Month: March 2017

Categories
PWTE Daily Devotion

Following Footprints into the Great Unknown

CR 187 Chaffee County, Colorado

Jesus calls us to follow him even when we can’t see where his footprints lead.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”
John 10:27 New Living Translation

I made good time on my way to Faith Lutheran Church in Buena Vista, Colorado to install their new pastor. Not surprisingly, I took my camera with me. Buena Vista sits in the Arkansas River Valley between Leadville to the north and Salida to the south, on the eastern side of the Collegiate Peaks. Instead of finding a good view, a “buena vista”, of  mounts Princeton, Yale, or Harvard, I chose a route less traveled and found these aspen trees cradled in the snow.

CR 187 Chaffee County, Colorado

Frankly, I needed to get out of the car and I needed to feed my fix for pushing the shutter button on my camera. It was the middle of the day, the sky was bright, and there was far too much contrast for decent pictures. After taking a few nondescript pics, I saw these footprints deeply embedded in the old snow and heading off into the great unknown. I was still in my Sunday best, so I didn’t follow where they led.

I don’t know where they stopped.

I don’t know what buena vista awaited the hiker.

I don’t know the struggles along the way.

Jesus, our Good Shepherd, calls us to follow his footprints. Lent reminds us of this call. We see his footprints that lead to his cross, tomb, and resurrection. These footprints are obvious. But as those who follow Christ, we don’t always see his steps that lead us as we daily pick up our cross and follow him. We have many questions about where Jesus will lead us.

Where will the journey end?

What will the view be like when we get there?

What struggles will we face along the way?

We can choose to admire the footprints to the cross but not engage in the journey. Or, we can allow the Holy Spirit to lead us into the great unknown of following Jesus. I’d rather embrace the latter and let God surprise me.

Text and Picture Copyright Douglas P Brauner

Categories
PWTE Daily Devotion

“Knowing God”

Part II.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

Here is God’s wisdom—He is determined to know us in His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.  God could simply know us as our creator.  That would be all that God needs to know about us.  Nothing of our true nature, thoughts, words, or deeds is hidden from God our creator.  But something would be hidden from Him (anthropomorphically speaking)—our righteousness in Christ.  It is an alien righteousness, remember.  For God only to know us on the basis of Genesis 1-3 is to ask Him to know us without Christ.

This is an unusual way to speak, but it directs attention to the awesome grace of God.  God is determined to know us in Christ.  God’s knowing us in Christ imputes to us Christ’s own righteousness, translates us from enemies to friends, receives us as God’s adopted sons and daughters.  Now we are co-heirs with Christ of every spiritual blessing under heaven. (Ephesians 1:3)

This is not because we know God, but because He knows us in Christ.  It is only through being known by God in Christ that we may hope to come to some accurate knowledge of ourselves.  In John 17:25-26, Jesus prays for us:

“Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me.  I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
New International Version

Jesus knows the Father; we have access to the Father’s throne of grace through Jesus.  In Jesus and His perfect obedience, in Christ and His vicarious atonement, the Father knows us.

Now we know something, now that God knows us in Christ.  Now we know whose we are, whose we must be.  Now we love Him.  Now we serve Him.  Now we understand that to stand in grace is to stand perpetually in God’s knowledge of us in Christ.  We know, we love, we serve, we stand in grace…not out of our knowledge of God, but through His gracious knowledge of us in Christ.

Text and picture copyright Don Schatz

Categories
PWTE Daily Devotion

“Knowing” God

Part I.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord….”
Philippians 3:8, New International Version.

Is the purpose of Christian spirituality to grow in a greater knowledge of God?  Or, is the purpose of Christian spirituality to bring one increasingly to that place where they are known more wholly by God?

“Knowing” God as an object of intellectual inquiry runs the risk of a certain hubris that is always a danger for the human soul.  To “know” in this sense implies the possibility, at least, of knowing God completely.  This, however, reduces God to a spiritual being whose essential nature, mind and conduct are capable of being apprehended by the human mind, understood in all their multitudinous implications, and embraced in an intentional action of human will and mind.

What seems innocent enough on the surface, a spirituality that grows one in knowing God, is in fact impossible, at least from that angle.  And there are accompanying dangers.  To “know” God can too often imply some sense of ownership, either of God, His will or a correct understanding and explication of the same.  One can corner the market on this understanding of God and His will, and can even end up insisting that this view of things, of God in particular, is the only correct way of thinking about Him, of knowing Him.

On the other hand, if the purpose of Christian spirituality is to bring the individual increasingly to that place where they are known more wholly by God, then some of the above dangers are obviated.  Now, the emphasis is on serving God in love and not on knowing Him.

Still, it is a strange way to speak:  “to bring the individual increasingly to that place where they are known more wholly by God.  How does this make sense?  How can God, who created me in the first place, know me any better tomorrow than He does today, simply by my practicing some spiritual disciplines, classical or not?

It is better to be known by God, and through His knowing, grow in knowing ourselves, than it is to attempt to know Him for ourselves, and so grow in some sort of knowledge of who we are and what might be expected of us.

Text and picture copyright Don Schatz