Devotional practices that have stood the test of time

Posted on March 19, 2016 by salooper57

Many Christians from various doctrinal streams and denominational traditions practice some kind of devotional exercise each day. These exercises are known familiarly as “doing devotions,” or “having a quiet time,” and usually include Bible reading and prayer.

Some people also employ a devotional guide. There are old favorites like The Upper Room and Our Daily Bread, as well as popular new books like Jesus Calling. Christians from liturgical backgrounds often use the daily readings from the lectionary, which guide them through short texts from the psalms, the Old Testament generally, the New Testament letters and the Gospels.

The goal of these devotional times is not the fulfillment of a duty but the transformation of a person. Christians don’t “do devotions” to stay in God’s good graces but to come close to him. They believe the promise of St. James: “Come close to God and God will come close to you.” There is absolutely no merit in that, but there is a great deal of hope.

A disciplined devotional practice helps a person know God, just as regular conversations help a person know a wise friend. And, as in conversation, there is understanding and disclosure on the part of both parties. Oswald Bayer pointed out this dynamic in the devotional practice of the philosopher Johann Georg Hamann: “In reading [the Bible] he was read and in understanding he was understood.”

A regular time of prayer and devotional reading places a person in God’s hands as an instrument for good in the world. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in his book on the Psalms,

“The entire day receives order and discipline when it acquires unity. This unity must be sought and found in morning prayer. The morning prayer determines the day.”

But as most people who have practiced a regular devotional time know, it’s easy to get in a rut. One can read the Scriptures and pray in a purely perfunctory manner. Or one can rush through the time in a way that robs it of meaning. Or one can come to the Scriptures to prove a point rather than to encounter God. When the routine becomes a rut, what can a person do?

Here are a few suggestions. Remember why you started a devotional practice in the first place. Was it to learn God’s ways? Was it to become the kind of person who could know God and be used by him? Clarify your purpose and then ask yourself if your current practice is helping you achieve it. If not, it’s time to modify your practice.

Stick to the basics. There are a few fundamental disciplines that have stood the test of time: solitude and silence, Bible reading, and prayer. Whatever else one adds to a devotional time, these should have a regular place. So take time to get alone, pray and read the Scriptures.

Use the basic ingredients, but don’t be afraid to alter the recipe from time to time. Solitude is one of the staples of the devotional life. That may mean going into a room, shutting the door, and closing out the world for a half an hour. But mix it up. Once in a while you should spend your solitude time in the woods or in a park. Take a day (or a half-day) at a retreat center. It is still solitude, but the variety will enhance your experience.

If your prayer time gets boring or mundane, try writing out your prayers and reading them to God. Or try praying the words of Scripture, a verse at a time, talking to God about the concerns you find there. Try praying aloud. Try praying on your knees or as you walk.

If your Bible reading has become mechanical, experiment with lectio divina. Or pepper your reading with questions: What is this about? Who is saying it? Where did it take place? Why is this being said? Try visualizing narrative passages. Or paraphrase what you read, as if you were writing it for a fifth grader. Same ingredients, different recipe, better devotional time.

Would a devotional time benefit an irreligious person? Probably. Why not try it? Time alone and in silence, with words of beauty and power, is bound to be uplifting for anyone. For the person intent on following Jesus, though, it is more than uplifting; it is empowering.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 3/19/2016

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The Love Chapter

Posted on March 18, 2016 by salooper57

I’ve really enjoyed studying and preaching from 1 Corinthians 13. It was inspiring for me. I hope it will be for you too. You can check the sermons out at http://lockwoodchurch.org/media

  • Shayne
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Is the church just after your money?

Posted on March 5, 2016 by salooper57

Is the church just after your money? If anyone wants to believe that’s true, he or she will have little trouble finding supporting evidence.

There are the TV preachers, crowding the airwaves, urging their video flocks to send them money in return for God’s blessing. Then there are the jet-setting prosperity gospelers, whose ten million dollar private jets whisk them off to wherever prosperity gospelers go.
And what about the media evangelist whose staff emptied supporter’s mail of their checks, then dumped the prayer requests without bothering to read them? They got caught because they threw them in the dumpster behind the bank where the ministry kept its money.

Then there was the famous evangelist who told his audience that God would take his life by the end of the year, if the ministry was unable to raise 8 million dollars. The following January, he repeated the dire warning, this time saying that God would take him home within two months, unless the money was raised. Only about half the money ever came in, and he did die … twenty-two years later.

There have been many others: the pastor whose pet enjoyed an air conditioned dog-house; the preacher whose multi-million dollar organization kept two sets of books and who went to prison for fraud and conspiracy; the pastor and wife team who drove his and her Ferraris – the stories continue ad absurdum.

There is a mountain of anecdotal evidence that some church leaders are after people’s money. But is that really so surprising? The church is full of giving people, which makes it the most likely place for “taking people” to gather. If those scoundrels could finagle more money at the Elks (or the New York Stock Exchange, for that matter) that’s where they’d be.

They’re in church because of the big-hearted and open-handed people there. Yes, some preachers give the impression the church is all about raking in money, but there is another side to the matter. Who is more generous than the church? The Hoover Institution reports that “Religious people are 25 percentage points more likely than secularists to donate money … and 23 percentage points more like to donate time.”

The church I belong to is a case in point. It gives between twenty and twenty-five percent of its entire income to missions, and that doesn’t count the offerings it gives away once or twice a year to support ministries or to provide relief to people in crisis. And our church is hardly alone in this. Local churches, denominations, and Christian organizations like The Salvation Army and Catholic Charities have done extraordinary work to help individuals and families in need.

Over the years, I’ve been privileged to know pastors who are so committed to God and his people that they support themselves through full-time secular jobs, while working nights and weekends to pastor small or newly launched churches. I knew one man, a teacher, who received a salary from his church but gave every penny of it back to the church to use in ministry.

These people are not “in it for the money.” They couldn’t care less about the money. They join their voices to the eighth century Irish poet who said to God: “Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise. Thou my inheritance now and always. Thou, and thou only, first in my heart. High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art.”

This is the attitude of the apostles and saints, who knew (and condemned) gospel peddlers and hucksters in their day. Jesus called them wolves in sheep’s clothing, and St. Paul referred to them as those who “peddle the word of God for profit.” “Their god is their stomach,” we are told, “and their glory is their shame.”

How sad that some people believe every sheep is just another costumed wolf! The real sheep may not command a lot of attention, but they’re really making the world a better place.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 3/5/2016

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No one needs another reason to be angry

Posted on February 27, 2016 by salooper57

Pundits keep telling us that Donald Trump has succeeded thus far by tapping into a deep-seated anger within the electorate. A CBS poll seems to bear this out: Mr. Trump enjoys a double-digit lead among voters who self-identify as angry. No wonder America’s 2016 choice for president has been dubbed “the anger election.”

And Trump isn’t alone. Many of the candidates are either truly angry or are feigning anger for the sake of political expediency. Carla Seaquist says, “The essence of 2016 [is] clear: This election is about anger.” Jennifer Boylan calls this “the Year of the Angry Voter.”

Anger has its uses. It is profoundly motivational. It gets us up and moving. It energizes us so that we can combat wrong and injustice. That’s what anger is good at. What it is not good at is thinking, reasoning, and figuring things out. Anger is much better at putting a stop to injustice than it is at fostering justice.

If an angry candidate is elected, who’s to say he or she will stop being angry and start governing wisely? It will depend on whether his or her anger is simply a façade to attract angry voters, is genuinely directed at injustice, or is the governing principle of the politician’s own life. If the latter, we are in for trouble.

The Bible presents a nuanced view of anger. We read that God gets angry (or, to be more precise, that God is angry) with sin, evil and injustice. Jesus got angry, and the biblical writers did not try to cover it up. St. Paul wrote, “In your anger do not sin,” which seems to be a reference to an ancient Psalm. But when Paul writes it into Greek he says literally, “Be angry and sin not.” Clearly anger is sometimes appropriate.

But anger can share living space with malice, the desire to hurt another person, and that is always forbidden. When a person acts out of anger, yells and swears or withdraws and avoids, he is trying to hurt someone. He may say that he’s not, but he’s just fooling himself.

I have heard men who push and slap and beat their wives swear that they never meant to hurt them. Nonsense. It is a pure, unadulterated lie. Malice lives in anger’s shadow, and it hurts both the soul of the angry person and the soul of the person who is the object of anger.

This is why Christian writers have been so guarded about anger and so opposed to malice. “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice,” says the apostle. “…rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.” “A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.”

These are but a few examples; the Bible is full of them. Anger is dangerous and must be carefully controlled, while malice is toxic and must be categorically rejected. Anger has a place and a time; malice does not. Anger is necessary, like a starter in a car is necessary, but if it doesn’t shut off when its job is done, something’s going to break.

To the biblical warnings about anger people often say, “But I have a reason to be angry.” Well who doesn’t? You can’t walk down the street without tripping over one. We don’t need another reason to be angry, however convincing it is. We need a reason to put away anger.

The biblical writers give us many: anger does not bring about the good life God desires; anger gets in the way; hurts the soul; leads to evil. Anger opens the door for malice to enter one’s home and relationships; it leaves a person subject to God’s judgment.

If “the year of the angry voter” transitions into the administration of an angry president, our nation is in for trouble. The ancient proverb warns, “Do not make friends with a hot-tempered person, do not associate with one easily angered, or you may learn their ways and get yourself ensnared.” Wouldn’t that also go for electing one?

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 2/27/2016

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The one thing we cannot lose

Posted on February 20, 2016 by salooper57

Christianity Today recently ran an article by history professor Susan Lim about the faith of the Founding Fathers, featuring a brief account of the life of Alexander Hamilton. It was timely: Broadway’s unlikely hip-hop hit musical based on the patriot’s life just won a Best Musical Theater Grammy.

The Christianity Today article was titled, “God Loved Alexander Hamilton,” and was subtitled, “but did this particular Founding Father love God?” As interesting (and debatable) as that question is, the article caused me to think again about God’s seeming predilection for losers.

What does Alexander Hamilton have to do with losers? He was George Washington’s right hand man, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, the first Secretary of the Treasury, and the genius behind the national banking system. He was a prominent lawyer and one of the most influential people in government and, indeed, in the history of the United States.

But he was born a loser. His mother was married but separated from her husband and was living with another man when Alexander and his brother came along. Their own father deserted them when Alexander was still a boy (his first great loss), their mother then died (his second great loss), and her former (and still legitimate) husband took everything of value in her estate (his third great loss).

Yet through the care of a Presbyterian pastor and the generosity of some of the wealthier men of his town, young Alexander was given a first-rate education. He was connected to a prominent patriot and took up the cause of American independence. He caught the attention of George Washington and became his trusted confidant.

Hamilton’s last great loss was in a famous duel with Aaron Burr. He was mortally wounded and lived only a short time. But in that time he reaffirmed his faith and received Holy Communion.

Did God love Alexander Hamilton because he succeeded in escaping his loser status? No, God loved Alexander Hamilton “because,” to quote the Bible, “God is love.” We just see that love more clearly when it is lavished on losers because we wrongly assume that winners – the people who’ve got it altogether; the nice people from good families – deserve to be loved.

But nobody was ever loved because they deserved it. That’s just not how love works. Respect works that way, responding to the worth of its object, like echoes rebounding from granite. But love does not respond; it initiates. Love does not materialize because of the loveliness of its recipient, but because of the character of the one doing the loving.

Because that is true, it must also be true that God loves losers just as much as winners and winners just as much as losers. It’s just that, in our merit-driven, image-conscious world, love for losers stands out in bold relief.

That God loves losers is obvious. The Bible is full of examples. Consider the long list of losers in Jesus’s genealogy. There was Judah, whose shameful behavior toward his daughter-in-law is a matter of biblical record. There was Rahab, remembered forever as “the harlot.” There was David, who stole the wife (also in the line of Jesus) of one of his most faithful supporters.

The list goes on and on. As U2 frontman Bono once put it: “The fact that the Scriptures are brim full of hustlers, murderers, cowards, adulterers, and mercenaries used to shock me. Now it is a source of great comfort.”

It’s a source of great comfort because it means God’s love is not conditioned on our success but on his character. He loves us not because we’re lovable but because he is love. We can choose not to care about that love, but we cannot choose not to be loved. Ours may be a long, sad story of failures and losses, but there’s one thing we can’t lose: God’s love.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 2/20/2016

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Looks like I forgot…

Posted on February 17, 2016 by salooper57

Hey, I just realized I haven’t kept up to date on sermons. Sorry about that Here’s the new link: http://lockwoodchurch.org/media. If you’re interested, check it out for the latest sermons, including this week’s message from 1 Corinthians 13 titled, “Sorry, No Substitutions.”

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A humbler approach to the Bible

Posted on February 13, 2016 by salooper57

My doctor referred me to a vascular surgeon for a consult. The surgeon’s assistant led me to an examination room and went over my paperwork, asked a bunch of questions, then told me I’d have to strip down to my skivvies while I waited for the doctor.

Earlier that day I’d donned a t-shirt with a graphic of Lake Superior above a graphic of Lake Erie. Each graphic has a caption. The top one reads, “Michigan is Superior” while the bottom reads, “Ohio is Erie.” The shirt was a gag gift from an anonymous University of Michigan fan. (I’m from the Cleveland area and make no secret of the fact that I root for Ohio State, which is a sort of heresy in southern Michigan, where we live.)

I suppose the observant doctor noticed my t-shirt and wrongly assumed I was a Michigan fan. The real reason I wore the shirt was that I was going over to my son’s house after my appointment to help him paint his laundry room. I chose that particular shirt because I thought it was the one article of clothing I own that would look better with paint splotches than it does without them.

Now suppose the doctor was a University of Michigan graduate. He would, perhaps subconsciously, approve of my shirt and me. My shirt might even inspire him to greater interest in my case, which could only turn out for my good.

On the other hand, imagine that the good doctor was a graduate of Ohio State and was a huge Buckeye fan. He would, perhaps subconsciously, find my shirt and me disagreeable. My shirt might even discourage interest in me and my case.

In either scenario, the doctor would be in danger of making assumptions from the available data that might mislead him. Because he didn’t know the backstory – the friendly rivalry in our church between Buckeyes and Wolverines – he might completely misread the situation. A whole host of miscellaneous data – where we live, the outcome of the college bowl games, past conversations – might lead him to draw the wrong conclusions.

I don’t for a moment think the doctor would have provided second-rate care had he known I was a Buckeye fan. My point is rather that the interpretation of a text, whether on a t-shirt or in the U. S. Constitution or in the Bible, will be affected by the assumptions we bring to it. The interpreter does not come to the data as a completely detached and objective observer.

We come to the Bible with all kinds of cultural and linguistic (not to mention personal) baggage in tow. Even the questions we bring to the text are conditioned by our own experiences and expectations. For example, people expect the Bible to answer a question like, “Can a believer lose his salvation?” But for a person to use biblical data to answer that question, he or she must deal with a number of preliminary issues, among them: what constitutes a “believer” and what the biblical writers had in mind when they used the word “salvation.”

A person might come to the Bible with the assumption that “salvation” is about getting into heaven when one dies, but is that all there is to it? When St. Peter wrote, “…for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls” did he really mean his readers were getting into heaven, at that very moment? And, if not, what else (or what more) did he mean?

To do justice to a text, any text – the Bible, the Constitution or a t-shirt – it must not be divorced from its author’s intent. This is not to deny that there may be more to a text than even its author understood (as many poets have testified about their own poems, and as Christians generally believe about the Bible). It is to say that the author’s intent and the text’s meaning are inseparable.

The Bible has been used to lend support to all kinds of theological and ecclesiastical campaigns that would have puzzled, and perhaps angered, the biblical writers themselves. Interpretive integrity requires a more principled and, frankly, a humbler approach.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 2/13/2016

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Bible reading for rugged individualists

Posted on February 6, 2016 by salooper57

(Note: The effects of strident individualism on theology generally and on biblical interpretation specifically deserves a more developed treatment. I hope this article will wet some readers appetite to go further. )

Herbert Hoover, that stalwart Republican champion of smaller and more efficient government, has been credited with coining the phrase “rugged individualism.” Hoover once described “rugged individualism” as “the American system,” and credited it for America’s supremacy in the world.

In 1922, seven years before his election as president of the United States, Hoover wrote a small book titled “American Individualism.” In it he acted as apologist-in-chief for an individualist worldview, which he defended against the competing philosophies of Communism, Socialism, Syndicalism, and Capitalism on both philosophic and spiritual grounds. Hoover, raised in the sometimes ruggedly individualist Friends (or Quaker) movement, argued that each person has an inner light, a divine inspiration that is not dependent upon religious hierarchies.

Citing Hoover in an election year is fraught with danger, since readers might get stuck in the debate, still associated with his name, over the size of government. But my concern is not with Hoover’s conception of efficient government, though his speeches are surprisingly apropos for our day. My concern is with the individualist worldview he celebrated, its influence on American thought and, particularly, its effect on biblical interpretation.

Hoover was right: America has been and is populated with rugged individualists. The people who crossed the Atlantic, whether for spiritual freedom or economic opportunity, were rugged individualists. Their descendants who made their way into the forests of Ohio, the vast planes of Kansas and the dangerous wilds of the Pacific Northwest were a tough people who relied on their own strength and wits.

When people like that read the Bible, they can’t help but do so through a lens of rugged individualism. But the Bible was written by and for people who believed in the fundamental connectedness of society, and especially of the church. Readers who fail to take that into account will have trouble understanding some biblical concepts. Take salvation, which Hoover rightly insisted is not the result of “mass or group action.” But neither is salvation, as the Bible reveals it, a reward for individual effort or piety.

The rugged individualist thinks of salvation as a personal relationship with Jesus that results in an individual’s entrance into heaven after death. Biblical teaching includes those components, but in a much larger framework. “Salvation belongs to our God,” cry the saved in the Book of Revelation, not to this or that individual. When a person experiences God’s salvation, he or she does so in the company of God’s people, not in the isolation of “a mansion, just over the hilltop.”

That God is calling to himself a people, not just individuals, may go unnoticed in an over-individualized approach to the Scriptures. When this happens the importance of the church is minimized, community is marginalized, and the unity for which Jesus prayed evades his people.

From the individualist’s perspective, people go to church to enjoy its benefits, “to get a word from the Lord” or to take Holy Communion. But early readers of the Bible didn’t go to church; they came together as a church (St. Paul’s wording). They did not attend services, they gathered as God’s special people.

And when they gathered, they shared the “Lord’s Supper,” as the Apostle Paul called it. This meal, which speaks of (among other things) the church’s unity, has divided Christians for centuries. The irony is that the apostle’s teaching about the Lord’s Supper was meant to stop divisions! The original problem had nothing to do with how Jesus was present in the bread and wine, and everything to do with how he was absent in the ugly divisions in the church. That reality, and many others, is likely to be overlooked in an individualist reading of Scripture.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 2/6/2016

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Just a reminder…

Posted on February 4, 2016 by salooper57

You can listen to sermons at http://www.lockwoodchurch.org. Just click “Media.” For the past few months, we’ve been working our way through what may be the oldest composition in the New Testament: 1 Corinthians. It’s been interesting. If you have a chance, check it out. – Shayne

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Don’t pull the rug out from under your faith

Posted on January 30, 2016 by salooper57

Why do I believe in God while other, equally (or more) intelligent people from a similar background and education do not? Why does faith stick to some people and slide off others? Why do some people have faith while others do not?

Sociology, psychology and theology have all offered explanations, but those explanations exist as part of a larger worldview. People who look through the lens of one worldview will find its explanations convincing, but those who look at the world through a different lens do not.

For my part, I find faith’s presence a mystery. But it is no mystery that faith can waver, even in the true believer. It waxes and wanes, grows and diminishes. Some experiences seem to build faith while others tear it down.

But perhaps it is misleading to say that experiences build or tear down faith, since people can go through very similar experiences (say, the death of a child) with very different results. One turns to God, another turns from him. Having seen this happen many times, it seems to me that the particular experience is not as consequential to faith as is the way one handles it.

Over the years I’ve become aware of certain faith-busters in life. Whether things are going well or life is coming apart at the seams, the presence of certain attitudes or mindsets can have an adverse effect on faith.

For example, faith is difficult, perhaps even impossible, when a person is trying to manage his or her own image. Faith is outward looking by its very nature, so when a person is looking inward, faith suffers. When one’s goal is to win the praise of others, the very possibility of faith disappears. This is what Jesus had in mind when he asked, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”

Faith is also weakened by resentment toward other people. The biblical writers generally, and St. John in particular, see a connection between faith and love. When we are relating to others in a loving way, “we have confidence before God.” But when relationships with others are governed by selfishness or antipathy, faith erodes.

The DIY approach to religion is also a faith-buster. The person who sets out to merit God’s approval (or be pious or religious, however you want to put it) by doing everything right will find it hard to trust God. Self-confidence can exist and even thrive in the rich soil of faith in God, but faith in God withers in the barren soil of self-reliance.

When St. Paul recognized this particular faith-buster among his former church members in Galatia, he vehemently exclaimed, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” He went on to ask, “Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” Their DIY approach to religion was pulling the rug out from under their own faith.

Staring at one’s problems, obsessing over them, focusing on them to the exclusion of everything else is yet another faith-buster. When our problems fill our vision, there is no room left for God. The bigger our problems get, the smaller our faith grows.

One sees this in the ancient story of Israel’s entrance into the Promised Land. Most of the men who explored Canaan came back with reports of a beautiful land that was “flowing with milk and honey.” But instead of focusing on the benefits this new land offered, they concentrated on the challenges it presented. As they magnified the challenges, their abilities (and God’s) were minimized. Before long they were saying, “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes.”

The power of positive thinking is not a fix for this faith-buster. Trying to exclude problems from one’s thoughts is not the answer, but including God in one’s thoughts is. One will either see God in the light of one’s problems or see one’s problems in the light of God, and that’s the difference between night and day.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 1/30/2015

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