The Advocate given to us

This was a message Andy Westra wrote for one of my classes, which applies God's promise to us well -- not only those in ministry but all Christians speaking for Christ.

The Spirit works through our words

by Andy Westra

“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me” (John 15:26).

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Umm… uhh… These were the only sounds that escaped my mouth as I tried to begin my 4H speech when I was in the third grade Spring Hill Elementary School. Now don’t worry. I got over that initial hiccup and delivered a fantastic speech.

I’m preparing for the preaching ministry, and sometimes I think writing and delivering a sermon is one of the biggest fears young men like me have about entering the ministry. I have heard my brothers say things such as “What if I accidentally preach false doctrine?” or “What if I’m not an exciting preacher?” or even “What if I can’t preach at all, and I just freeze up while I am in the pulpit trying to deliver a sermon?” I have also had some of these same fears cross my mind as I think about my future ministry.  I think Christians in general have similar fears in regard to speaking about Jesus in everyday witnessing to others.  We fear we won’t say the right things.

As sinful human beings, we have trust issues. We sometimes feel that we are not worthy of handling God’s Word and bringing it to other people, and we are absolutely right. Every single one of us has fallen short of the requirements God set in place for a person to acquire heaven. Not one person can claim to have met God’s standards, but there is one man who lived on this earth who can make that claim. You all know that one man is Jesus Christ, and through Christ’s innocent life, death, and resurrection he won salvation for us. Christ sends the Holy Spirit out through the Word of God from the Father, and in that Word is the power of Christ.  The power is in his Word, not in us.

Now this does not mean that a pastor will just march up to the pulpit on Sunday morning and just open his mouth and figure the Spirit will make words flow from his mouth without having done any preparation. On the contrary, a diligent pastor will put in hours and hours each week writing and practicing sermons, so he is fully prepared to speak for God. And it doesn’t mean that Christian people will assume the Spirit will make words just flow from their mouths when opportunities arise to speak to others about Jesus.  On the contrary, disciples of Jesus will study Bible often so they know what the Word says and are prepared to share its truth with others.   But when we do speak for God, we always take comfort in Christ’s promise.  Christ has sent us the Holy Spirit and in him is the power.  So where we faithfully preach the gospel, the Holy Spirit is there working.

How comforting is it to know that as we handle the precious Word of God the Holy Spirit is active in our words. What a blessing it is to know that while we speak about the salvation which is ours in Christ to people who so need to hear that message, the Holy Spirit will be with us and going out through the gospel and working in the hearts of those who hear what we say.

Freedom in Christ

This week's message is from English major and writing coach Kaylee Messman, who also worked as an assistant last summer for my course on Writing Bible Studies. 

Free to be Faithful

by Kaylee Messman

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” 

2 Corinthians 3:17

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This summer I landed a job working second shift at a filter factory in the town where I live. The filters that we make are used by farmers to filter sediment out of milk. Our main job on second shift is to sit at a sewing machine and sew the material together to form the filter bag. I’ll admit that it isn’t the most exciting job on the planet. The best part about being on second shift is that there are no managers around. My college-age coworkers and I are alone in the factory without any bosses on duty to be bossy with us. We can get away with almost anything! For example, we will frequently dance along to the radio or go exploring in the mysterious basement underneath the warehouse instead of actually doing our jobs. While our antics distract us from the repetitive job that we’re assigned to do, I can’t help but feel a little guilty about goofing off after the fact.

My experience with no managers on second shift is similar to the situation that we face as New Testament Christians. Paul emphasizes in 2 Corinthians 3 that the terms of the Old Covenant are no longer binding. The old rules delegated how the people had to behave in both worship and civic life. When Christ came to earth to live a perfect life and die for us, he brought freedom from the old ways. Because of this, we are no longer under such tight supervision. Of course this doesn’t mean that we can run around sinning whenever and wherever we please! Instead, it means we act maturely, responsible for ourselves, guided in our freedom by the Spirit of God who now inhabits us by his Word.

What do lives lived in the Spirit look like?  How will freedom and faith coincide in our daily endeavors?  When we're at work, we'll work faithfully, honestly, and diligently; we won't look at our labors as mere drudgery.  We live in joy, knowing Jesus endured far more than drudgery for us, and his presence in our lives is our constant hope.  We'll enjoy the world around us.  Maybe dancing on company time isn't the best idea, but when appropriate we will be dancing and singing and enjoying life, because we don't have to fear sin or evil knowing God is on our side.  And we can enjoy good music and good food and good friends and not feel inhibited in how we live, because "everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving" (1 Timothy 4:4).  We can go exploring and trying new things (although, again, maybe not the basement on company time!)  knowing God's Spirit goes with us wherever we are.  We have been set free by Jesus -- free to be faithful and full of life.  And so we will live -- freely and faithfully

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, I thank you for granting me freedom through the Spirit. Continue to be with me that I may continue to live freely and faithfully, serving you to the best of my ability. Amen.

"I Will Respect You"

A young woman speaks from her own difficult experience about what healthy man-woman relationships look like. 

 “I Will Respect You”

by Mariah Wild

It is in the look she gives him, that he just does not seem to understand. It is in her sighs when his back is turned. It is in her tears that she has to cry alone.

A woman, she expresses herself through emotions and by them is how she loves deeply and hurts most. Yet those same emotions have the ability inexplicably to trip her up when they prevent her from leaving an unhealthy relationship. She has found herself having allowed an emotional attachment to have taken place between her and her man, one that has now become a detriment to her when the questions arise. Why is he asking me to “submit” to him, when I do not feel comfortable doing that? Why am I getting the feeling that I am worthless? How much does it hurt when he does not appreciate my personal gifts and talents that God has blessed me with?

A woman does not easily acknowledge that her boyfriend is mistreating her. And once she is able to remove the rose tinted sunglasses rather than peeking over the top every once in a while to see the truth, what does she do then?  She forces herself to go back and take a deeper look at what the things she thought she was doing wrong the whole time, coming to the conclusion that the problem is not so much her as was him. She searches for the key to this downward spiral. She wants to find what was driving him to be this way, and how had she been so taken in by him while being misled.

I was once this woman, and if your man was anything like the male counterpart I had at one time, even though he was a Christian, he had a misinterpretation of this Bible passage. Perhaps, hurt wife or girlfriend, you can see that this is where your man also derived his own ideas.

“Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.” (Colossians 3:18)

The “submit” in this passage, if interpreted correctly, is about respect. Respect your husband as God asks us to. Men look for this respect, as they look for the encouragement of that we are proud of them. We can be proud of our men in many circumstances and give them the respect that they look for. This becomes a challenge however, when they mistreat us or when they see submission as a form of servitude or forceful compliance in terms of physical affection.

We cannot as women make the men in our lives re-evaluate themselves. Rather we can offer another Bible verse to encourage men to make the adjustment for their women that God has entrusted them to care for; “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy.” (Ephesians 5:25)

Christ is the ultimate example for how men should love their women. Christ was the first to love all of us and was willing to show that love even to the point of laying down his life on the cross. When men have Christ in their hearts, love and commitment and unselfish sacrifice will flow from them to their wives, their own beloved. When women see and feel this, their men are truly worth respecting.   

About the Electric Gospel

Once upon a time, when I was serving as pastor of a small, mission-oriented church in West Texas -- and when people were still accessing email and very rudimentary Internet through dial-up phone connections -- I thought it would be a good idea to send out a weekly devotion via email to church members and other interested persons.  I called my weekly email transmission "The Electric Gospel."  [Like the claim that Al Gore invented the Internet, I'd like to make the claim that I was one of the first pastors ever to do a weekly email devotion.  But I really can't prove that!]

At any rate, in those heydays of the late 1990s, it turned out that as I sent out my email devotions to friends and acquaintances they would forward them to further friends and acquaintances, etc.  It so happened that my emails started reaching some assistant editors at Forward in Christ magazine (which actually had a different magazine name back then, but I won't bother you with that).  Linda, one of those assistant editors, contacted me to say, "We'd like to publish this particular devotion you wrote about Tinky Winky in our magazine.  May we do so?"

Thus it was that the fledgling "Electric Gospel" email series became my first foray into article writing as a published author.  Forward in Christ used at least one other of my "Electric Gospel" items as a feature article and also began asking me to write other material specifically for them.

A few years ago, when I began teaching an online course through Martin Luther College on Devotional Writing, I resurrected the "Electric Gospel" name to create a blogsite where students in the course would post their finished devotions. 

For a while I repurposed the "Electic Gospel" as a place to field-test devotions for a book I'm scheduled to write.    

Now I've repurposed this site yet again.  Rather than just my writing, I'd like to feature the writing of various Christian friends who have written items of strong spiritual impact.  If you have something you'd like me to consider for the site, send it my way.

David Sellnow

Professor of religion, philosophy and history