Wanted: Faith!

Due to traveling between Houston and Dallas every week and the demands of school, my blog activity has  suffered as of late!  Things are going well, though, and I hope to begin posting more regularly soon.

I ran across an excerpt from Luther’s “Preface to the Epistle to the Romans” this week in one of my classes.   This passage discusses what real faith looks like in the life of a Christian.  Mere profession of belief does not necessarily an experience of the heart, and yet we are always quick to point friends and family back to their moment of “belief” when they are looking for security of salvation.

While the initial moment is exciting and important, if the believer never matures, bears the fruits of the Spirit, or produces good works, it might be a grave sin on our part to give them assurance that they are saved.  Rather than needing to hear how to be a good Christian, they may need to hear the Gospel and to ask God to give them faith!

An excerpt from Luther’s “Preface” is below, and it can be read  in full here.  How does this compare to your faith?  How does this compare to how you explain faith to others?

Faith is not that human illusion and dream that some people think it is. When they hear and talk a lot about faith and yet see that no moral improvement and no good works result from it, they fall into error and say, “Faith is not enough. You must do works if you want to be virtuous and get to heaven.” The result is that, when they hear the Gospel, they stumble and make for themselves with their own powers a concept in their hearts which says, “I believe.” This concept they hold to be true faith. But since it is a human fabrication and thought and not an experience of the heart, it accomplishes nothing, and there follows no improvement.

Faith is a work of God in us, which changes us and brings us to birth anew from God (cf. John 1). It kills the old Adam, makes us completely different people in heart, mind, senses, and all our powers, and brings the Holy Spirit with it. What a living, creative, active powerful thing is faith! It is impossible that faith ever stop doing good. Faith doesn’t ask whether good works are to be done, but, before it is asked, it has done them. It is always active. Whoever doesn’t do such works is without faith; he gropes and searches about him for faith and good works but doesn’t know what faith or good works are. Even so, he chatters on with a great many words about faith and good works.

Faith is a living, unshakable confidence in God’s grace; it is so certain, that someone would die a thousand times for it. This kind of trust in and knowledge of God’s grace makes a person joyful, confident, and happy with regard to God and all creatures. This is what the Holy Spirit does by faith. Through faith, a person will do good to everyone without coercion, willingly and happily; he will serve everyone, suffer everything for the love and praise of God, who has shown him such grace. It is as impossible to separate works from faith as burning and shining from fire. Therefore be on guard against your own false ideas and against the chatterers who think they are clever enough to make judgments about faith and good works but who are in reality the biggest fools. Ask God to work faith in you; otherwise you will remain eternally without faith, no matter what you try to do or fabricate.

Thanks for reading!

Mickey

Luther on Study

Check out these words from Martin Luther. He applies his comments to preachers, but I see no reason to stop there. We have all been given God’s Word, and it is our duty to live it and be able to talk about it as it comes up in daily life. Read and reflect (thanks to HePrayed.com for text in full), and I welcome any comments… thanks for reading!

Some pastors and preachers are lazy and no good. They rely on these and other good books to get a sermon out of them. They do not pray; they do not study; they do not read; they do not search the Scripture. It is just as if there were no need to read the Bible for this purpose…

Therefore the call is: Watch, study, attende lectioni (attend to reading). In truth, you cannot read too much in Scripture; and what you read carefully you cannot understand too well, and what you understand well you cannot teach too well, and what you teach well you cannot live too well. Experto crede Ruperto (Believe a man who has found this out). It is the devil, it is the world, it is our flesh that are raging and ravaging against us.

Therefore, dear sirs and brethren, pastors and preachers, pray, read, study, be diligent. Truly, this evil, shameful time is not the season for being lazy, for sleeping and snoring. Use the gift that has been entrusted to you, and reveal the mystery of Christ.

-Martin Luther

Energy Efficiency

I was thinking some this weekend about work and being tired – we’re all tired by the end of the day, but what is it worth? We all have a job to do, somewhere we spend our energy for some type of result. It’s not a question of whether we are going to use up our energy, but what we are going to accomplish with it.

Efficiency does not specifically mean not using energy (like an energy efficient fridge), but the lack of waste. How responsible is our use of the daily resources that God gives us all: time and energy? It is not just important to consider what we do as how we do it, and why.

Luther described changing diapers for the glory of God:

“Now observe that when that clever harlot, our natural reason (which the pagans followed in trying to be most clever), takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife, provide for her, labour at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves? What, should I make such a prisoner of myself? 0 you poor, wretched fellow, have you taken a wife? Fie, fie upon such wretchedness and bitterness! It is better to remain free and lead a peaceful. carefree life; I will become a priest or a nun [not exactly what my natural reason compels me to, but Luther wrote in a different age...] and compel my children to do likewise.”

What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, “0 God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers. or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? 0 how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labour, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight.”

A wife too should regard her duties in the same light, as she suckles the child, rocks and bathes it, and cares for it in other ways; and as she busies herself with other duties and renders help and obedience to her husband. These are truly golden and noble works…

Now you tell me, when a father goes ahead and washes diapers or performs some other mean task for his child, and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool, though that father is acting in the spirit just described and in Christian faith, my dear fellow you tell me, which of the two is most keenly ridiculing the other? God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling, not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith. Those who sneer at him and see only the task but not the faith are ridiculing God with all his creatures, as the biggest fool on earth. Indeed, they are only ridiculing themselves; with all their cleverness they are nothing but devil’s fools.”

[From Luther's "The Estate of Marriage" (1522) posted online here.]

Do people get glimpses of Christ in the way that we go about our work?

Do we devote even the most menial tasks to the glory of God?