Give me understanding that I may learn your commandments.
2 Corinthians 1:20
For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’ For this reason it is through him that we say the ‘Amen’, to the glory of God.
Words of Grace For Today
Understanding to learn God’s commandments is a child’s first step in following Jesus. Next the difficult part comes in following the commandments. The ten commandments are a beginning to what following Jesus’ commandments (to love God, self, others and even ones’ enemies) are all about.
Love is a life long challenge that is worth every bit of energy and time we put into it.
We are only able to follow through because God promises to love us, accept us, forgive us, and set us on a path to follow the Holy Spirit guiding us to do God’s will.
God’s promises are always Yes to life according to God’s will.
Trusting God we can put an amen ready on our lips for every occasion.
Your hands have made and fashioned me; give me understanding that I may learn your commandments.
1 John 3:23
This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.
Words of Grace For Today
Following Christ brings us to recognize we cannot do anything good on our own. Only by the Grace of God carried in us by the Holy Spirit can we do anything good at all.
Choosing to follow God’s commandments is something we can do. Actually fulfilling the commandments that we choose to follow is something else. Choosing to not follow God’s commandments is something we easily can both choose and accomplish on our own.
So when we hear, that we should learn God’s commandments, or obey Jesus’ commands, that may seem a simple thing. It is certainly not. It is impossible.
What does Jesus command us to do: To love the Lord our God before anything else and to love one another and ourselves as he loved us, and to love even our enemies.
Because God steps into our lives and replaces our track record of our past and future with Jesus’ track record, we can not only imagine fulfilling this commandment to love, we can live it in thought, word, and deed.
1 John 3 describes this love:
16We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 17How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?
Simple, just choose and do it, Right?
Not so simple, we get to choose and do that, and are aware we can, only when the Holy Spirit wakens us to see through our worldly goods to comprehend our brothers’ and sisters’ needs and our ability to meet them, even if it may hurt us a bit or a lot to help them.
That’s loving with the same love that Jesus loves us.
The words spoken to one’s beloved are precious. They words spoken and not lived are the most powerful destroyer of speaker and the person spoken to. Love is powerful, wield it carefully. Wield it and trust mostly that the Holy Spirit will guide you to love as God loves us all.
It isn’t ‘rocket surgery’* after all.
It’s life.
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..
…
…
*just in case ‘rocket surgery’ is not understood (since it is a construct):
the idioms are rocket science and brain surgery, both needing a great deal of knowledge, skill and even an artist’s creativity. Used as examples of work that is beyond most people.
Rocket surgery is a comic’s play of an idiot’s mix of the two, (though some say it was Don Cherry’s mix, go figure) which makes it even less attainable by the speaker, or as I have used, it is accessible for even the most confused.
Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.
Luke 1:49
The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
Words of Grace For Today
All through life we learn how to respond to challenges. We learn to tie shoes. Maybe not, since more and more shoes are just Velcro. We learn to make allowances for others while we play, then as we study (if we learn to study), then as we raise a family (if we have children), as we mature with a spouse (you get the idea: if we mature -:), as we work, and as we age, retire and kick the bucket (stubbing our toe as we most always do).
All this supposedly gives us common sense, which seems less and less common. All this supposedly gives us knowledge, which seems less and less based on reality for many. All this supposedly gives us opportunity to fill our lives with goods, which we throw away for newer, maybe better goods as if our own worth were dependent on our goods.
God, in many and various ways, keeps trying to communicate to us, hard headed and stiff-necked that we are, to show us all of this is inside-out, up-side-down, or of no consequence when it comes to being part of God’s good creation, and the goodness we are to be (in thought, word, and deed) for others and our own souls.
How great it is that God keeps communicating with us, generation after generation, day after day. Only God who is holy could bear us rascal sinners with such loving patience and grace.
It is not complicated. It is so simple that this way of being (sacrificially loving, forgiving and renewing others) can easily come from infants and young children.
We get to unlearn the world’s lessons, and practice the foolish truths that a child’s perspective on the Goodness of Creation can teach us.
Thanks be to God.
Covid 19 places huge challenges before us. The blessing in these challenges is that we have to re-orient our lives and have therein opportunity to practice again that foolishness of Christ, which brings life to all people.
Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord.
1 Corinthians 8:3
Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him.
Words of Grace For Today
What is it that we do, in order to try to hide in secret places from God?
We try to be little ‘godlets’, masters of our lives and of others. Sometimes it even looks like we succeed. The delusion required to make it look like we succeed is fascinatingly stupid.
God is with us always, not tagging along, but we are in God’s omnipresence wherever we go. God sees our foolish pretending to be masters of most anything. Ah, how painful that must be for God.
We all sin. Most often it seems people try to pretend that their sin is something else, or that someone else did their sin and that they did not do it, or that they really did not do that evil thing, but something else that only appears to look like sin. The cover up is worse than the sin.
We ALL sin. The only way forward to goodness is not to pretend at all. Certainly we cannot move forward to health if we pretend that we know enough to talk, manipulate or manoeuvre our way out of the sin we’ve done.
The only way forward towards an abundant life is to already trust that God will forgive us, freely, without cost to us. To trust that the price for our sins (every last one of them) is already paid for by Jesus’ death. To trust that the loss of God’s own life is recouped in the resurrection. With that trust (that only the Holy Spirit can give to us – but which we certainly can refuse) then we can face God, deserving condemnation and knowing that we will be forgiven. Not just that our past sin is wiped away. We also have our future life renewed, so that hope is real. So that our expectations can be for a good future for us, for our loved ones, for God’s people around us, and for the strangers among us on this planet earth – so that we can expect (and thereby help bring to be) good things to happen.
What joy!
It is no less than being told our lives are over … and then we hear that miraculously we are healthy and will live. Or it is to know that everything good we have worked for and been and become will be taken from us (not possessions, but our selves). We anticipate with horror living as mere shells, having the innermost things that make up who we are ripped out of us and shredded away to dust and water. Then we discover that, though our expectations were accurate, by some inexplicable change in history and current events, we are left intact, whole and looking forward to living a full life for years to come.
What Joy!
How different it is for people like the church council who have breached their own constitution and legal process to falsify a vote to hire a man who is not qualified to be a pastor. What kind of guts and prideful foolishness does that take? What kind of innermost self are those people made up of that they brashly contravene their own constitution, and work to deceive and lie and cover up what they are doing? To be them must be terrible!
For to be them is as terrible as it is to be any and every other kind of sinner who cannot find forgiveness in the ‘godlets’ they have perversely begun to worship.
Catching Covid 19, whether one barely has symptoms, one suffers symptoms and recovers (either with chronic issues afterwards or not), or whether one succumbs into death (and still have the promise of life eternal) is not as bad as losing one’s self, that spirit that God has breathed into us at our baptisms, which gives us life. That is a horror that never stops no matter what one stuffs into one’s life.
With profound gratitude, even as we are caught in the snare of the Evil One, we trust that we will find our way forward to goodness and health, but only through God’s unending Grace, forgiveness and the gift of renewed life.
‘Come,’ my heart says, ‘seek his face!’ Your face, Lord, do I seek.
Philippians 4:6
Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
Words of Grace For Today
There is simply no command in all the universe that will stop someone from worrying.
To stop worrying can be pretty futile, even for us to try to move ourselves away from worry to another attitude, or waiting, or dreading, or enduring to some kind of an attitude not associated with worry or concern or anxiety.
The only possibility for worry, anxiety, concern, or dread to end is if we have our attitude about life adjusted.
God’s face can surely adjust our attitude. One would think at first to greater and greater anxiety, unless or until one recognizes the promise provided to us in Jesus’ death and resurrection. God could justifiably smite us out of the universe as if we never existed with a word.
God doesn’t. God instead takes all the time, effort and heartache (even grief) of being born as one of us, living, teaching, and healing, all so that we might notice God’s love for us. And since that cannot make up for our sins, Jesus sacrificed himself on a cross to remove sins from us on to himself. He died because of our sins. Then he was resurrected, and promises that we are resurrected with him.
That is a huge step away from the smite key installed on a control keyboard, a key that could be used quite often to end strife and conflict. Instead God promises to be with us always. Therefore we can sing Hallelujah always, Anyhow, no matter what.
What can we do to readjust our attitudes to remember God’s Grace for us: turn our concerns and worries into prayers for the God almighty to deal with. Seek a face to face with God.
Zoom during Covid 19 is only a foretaste of what face to face with God is like.
Then the king was exceedingly glad and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.
2 Corinthians 4:9
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
Words of Grace For Today
The challenges of this life, Covid-19 being a relatively small one, can kick the breath right out of us. Sometimes, like Daniel thrown into the hungry lions’ den, we get a small reprieve before our enemies’ tools/animals of destruction tear us apart and consume us limb, by limb.
Fewer times than we notice other miracles during our short lives on this marvellously created planet, sometimes we survive the tools/animals hungry for our pieces, together which make up our lives. At those times, like Daniel, it is good to have friends in high places with real power, like kings and queens.
When it comes to the challenges of life beyond this life, in the battle between the Devil and God, we have no chance at all to even be effective on the playing field, the stage or the battle arena. The Devil always gets his devouring ways with us – unless the Holy Spirit steps in and defends us.
At that time it is good to be baptized, because in spite of all the doubt the Devil and his minions can create in us, we have a sure sign that God steps in for us, we bear the Cross of Jesus on our foreheads, emblazoned their never to be erased.
That cross does not fend off discomfort, doubts, physical hardships, or assaults of enemies. It does guarantee us that God never walks away from us. We can even turn on God, trying to create our own way forward, and God is still there, carrying us, caring for us, nurturing us back to full health.
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.
This is a two-fold promise: first that we will not be crushed, driven to despair, forsaken, or destroyed.
Second it is Paul’s full disclosure that following Christ, our enemies will afflict, perplex, persecute, and strike us down.
It’s good to have a cross on one’s forehead to remember, rely on, and especially to have a saviour in the highest places, as well as in the lowest places and everywhere in between.
Trust God. Everything else is a passing illusion. Trust God, no matter that you will not get out of this life alive; but you will live eternally, starting the day you were baptized.
I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Luke 9:62
Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’
Words of Grace For Today
What roadblocks and earth-movers does the Devil and all his wiles, deceptions, and destruction threaten us with today?
Shall we be moved to join these forces pushing us and so many people up against the rock hard wall?
We pray to the Lord, as promised, may the Holy Spirit guides us, waling right beside us, left beside us, behind us, in front of us, under us and over us. Keep us surrounded so the earth-movers and rock hard places the Devil creates will not be able to distract us from the harvest work Jesus has sent us on all these years. Do not let the Devil’s power, which can eliminate planets and stars in a moment, detract from the greatest power of the Universe that guides us each moment, the power of self-sacrificial love graciously shared with all people.
Help us, to leave behind us the ground that we have gone over and prepared for the seed of God’s Kingdom. It is your soil, your harvest, and yours to bless or not as you choose, God.
Guide us, looking forward to the reward that is ours already and yet not yet.
Save us from drunken, stupid gatherings where not only is God denied but the reality of the Devil is ignored, as if Covid 19 does not kill people, innocent people of all ages, in all places.
Singing together we face the injustices of the people who serve the Devil, even as they pretend to call on Jesus’ name:
Set us free from this evil tyranny, set us free today. But your will be done Lord. All that we are and have is from you. We are your servants, from you we have our very breath.
Let no evil person, nor a devilish virus, take that from us!
God, remember your congregation, which you acquired long ago, which you redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage. Remember Mount Zion, where you came to dwell.
2 Corinthians 8:9
For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.
Words of Grace For Today
Remember, God, your congregation.
Jesus’ Riches lost, to make us Rich.
There is a congregation where the council has presented, and persisted in presenting, to the congregation a vote to call a candidate for ordination, even though he has not even attempted to start the process to be approved for ordination in our church.
It’s an invalid motion at an illegal meeting of the council, presented illegally to the congregation, named as that by the Bishop, i.e. it is against their constitution in both spirit and the letter.
I am quite sure that the council has committed a whole series of criminal acts, bringing criminal liability and civil liability on themselves, and profoundly so.
Remember, God, this congregation, Hope Lutheran, Edmonton which is yours from of long ago, and save these leaders, Catherine Moir and Richard Grynas among them, from their brash, bullying, sinful selves, and the members who must participate in an illegal process to voice their disagreement with the process, yet alone the lack of qualifications by the not-candidate.
There is a congregation, where the lay pastor cooperated with the RCMP who were coordinating a Gaslighting operation to bring false charges against me. The lay pastor, in a pastoral care session with me not only interrupted me while I was crying to accuse me of threatening her, she disclosed the information she gained in those pastoral care sessions to the RCMP and others, which was perverted to further Gaslight me.
This lay pastor went to the congregational council and used lies from the RCMP and others to convince the council to ban me from the congregation, something that is impossible in our church if people behave according to our theology of the Cross and Grace. This lay pastor then went on to bald-face lie under oath in Court against me.
The judged used this pastor’s lies as grounds to convict me, but the lies were not enough. The judge had to lie about the meaning of the restrictions I was under in order to say I had broken them.
Remember, God, this congregation, Lakeland Lutheran, Cold Lake, which is yours from of long ago, and save us all from the crimes that lay pastor, Anne Zimmerman (now miraculously specially ordained) and council have committed against so many good people.
While these people and many more commit crimes and unethical acts in the name of Jesus, Jesus did nothing like what these people do. While he had everything, except our salvation, he came and emptied himself of everything allowing equally malicious, confused and evil people to call for his crucifixion. Then, as now, the judge knew true innocence, and still for fear of the power of evil religious leaders, the judge perverts justice and allows people, who pretend to be God’s righteous people, to kill an innocent person.
On the cross Jesus hung, and cried to God, Father forgive them for they do not know what they do. Then in desperation he plead, Father why have you forsaken me? before he gave up his last.
With that Jesus paid the full price, not merely every thing he had, he gave up every bit of life he had in him. Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty we might become rich. That is Jesus gave up every thing, even his life, so that he could show us that God’s love provides everything for us including salvation, so that we can live in God’s grace and live abundantly, rich with all God’s blessings. There is nothing we can do to earn these riches and our salvation.
We can choose to walk away from those blessings, away from that salvation, away from that abundant life. We can do it in the smallest way, or in the most blatant and flashy way. Walk away is what we all do, and can do no other, each day. Then God exercises Grace again and re-invites us to the feast of life lived in Jesus name. Again and again.
What does God do when these congregation’s leaders and lay pastor/not-pastor turn deceit on others to bring them close to their deaths?
When does God no longer welcome these brash sinners, who even admit their sin, and in the same breath say they are forgiven, ridiculing God’s Grace as if it were a tool of theirs to wield according to their own will. Instead of confessing their own sins they make false accusations against innocent people to distract from their own terrible sins.
There are many horrendous sins one can read about in history, which one must believe the perpetrators will answer for as they stand in judgment before Jesus. As the chaff is burned out of them they will be entirely consumed into the void of the universe as they suffer that eternal fire.
Surely Jesus did not give up everything in order that people could, in his name, so cruelly deal deception, criminal lies, and destruction on other people, could he?
May Jesus correct all our ways that we will not be consumed by that eternal fire, but indeed act as his saints, confessing our unending sins and making restitution to any who we have sinned against, so that we may not be instruments so freely used by the Evil One to destroy God’s people.
Remember, God, each congregation, which is yours from of long ago, and save us all from the life destroying work of the Devil. Help us sing the Hallelujah Anyhow. Those we are poor, bankrupt according to the world’s standards as a result of the Devil’s work, as a result of Jesus’ sacrifice, we live as the most richly blessed people, with clear consciences. We have much work yet to accomplish, God’s Grace to offer to so many people, and such Joy to share as matches nothing else in life!
May you, too, find the riches of Jesus’ sacrifice, pouring into your lives, and the strength to stand up against blatant evils, to demand others be held to account for the evil they perpetrate on so many people.
There is no photo of justice observed and righteousness done at all times.
It cannot exist, except by GRACE
Psalm 106:3
Happy are those who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times.
1 John 2:17
The world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever.
Words of Grace For Today
The way the world teaches it’s children to live is not to observe justice and do righteousness – just do not get caught.
The desires that fuel that kind of thinking are endless, in number and because of our inability to satisfy them. Our living experience of them is that they continue, as sure as the rock under our feet as we stand on a high crested mountain west of Edmonton.
Yet from God’s perspective that rocky mountain is a fleeting feature of earth, along with us living on it, and the entire planet as it spins around the star we call our sun will soon pass into oblivion.
The question for us all is how do we live in this fleeting moment, that lasts generation upon generation for us.
Observing Justice and doing righteousness at all times.
First that is impossible, a dream for some, and for all of us mostly wishful thinking.
We are saved by Grace alone. None of us are able to do other than sin, and we wretched sinners can only hope that Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection will save us, for there is no other hope for us.
So as long as we live, if we can always observe justice and do righteousness at all times, then we will be happy.
Since we cannot do that, is it true that we will never be happy?
I’d hope not, but …
… now is the moment when one needs to have prayed and trusted God, and paid a little attention in Confirmation Class.
We can be happy, because even though we cannot observe justice nor be righteous all the time, Jesus steps in for us, sets his record in place of our own.
Not on our own, but transformed by the Grace of God into saints, we can be happy, not just merely happy, but the happiest that we can ever be.
Able to observe justice and do righteousness always, only because Jesus steps in for us, the guarantee that we will be counted to have done exactly that cannot be more sure.
Happy hardly begins to describe how grateful we can be, relieved that we need not count on our own abilities, and exhilarated that life for us is wonderfully blessed by God.
Happy are we who have God doing justice, and observing righteousness, for us, for our record.
No matter our sins, as we trust God, we can join the many people who for so long have learned even amidst great grief to Sing Hallelujah Anyhow.
You shall know that I, the Lord, am your Saviour and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.
Romans 8:35
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Words of Grace For Today
You shall know …
Words of warning,
Words of promise
Words of hope.
Warning for those who assume that it will pass, this evil that infects us all. That is Covid 19, but worst it is the temptations of the Devil to ignore the pervasive and deadly effects of perverting truth, faith, love and hope in order to effect one’s own perverse will.
Promise for those who see the Light, even if dimly, and wait for truth to be upheld, for faith to remain purely focused on and nurtured by Christ’s Grace, love to be unconditional and universal, and hope …
Hope to draw us into a future directed by the Holy Spirit that is as God created us to be, in harmony with all God’s people, creatures, and creation.
No small feat.
and none of it is possible for us on our own. On our own we pervert truth, faith, love and hope as badly as the Devil himself does.
This is only possible after we surrender ourselves to Christ’s Word willingly sacrificing all our own desires and dreams that they may become those given by God,
And that surrender can only be done in us through the work of the Holy Spirit. If we think we can effect it or affect it on our own, we simply pervert it into evil itself …
which is what we constantly do.
So we can only pray that God will effect and affect the lives of those around us, through us, according to God’s Will, in spite of us and our pitiful efforts.
Let God’s glory shine through us, we can only pray. Otherwise the Devil will have his way also with us and ours. Covid 19 is child’s play compared to the full force of the Devil. Just watch as people rebel against limits and cautions, claiming the virus does not exist! And watch the virus to rebound in a second and third and fourth wave, leaving the rebels to rule and deal with it themselves.
For like Covid 19, we are in this all together. We cannot save ourselves. We can only share God’s Word, the Good News of Jesus, and help the Holy Spirit save others.
And trust and hope that God has already saved us in our baptisms.
