Day by Day

[Soldier4Christ]

"God Hears Prayer"

[Peter] described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. Acts 12:17
   

God does the most surprising things. Look at Peter. Peter had not known that his fellow Christians had stayed up this night to ask the Lord to deliver him. It was the only thing they could do. They were absolutely helpless, and therefore they were all the more willing to let the Lord handle the matter. The result was that the Lord surprised them. They had not expected that their prayer should be answered. They had miscalculated; they had made God too small.

All of us need to learn this fact about our prayer. We are praying to the true God who loves us dearly. We are asking things of Him who can do all things. We usually feel that we should bring to the Lord only such things as are possible in our thinking. After all, God already has given us the strength, the talents, and the ability to do the possible. We need to have the courage to step to the throne of grace and ask God for the impossible. That is when our faith really begins to shine. Then we have acknowledged God to be the great God that He really is. Nothing pleases the Lord more than this.

We need to think about this especially in our church work, in the great mission work in which we are engaged. Let us pray to God to do what we think is impossible, then we shall better understand that with God all things are possible.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Love's Labor Never Lost"

Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men. Ephesians 6:7
   

We have heard about the shoemaker who said, "My business is saving souls, but I mend shoes to pay expenses." While his zeal is praiseworthy, as a faithful Christian he also would have to make sure that he did the best possible job with the soles of his neighbors' shoes. Both through soul-winning and sole-repairing the cobbler shows love to his neighbor and helps God to provide His creatures with "clothing and shoes."

We are called to love and serve our neighbor for Jesus' sake. In our complicated society our neighbor's needs are complex. We all need food and clothes, homes, places of business, cars and roads, mail service and telephones, cotton and wool, aspirin and antibiotics. Nearly every occupation contributes to human welfare. By our jobs we are helping the neighbor whom God created and redeemed. It makes all the difference in the world when we view others as neighbors, as sisters and brothers in need. We love because Christ first loved us and gave His life to bring us back to God. One way to show this love is by our daily work, which helps meet our neighbor's need. This labor of love is never lost.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Alone, but Together in Him"

"Holy Father, protect them by the power of Your name -- the name You gave Me -- so that they may be one as We are one." John 17:11
   

We human beings are individuals. That is, we are each trapped within our inner self. We have forms of communication by which we reach out to others, but at best they allow us only a glimpse of others. We live with people in our own families for years, but we can never get to know what is really going on inside them. What is your mother's favorite color, her greatest fear? Even if she told you yesterday, is it still the same today? And would you even remember?

The problem is that we are each, by nature, the center of our own universe. We are more concerned that others should know us -- our ideas, our feelings -- than that we should know them. We are better talkers than listeners.

We are each born trapped within our own soul, but not for eternity. Jesus' death and resurrection are God's way of freeing us from that trap of self-centeredness. His love reaches out so we might be in Him and He in us. As He draws us closer to Himself through His Word and sacraments, His love reaches out through us to others and draws us together as the members of His body. In eternity we will form a perfect unity of individuals -- one, as God is one.

[Soldier4Christ]

"An Explosion of Praise"

"Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!" Revelation 5:12
   

It isn't too often that people seem able to really get excited about something. It doesn't seem fashionable to demonstrate one's obvious delight and sing for joy.

Our text shows that this is not the way it is in heaven. While on earth we, the heirs and beneficiaries of God's grace in Christ, often worship God in a subdued manner. Heaven itself undergoes an explosion of praise and thanksgiving centering in Jesus Christ.

Since Christ was slain and by His blood ransomed all people for God, heaven is ringing with praise to Him for gaining followers "from every tribe and language and people and nation" and for making them "a kingdom and priests to serve our God" (Revelation 5:9-10).

Let the redeemed people of God accord the Savior glory and honor also here on earth, for He has broken the power of sin over them and has set them free to serve the living God. Let them sing: "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest" (Matthew 21:9). Saints above and saints below have every reason to join in the celebration of our Lord's glorious victory.

[Soldier4Christ]

"The Resurrection"

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
1 Peter 1:3

As farmers and townspeople in the Old World walked to church on Easter morning they were accustomed to greeting each other with the ringing shout, “Christ is risen!” Their friends and neighbors answered with the standard reply, “He is risen indeed!”

I say to you today, “Christ is risen!” I can just hear the reply from millions of you who believe in Jesus Christ: “He is risen indeed!”

What a great day this is, with its dramatic reminder that Christ is alive. Christ has conquered. There is hope for humanity. All of this takes us back a long time. A few sad-eyed women were picking their way to the tomb in the early morning darkness when the thrill of discovery came with electrifying suddenness. He was not there! A woman wept in the soft light of early morning, her heart crushed over her shattered hopes. He was gone, and she did not know where they had laid Him. Then He appeared! People came with leaden hearts and went forth with winged feet to tell the story of what had happened.

That morning God brought all men everywhere under the spell of immortality. What happened on Easter morning can bring perpetual morning to your life. As Saint Peter recalls the glory of what he saw that morning, we celebrate with him that God has “given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

[Soldier4Christ]

Christ the Victor"

So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard. Matthew 27:66

For Jesus’ followers, Good Friday looked like the end of all their hopes. His enemies held a victory celebration and gloated, “At last we’re rid of Him!” They rolled a stone against the door of his tomb and wrote “finis,” which means “the end.”

The new chapter being written by God this Easter weekend has a short title: “Christ lives.” Since Christ has been raised from the dead, no stone, however big or imposing will ever be final again. You may close a chapter that seems hopeless and beyond change or improvement. You may bury your cherished hopes, your fond dreams, your fervent desires, putting them to rest in a tomb marked “impossible and hopeless.” You may roll up to the door of that tomb the stone of defeat and despair. You may seal it up and write “finis” upon it. But God always has a line of His own: “To be continued.”

God does not notice stones. The enemy that haunts us all is finished. Christ lives. The stone has been rolled away. In Christ there is full forgiveness and vibrant life.

Let Christ live in you. With Christ living in you, life will not be easy. It will often be dangerous. A lot of things will have to go by the board: old sins, self-adoration, fence-straddling, lukewarm discipleship. Jesus Christ has broken death’s dark prison. Look out, devil. Look out, death. Look out, man. Look out and live dangerously with Christ in you in all His risen power.

[Soldier4Christ]

"The Cross That Kills"

But we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.
1 Corinthians 1:23

A lot of people don’t like to hear all this talk about the cross of Christ. They think they have heard all about that, and they have had enough. Actually, they may never have heard it at all.

You see all forms of the cross in the symbols of our culture. All too often, it’s a pretty kind of thing, with the power drained out of it. People sing “The Old Rugged Cross,” but many think only of the good old days and wish they would return. For others, it is just a work of art or something to wear around your neck on a silver chain. When that happens, the message of the cross becomes muted.

I am talking about the cross of Christ as Saint Paul talked about it. It is a real thing. It has not been made unreal by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I don’t believe in leaving out the resurrection of Christ when you talk about His cross. But you don’t add to the glory of Easter by robbing Good Friday of its meaning. The open tomb gets its meaning from the brutal cross on which Jesus Christ died.

In the cross of Jesus Christ you are not dealing with just another event in history. It is more than simply a moving tragedy. It is a decisive act in the plan of God. God wants to forgive, and He Himself provides a way to forgive. The cross of Jesus Christ is not just the intention of God. It is God’s completed action.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Lift High the Cross"

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Galatians 6:14

We lift high the cross of Christ, as did Saint Paul, who stopped boasting about himself and his own accomplishments and started glorying in the Christ of that cross, now raised from the dead.

There was a time when Paul had been Saul, the boaster. He beat his chest with his fists and proclaimed to the world, “Look at me! See how powerful I am! See what devastation I can bring to the lives of people! If you want to learn how to control the lives of other people, look at me!”

Now, having come to know Christ and the power of His resurrection, Saul had become Paul, the apostle to the nations. He shared one great story: that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He was raised again the third day as the Scriptures said He would be. The day Saul met Christ, everything else went out the window and he became Paul, apostle to the world.

Lift high the cross of Christ, living your life freely and gloriously in the light of His redemption instead of being crucified by the world. Lift high the cross, because there your sins have been forgiven. God buries your sin in the depths of the sea, which boasts the sign: “No fishing here.”

Lift high the cross, the sign of God to you and the whole world, a witness to love and to victory—from beginning to end, His offer of salvation is true and free.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Substitute"

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13

In a dungeon cell at the time of the French Revolution laid two men. Both happened to have the same name, because they were father and son. The father had been thrown into prison because he was suspected of complicity in the counter-revolutionary activities of his son. The son was under sentence of death for those activities.

When the time came for the son’s sentence to be carried out, his name was called out. With a gesture to the son to remain silent, the father rose and joined the armed guard prepared to lead him to the scaffold. Boldly he laid his head upon the block. The blade of the guillotine flashed, the father met his death, and his son’s name was checked off the list as having paid the supreme penalty.

The genuine Gospel of Christ teaches that a man is a sinner, a violator of God’s law, under sentence of death, condemned by his own transgression, and implicated in a situation which makes it impossible for him to save himself. The genuine Gospel of Christ teaches that Jesus came into the world to save sinners by taking the guilt of all humanity upon Himself, and by dying in the place of every sinner. There is only one hope of salvation. This hope is based upon the fact of Christ’s substitutionary death for all.

Let Christ’s sacrificial love control your life. It will help you to see other people as God sees them. Love will be apparent in your actions: It will be written all over your face.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Why Me?"

About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Matthew 27:46

“Why did this have to happen to me?” Poignant and personal, suffering invades the sacred precincts of life, wrecking the little fences built so tidily and intelligently around our emotions and throwing into confused disarray all the defenses we have set up against intrusion upon our inner being.

Christ suffered the pain that hurts the most, deep down inside. It did not come upon Him unawares, as if up to that moment He had closed His eyes to the heartbreak of the world. None was more sensitive to suffering than He, none more ready to give instant help without thought of self. Never having hurt anyone, Christ lifted up His voice in the darkness of Calvary to ask the classic human question: “Why God? Why Me?”

The question is right at the heart of life. Christ was a real man, living a genuine human life and dying a genuine human death. He died all for us, in our place.

Since He died and rose again, all is changed. Death is not what it was. Suffering is not what it was, either. “Why me?” strikes a tender chord in the heart of God ever since that day when the Son of God offered His holy and lonely life in atonement for a world’s sin. In Christ, God forgives. In Christ, God cares. When we recall the suffering of Christ, we remember that we are not alone. What happened to Him happened for good. What happens to us, as we trust in Him, happens for good.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Who Is Lord?"

That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:10-11

“Jesus Christ is Lord.” Christians have been saying that ever since Jesus Christ rose from the dead. They say it today because Jesus Christ is alive. It is not that He is alive because Christians believe in Him; they are believers because He is alive.

Writing to the first Christian congregation of what is now Europe, the Apostle Paul proclaimed the same great fact: “Jesus Christ is Lord.” He is Lord, whether you recognize Him or not. If you don’t recognize Him now, the day will come when you will have to acknowledge that He is the Lord. On that great day, when He returns to judge the world, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Everyone will see Jesus returning, surrounded by the armies of His angels. We have it from His own lips, and from the clear and straightforward testimony of His own men, who knew Him and talked with Him: “Jesus Christ is Lord.”

A remarkable thing about the apostolic witness to the second coming of the Lord is that Jesus told His people about His return in order to give them comfort! On that day, their faith in Him will be vindicated, He said. They may suffer all kinds of things now, but things will be reversed on that day.

His Lordship is the guarantee of joy for people who believe in Him. The certainty of their faith in Him and the grace that gives them the courage to love where others hate comes from His Lordship over all creation.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Life Is a Procession"

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:6

Life is a procession. From the moment we are born, we seek survival, safety, and security; we search for happiness, purpose, and meaning. Life is a procession. We process through life devoted to our own best interests. That is what the Bible calls sin: the selfish, reckless, shortsighted, and faithless following of our own imaginations. We process through life with a lot of twisted goals and distorted values and warped standards. We march along arrogantly, desperately, unrealistically, making ourselves or someone else lord, whoever it is that will let us have our own way.

There is one who did not go that way. With all of the pressures of conformity upon Him, He went His way. It was the way of a cross, the way His Father asked Him to go. He started a procession of true life.

Jesus had a mission in life. He came to show His Father to people, to make real on earth the mercy and forgiveness of God. He came to free us from the procession toward death and ruin, to make life a procession of joy, hope, and victory. God His Father confirmed what He had done by raising Him from the dead and from the grave that the procession might continue right into eternity.

Walk with Jesus Christ and know the joys of new life in Him. Celebrate, give thanks, offer worship. Share what you have. Process through life with the blessing of the one who travels with you in the name of the Lord.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Last Words of a Real Man"

Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last. Luke 23:46

Men usually die as they live. If their life was an open book, that’s the way they die. If they were secretive, suspicious, envious, and nasty when they lived, that’s the way they die. If they were afraid of death when they were alive, you can imagine how they are when they die.

This man died as He lived, not afraid to commit everything to His Father because He trusted in Him: “Father! It’s all Yours now. Into Your hands I commit My life, My breath, My everything.”

This is the Son of God sent by His Father to be the Savior of the world. I take great comfort in His thoroughgoing humanity. He bore in His own body our sins upon His cross. This is the way to die: “Father! I leave it all to You. Into Your hands I place myself.”

I see myself in that dying man. He is like me, and He died for me. That is not just a figure of speech! He is a real man who really died for me. As He died, all die, and I am one of them. I am glad to be in His company.

With faith in Jesus Christ, I say (and you can join me in saying it): In all that I am and all that I do, in my living and in my dying, Father, into Your hands I place my spirit.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Finished"

When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. John 19:30

“It is finished.” I don’t know of anyone else who could say it in exactly the same way. We finish some things and leave others undone. Even the things we finish are only half finished. Someone has to put the finishing touches on them somewhere. If they don’t have to be redone, they have to be repaired or restored or renovated.

What Jesus Christ did was finished. He entered the holy place and made Himself the final sacrifice for sin. That’s finished!

Nobody needs to complete it. Nobody can. Anybody who thinks he has to make a contribution to it doesn’t understand it. It is finished. He is the one. In Him there is salvation, full and free. He did what He alone could do, what He had to do, and now it is finished.

By the grace of God, you are saved through faith in Jesus Christ. You are not saved by anything you might be able to do, and there is not a thing to make you boastful – no matter how pious you are or how righteous you imagine yourself to be. God did this to demonstrate for all time to come the abundant riches of His grace and the love He has for us in Jesus Christ.

In His word “It is finished” there is the music of heaven. All has been made ready. “I am going there to prepare a place for you,” He said (John 14:2). All who hear His voice and call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. That’s for me.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Forsaken"

About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Matthew 27:46

Jesus felt forsaken, abandoned even by God. In the final hours even His friends forsook Him and fled. He had foreseen the final tragedy of that defection, but He relied on his Father’s presence: “You will leave Me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for My Father is with Me” (John 16:32). And now God hid His face, and Jesus was totally alone.

Someone has called this the crucifixion within the crucifixion. His feelings of abandonment give us a glimpse of what it took to redeem our world. This is not a perfunctory paying of a price for something that is good and beneficial. It is not even just a death, terrible and terrifying as death can be. This is God’s Son making atonement for a world’s sin. We can’t appreciate the full necessity of Christ’s cross until we see our condition as fatal. Only when we see ourselves plunging into the abyss does God’s reaching out have any real meaning. The peril is so great that nothing simply human can divert it. The Son of God took this deadly disaster into His own heart and was forsaken by God.

In Jesus Christ there is reconciliation. It comes from God. In Christ, God reconciled the world to Himself, not counting our sins against us. The hurt we inflict upon ourselves God took in the person of that real man, His Son. There is one mediator between God and men—the man Christ Jesus. He is the one. He took it all and He is the one.