading or implementing them.* Visions of altar calls and mass baptism may come to mind when thinking about making disciples. It even seemed at times that churches competed with each other to see who could get the most. While confessions of faith and baptism play an important role in the development of a follower of Christ, it is an ongoing and lifetime process for all of us. While we are responsible for making disciples we are continuing to grow as disciples ourselves.

Philips experience with the Ethiopian is a great example of this process. First, we have the story of his being led by God to go out into the world where he could encounter someone who was not a disciple but was open to learning a new way. Where do we meet new people? Where do we find people who hunger for something more to their lives but may not know exactly what it is? Where do we find people who were perhaps raised in the church but have drifted away?

Second, Philip had the courage to approach the traveler. This man was apparently a practicing Jew for he was returning home from worshiping in Jerusalem. Philip heard him reading from Isaiah, which provided Philip and entry into a conversation. The two shared a common background that made the contact more meaningful. Philips was then invited, given permission, to share his thoughts and understandings.

We can all learn from Philips’ example of making disciples. I wouldn’t be surprised, if we could talk to Philip today, he would tell us that he became a better disciple because of the same discussion.

Prayer: Lord, open our lives to exchanges with people that help them become or grow as your disciples as they help us grow as your disciples. Amen.

*http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/unabridged/Disciple

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.