John 1:18  No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known.

Howard Rutledge was an American fighter pilot. The North Vietnamese shot him down and took him captive in 1965. Then his captors threw Rutledge in the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison, into the building called (by the Americans) Heartbreak Hotel.

We all know what it feels like to be imprisoned by our sin in the Heartbreak Hotel of our own making. The problem for us, though, is that at first it didn't look like Heartbreak Hotel. It looked like the Promised Land! It even was the Promised Land - at least for a while. The moral indiscretion? "No, big deal!" That financial dishonesty? "No gig deal!" That small, little lie? "No big deal!" Eventually, though, "no big deal" became a really big deal!

 I've got bad news for you. We can't fight our way out of our prison of sin. We can't think our way out, buy our way out, or educate our way out.

We're not permanently stuck, however, in our sin, languishing in our Heartbreak Hotel.

The tokens of Christ's Passion make known to us the loving heart of our heavenly Father. The whip, thirty pieces of silver, dice, nails, and spear point to one overwhelming fact. The Father doesn't recoil, run, or retreat at the sight of our ufly prison. He comes to save us.

One day, Howard Rutledge saw a glimmer of light dawning through the bottom of his prison door. He knew God would set him free. For us, that light dawning is Christ's Easter victory.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

John 1:16 For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

I remember when my son was in High School. He dedicated every ounce of his strength to one goal - making the basketball team. Then the day came when the coach posted the list of who made the team. The process left him with the understanding that to get anything in life, he would have to sacrifice, sweat, and give it all he has - and then some.

We are pros at performance. God is a pro at grace. From God's fullness, He gives us - unworthy sinners- not just grace. Grace upon grace!

There are other options than grace. We might try salvation by sincerity. "It doesn't matter what you believe, just as long as you're sincere." Yet we've all been sincerely wrong about a lot of things! Then there's salvation by subtraction. If being saved wasn't doing anything then everyone in nursing homes would be saved. You don't do a lot in those places. Or how about salvation by service? Do good. Be nice. Help people. None of this works. We will never generate enough sincerity, subtraction, or service.

Remember The Little Engine That Could? I think I can, I think I can." Grace isn't for the little engine that could. Grace is for the little engine that couldn't. Grace is for the little engine that turned out to be a massive train wreck! God's magnificent grace in Christ's cleansing blood is His gift to you!

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

John 1:12  But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.

Between 1854 and 1929, over 250,000 children in crowded cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia were placed on trains and shipped west, across the United States. These trains would stop for viewings. Potential parents would ask questions, evaluate health, and even examine the children's teeth. If chosen, the children had a home. If not, they got back on the train - the orphan train.

I wish I could tell you that the fathers then went looking for their children, that they got their life together and headed west to find what they had lost. I'd love to describe the moments when these children heard their father say, "It's me. I came for you!" But I can't. Few of these fathers ever came looking for their children.

Do you sometimes feel like you're stuck on an orphan train? that you've sinned one time too many? that God has a limit on grace? That might be how you feel. But feelings are not facts. These are the facts: your Father in heaven comes looking for you! When we believe in the Savior, we become His children.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Psalm 141:2 Let my prayer be counted as incense before You, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!

A husband and wife were awoken in the middle of the night by their little boy. Half-awake and almost hysterical, he threw his arms around his parents and refused to let go. He had experienced a nightmare. As he told his parents what he had dreamed, they quickly realized that bits and pieces of his bad dream were from a movie they had watched before bed. The vivid pictures he had seen right before going to sleep had stayed with him and continued as he slept.

The couple decided that screen time would no longer happen right before bed. The director of their Sunday School program encouraged them to use bedtime as a family devotion time in which they would share about their day, read Scripture, and pray together. There was no promise that this would prevent nightmares going forward, but what the couple discovered was that their children went to bed with their parents' voices in their head, not an actor's. Rather than ingesting sarcastic words from teenage characters, their children went to bed having had God's Word poured over them. Best of all, the last thought of their day was of their Savior, Jesus, through whom they have direct access to God.

While God's people benefit from praying to Him at all times of day, evening prayers bless the hearts and minds of God's children of all ages and provide for them comfort and peace as they close their eyes to sleep. There is no better comfort than that.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Psalm 59:16 But I will sing of Your strength; I will sing aloud of Your steadfast love in the morning. For You have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress.

Praying is our faithful action believing that God is listening. We pray because we know that God is present and willing to be heard. How do we find this out? From Jesus. He faithfully and daily spends time with His Father, seeking His will for the day. Jesus tells us that He only does what the Father is doing. His Father wants only that ongoing relationship with us that acknowledges that He knows exactly what we need to be with Him and His creation. Jesus is content not to make things up for His daily life. He knows that whatever His Father thinks is best is good enough for Him.

Making use of a prayer like Luther's Morning Prayer, we have the opportunity to acknowledge God's presence in the past, day and night. Because of that Faithful experience with Him, we boldly ask Him to lead us through the day to come. We humbly, and yet with childlike expectation, look forward to what He has in store for us. We ask for His protection, look forward to what He has in store for us. We ask For His protection from the evil one, who would see us distracted from the Lord and His blessings for us.

We can do all of this kind of praying because God is really present with us. Through the Holy Spirit's power, we speak with God in complete confidence that He loves us so much that nothing - not even our sins, the devil's power, and death - can defeat what He has in store for the day. Bring it on, Lord!!!
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

John 4:23-24 But the hour is coming, is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

The Christian life begins when the Holy Spirit, through God's Word, moves us to trust that the Father has forgiven our sin for Jesus' sake. It is sustained when the Spirit uses God's Word to show us our sins, move us to repentance, and announce forgiveness. Where does this happen? Certainly in personal devotions, but especially through other Christians in worship. There, God speaks to us through the pastor when he forgives our sins in Absolution and proclaims the Good News in the sermon. There, God speaks to us when we confess the Good News together in the Creed and sing it together in hymns and songs.  We respond by praising God, offering prayers, and returning to our everyday lives to love our neighbors in our vocations. The Spirit sustains our faith through God's Word.

This explains both why we should attend worship and what worship should be like. God commands us to share His Word with one another so that we grow in faith toward Him and love toward our neighbors. We need to hear His Law so we confess our sins, and we need to hear His Gospel so we cling to His forgiveness. Music, songs, and liturgy should therefore proclaim God's Word to us. Songs without the Gospel do not strengthen faith, and neither do rituals done for their own sake. Where song and ritual proclaim God's Word, however, the Spirit serves us and preserves us in the one true faith.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Mark 9:24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, "I believe; help my unbelief!"

Most people do not like exams. Although if the instructor says, "This will be an open-book exam," that relieves some stress. Luther's Christian Questions can be compared to an open-book exam, and the open book is the Bible.

As in the classroom, we learn things when we take this exam. First, like the father of the demon-possessed boy in Mark 9:24, we learn we need help with our unbelief. The answers we find in our open book tell us of our sinfulness. They remind us that we break God's commands and deserve His punishment. Every time we sin, our unbelief shows through. We find ourselves helpless and can only beg, "Help my unbelief!"

The second thing we learn in our open-book exam is that God loves us, unbelief and all. By grace and through the power of the Holy Spirit, He enables us to believe in Jesus as the only hope for our unbelief. Like the father in Mark 9, we can also cry out, "I believe." We believe in all that God has done in Christ to bring us forgiveness, life, and salvation.

What we learn in our open-book exam about unbelief and our belief impels us to come to the Sacrament of our Savior's body and blood. There we find our beggarly prayer for help answered through the forgiveness of sins. There we find renewal of belief so that it may have more power over our unbelief as we live our lives as Christ's people.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,