Psalm 19

⁷ The law of the LORD is perfect,
       reviving the soul.
       The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy,
       making wise the simple.

⁸ The precepts of the LORD are right,
       giving joy to the heart.
       The commands of the LORD are radiant,
       giving light to the eyes.

⁹ The fear of the LORD is pure,
       enduring forever.
       The ordinances of the LORD are sure
       and altogether righteous.

¹⁰ They are more precious than gold,
       than much pure gold;
       they are sweeter than honey,
       than honey from the comb.

I am still reading the Bible through the year and this was one of my passages from yesterday.  It is such a great reminder of how important the Bible is to our everyday life.

It revives us… Gives us joy… It enlightens us and makes us righteous… it is more precious than Gold, sweeter than honey. 

The Word of God is our source for our physical needs as well as our Spiritual needs.

Reading the Word is critical….

Final Thoughts on Field Ed Summer 2010

This summer I took my next to last Field Education class. Field Ed is an important part of the Theology degrees. It's suppose to be the class that ties the theory with practice. For the most part they are enjoyable and edifying. This summer was especially fulfilling. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, Life Together, was such an amazing book. I look forward to reading it again.


The last chapter of Life Together dealt with Confession and the Lord's Supper. Of course the confession part stood out more than the Lord's Supper portion. Bonhoeffer stressed the importance of confession. But not private confession, but confession to one person. Someone you can trust but it has to be someone other
than yourself. The idea is that when one confesses their sin to another person it is humbling and painful and will be a true confession.  You will be a lot less likely to commit the same sin again if you make yourself vulnerable to another human being. It makes so much sense, but wow, for someone who has trust issues it can be extremely difficult.

I haven't talked about the other book we read, Tale of Three Kings, by Gene Edwards. It didn't suck me in the way Life Together did. But it had some good points. It compared and contrasted King Saul, King David, and "King" Absalom. The thing I pulled from the book is the importance of choice. We choose the our reaction to situations. We choose our behavior.

I walked away with many encouraging things from this semester.  I feel challenged and encouraged.

More from Life Together

I’m truly amazed at how much good stuff there’s been in Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together. It will be quite easy to write my 1,000 word paper at the end of class on what I’ve learned.  Actually it might be hard to keep it to 1,000 words. 

So this week’s reading was a chapter called Service. I think in the other’s book it is called Ministry, regardless, it was good stuff. The service/ministry to the community as defined by Bonhoeffer:

The first and probably foundational service we can do is: Listening

It is so true, most of the time it’s harder to listen than to speak. Often we think we have so much to say that’s so beneficial when actually if we would only shut up and listen the person would be so much better off. But another thing that Bonhoeffer points out that most of us probably wouldn’t have thought about is if we stop listening to people, we will stop listening to God.

The second service is: Active helpfulness

That means not being too good to do anything, whatever it takes to help the person. The thing that just slapped me hard in this section was the statement that we should be ready to be interrupted by God. By Him sending people across our path who need to be helped. If we past them by we are in essence no better than the priest tha tpast by the beaten victim in the Good Samaritan story.

The third service: Bearing One Another Burdens

As Christ bore our burden of sin on the cross we should bear one another’s burdens. And we should always remember those burdens are people, our brothers and sisters. We need to always remind ourselves that Christ bore a tremendous burden for us, we need to support each other.

He always warns us that the weak shouldn’t gloat the strong when they fail, nor should those who are strong in their faith lord it over those who are weak when they fail.  We are a family and need to support one another.

The final service Bonhoeffer gives us: The Word of God

Sharing the Word of God is not about being in a position such as Pastor or teacher, but more of a time and place. Speaking the Word of God into one’s life is a natural are of listening, helping and bearing one another’s burdens. It’s also that confidence in God’s Word that helps us be comfortable in not saying a word.

At the end of the chapter there are two sentences that just hit home:

Genuine spiritual authority is to be found only where the service of listening, helping, forebearing and proclaiming is carried out.

Genuine authority knows that it can only exist in the service of the One who alone has authority.

My authority comes from serving God alone.

Dietrich This Week

This week’s chapter in Living Together deals with spending time alone. A stark contrast from last week’s chapter that dealt with the importance of community.

Bonhoeffer stresses that spending time alone with God is as important as spending time with the community. One can’t out weigh the other, but they need to be equally important. Bonhoeffer also warns against seeking community out of loneliness. As I read through this chapter where he talked about developing self and not looking for community as a “fix” for what is developed in the quiet time I was reminded of the saying, “No matter what church you go to you will still be stuck with you.” The church can’t fix what needs to be developed within us during that one on one time with God.

Bonhoeffer goes on to state that “Genuine speech comes out of silence and genuine silence comes out of speech.”  I love the philosophical circle that Bonhoeffer paints here. Yet, there is tremendous truth in his words, ‘genuine speech comes out of silence…’  Because he defines silence as nothing other than waiting for God’s Word and coming from God’s Word with a blessings. It’s when we are silent, praying, mediating, and reading God’s Word that we will then have something genuine to say.

That time of silence is the most difficult for me to find. Not being a morning person being trying to be silent usually finds me snoring some more. But I do what to have something genuine to say, which only comes from times of silence.

Oh the challenges we face!

Sharing the Gospel

The past three weeks, my pastor has been speaking on how to share the Gospel and more importantly why to share the Gospel.  One of the things I appreciate most about my pastor is his heart for the lost. He is passionate about leading those who are far away from the Lord to Him.

Over the course of three weeks he covered these four points:

1. There is something to admit. Our sin condition.
   Romans 3:23 and Romans 6:23.
   We all start in the same place, we are sinners condemned to death.
2. There is something to believe. God’s generous provision.
   John 3:16-17 and 2 Cor. 5:21
   God provided a way out from our sin.
   Literally a “Get out of Jail Free” card. (that’s mine not his)
3. There is something to consider. The cost of obedience to Christ.
   2 Cor. 5:15 and Luke 9:23-24
   There is a price to serving Christ people really do need to understand that.
4. There is something to do. Live what we believe is true.
   Romans 10:9 and John 1:12
   Confessing that Jesus is Lord.
   It’s also important to let that person know that feelings aren’t important, they come and they go.  We are promised that if we believe we ARE children of God! 

In this past year we’ve seen 8 people take the 4 steps.

It’s been very cool, now it’s taking them through the next steps of developing their faith and encouraging them through the hard times.

What I learned from Dietrich this week

This week I had the pleasure of leading the discussion on Living Together with the class. Due to the fact that we had so many other good things to discuss tonight including watching an amazing video featuring Jim Garlow preaching on church history, there wasn’t a lot of time to discuss the book.

However, I found this chapter interesting and convicting. There are several things Bonhoeffer brings out in this chapter, more than I could ever begin to discuss here. The primary theme dealt with Scripture. An overall, theme through out was the importance of Scripture. A key phrase was the idea of looking at the Bible as a letter from a close friend. I remember “back in the day” when we actually sent letters getting one from a friend, I would read it over and over. I would keep it in a safe place and read it frequently. In fact, I’m sure there’s a box in my garage with some of those letters still in them. Today, it’s all about email, but there are those that I’ve saved and read many times. It should be that way with God’s Word. We should read it as if they are the most important words in the world, which they are. Sadly, too often we neglect our Bibles and only open them on Sunday morning.  Again, God with His Spiritual 2x4 smacking me up side the head.

The next thing that I really enjoyed was Dietrich discussion of praying the Psalms. The book of Psalms is one of my favorites and I’ve heard and even prayed some of the Psalms. I’d never thought of it as such a significant way to pray.  We learn what prayer is, on the bases of God’s words which in turn His promises. The Psalms help us to know what to pray. I think of Psalm 51 where David prays and asks God for forgiveness and restoration. How often I need to pray that! Of course there’s the “Hallel” Psalms where we can praise God and all the reasons why we should praise Him. Lastly, it teaches us to pray as a community. How cool it would be for us to pray through a Psalm together.

The third thing from this chapter that was so valuable to me was Dietrich discussion on singing. He states, “Christians sing together to make it possible for them to speak and pray the same Word at the same time.” Bringing about a since of community and more importantly UNITY. As I read this one thought came to mind, “I need to be sure to pick GOOD songs!!” When we sing a song as a congregation we are making a confession, praise, or possibly a request together in one voice, it better be the right words, words that are clearly supported through scripture.  He continues by saying, “…singing from the heart, singing to the Lord, singing the Word; this is singing in unity.” I think this is why I feel so blessed when I hear the people at my church singing and praising God.

I find it interesting that even in the 1940’s Bonhoeffer felt the need to address the fact that vanity and bad taste have no place in worship. I struggled with the ideal that all the singing must be in unison. I understand what he was saying, and I agree that if you have a vocalist or a musician that is attempting to draw attention to themselves then that’s wrong, it becomes about the person instead of God.

Again, I have much to think about and look at how I plan.  Thankfully, I  don’t have any singers or musicians on my teams that try to be the center of attention. 

Life Together – Community

For my Field Ed class we’re reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together”.  The first chapter is on Community and I must admit the first several “pages” (I’m reading it on my Kindle) are lost on me.  I have no idea what I read or what it was about. But tonight as I sat at Chipotle and read I was struck by some profound truths that I quite frankly have forgotten.  In regards to what brings us together as a community:

“We thank God for what God has done for us. We thank God for giving us other Christians who live by God’s call, forgiveness, and Promise. We do not complain about what God does not give us; rather we are thankful for what God does give us daily.”

Talk about a smack in the face!  It’s that spiritual 2x4 that God likes to use now and again to get our attention.

Focusing on being thankful for each and every day. I also liked his statement “Only those who give thanks for the little things receive the great things as well.” If we’re not thankful for the little things in our lives will really appreciate the big things in our lives?  Bonhoeffer would have had a definite problem with the “name it and claim it” crowd, many of which preach “believe and pray for the Cadillac” to receive the Cadillac.

When the reality is most believers in “Third World” countries are so thankful and so appreciative to God for being able to live another day on the earth. Some of the poorest are the richest people in the world because of their thankfulness.

Thankfulness should be a natural part of our worship. Thanking God for the “little” things in life. A home, clean water to drink, etc. instead of whining about not having an iPad or even an iTouch. 

This section of the book was a nice reminder that I need to be thankful for all the wonderful things and wonderful people in my life.

Thanks Dietrich!