I don’t like to listen. I never have been the best at it. I know some of you know me and know that I can be a good listener but I will tell you it takes a tremendous amount of work. I, like many extroverted men, want to solve problems and think I have all the answers. It makes it hard at times to listen.

So the question I have been asking myself is how am I doing. Am I listening to my wife, my kids, my coworkers, my friends, my students? The answer all too often is no. I know I should but just don’t do it. I am reminded often when I think about listening, about Jesus’ ability to listen. I know the scripture is full of stories about him jumping into action and about him teaching. Lately however I have been noticing the instances where he is listening in the gospel lessons. (John 4)  I am struck by how often he listens. He listens to their gripes, complaints, needs and wants and then responds with more questions and answers to understand them. He was a very good active listener, and springs into action to help them in their need. I want to be more like Jesus.

In a world today that almost always seems to spring to action first or just plain forgets to listen to the other side I would say. Maybe we all just need to listen to each other a little more. When you think about relationships, politics, family and all the people around you, maybe you should think about listening more and acting less. I know I need to start.

I have always wondered if students and more importantly I believe in the power of prayer.  It is a tough question to ask yourself as someone who thinks it is important to share faith with the students God has put in my life.

I don’t know if I have the answers yet but I decided this year as part of our youth ministry we are going to focus on prayer.  Not, we are going to pray at events and times together for a few minutes. We are going to spend time, 2 times a month and take 25 minuates to pray as a group and see how God answers.

To help us do this we decided it would be good to have a wall of prayer.  We as a group of students, parent helpers, adults and myself take time to be in prayer every other week to write down and take prayers off the wall and pray for them. On the other side of the wall we have added a sign for answered prayer.  This will be the hard part.  Students have been asked to move their card as God seems to answer their prayer.

Maybe God will say yes, maybe he will say no, maybe he will say not yet, maybe he will say it is time for your loved one to come home, and maybe he will just say rest in me.  I don’t really know how this will turn out.  I don’t know if this will work out, or how it will work out, but I know it is important to see this not as just a wall but a wall of Christ’s answered prayers for us.

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near
Hebrews 10:24-25

Bring a Church worker can be a very lonely vocation. We spend countless hours with other people, We are on call for people and their problems 24/7 and finding someone in ministry you can be honest with and dump on can be a truly difficult thing.  Its not that people at Church don’t care, because they do, but it is your place to be with them not them with you. So my goal has always been to have people outside of my church and community to speak with and grow with.

But I don’t think this is just a problem for Church workers.  I think this is a problem for all people in many walks of life.  You see I think it is one of the devils great tricks. He wants us to be alone.  When we feel truly alone, when we have no one we are talking with about this faith thing then we are so easily tricked into feeling like God isn’t there. Or we believe no one cares including God.

Lately I have been a part of a couple of groups of people who have helped me feel less alone.  People who I really feel care about me, and I can dump on.  I try to do the same for them.  My point here is don’t be alone.  God calls us to live this faith out in community.  He calls us to live it out with others.

I think American Christianity has lost something in our goal of individualism. Many people tell me today their faith is between them and God. Although I agree that it obviously has a personal part, faith is truly lived out in community.  The community helps keep you on the straight path when it comes to theology, faith life, and practice.  It keeps us from going too far down a path of evil.  Its goal is to hold everyone accountable, and more importantly remind them of the God who forgives us for Christ’s sake.

So we come back to, are you alone?  Well with Jesus of course we are not but since we don’t get to see touch and see him in visible form it is probably best to experience this Jesus in community as the body of Christ.  You see; we see Jesus, when we see each other.  We see Jesus when we gather together around the Word of God and sharing our faith in that context. This faith we are given as a gift and we experience all of it in this amazing community.  We also experience it in this community when we experience the forgiveness of sins with body and blood of Christ. We can receive it in private confession surrounded in God’s word.

So today I pray all of us experience this community of the believers in Christ.  We never have to be alone.  Where even if our vocation or job makes us feel alone we have a place where we never are alone again in Christ Jesus through his body the Church.

in Christ,

Steve

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 ESV.

What is love? I have been asked this a lot over the years by students and friends.  I always take them back to 1 Corinthians 13. I know it is a verse that is read at every wedding and often gets quoted during Valentines day but what does love really mean?  As a good Lutheran it is a great question to ask. Let me start by telling you what it doesn’t mean first.

Love is not an emotion.  Love is not a feeling about another person.  Love isn’t about making me happy or making the other person happy.  It isn’t an emotional high. What Paul talked about here has nothing to do with how I feel about someone.  If we think love has to do with feelings then we missed the whole point of the text. But more importantly what love truly is. (this by the way is the hardest for my students to understand)

Over the years I think many of us have gotten the idea that the love in a relationship between two people has to do with how we feel.  When people use this text as a marriage text I pray the pastor explains to them what the text means.  The Love used here is always used as a verb.  It is never an adjective or noun.  It describes how we care for each other. You see Love is about how we respond to those around us.  It tells us how love is acted out.  Love is about action. The really crazy part is this text has very little to do with us at all beyond a way for us to imitate Christ.  If we were to focus solely on how we are to love each other we would miss out on the most important part of love text.

The most important part of this love text isn’t how do I love my spouse or how to do I love my girlfriend or boyfriend but how does Jesus love me? His love in this text points us to something that is so important to marriage, love endures.  Love doesn’t give up. That care from God lasts even when we don’t deserve it.  Love is patient…Absolutely Christ is patient with a crazy awful sinner like me. God showed His love for me by forgiving my sin through the cross.

Today as you think about Love remember that Love isn’t about how you feel about other people but about how God showed his care for you.  As you think about those around you today share the crazy love Jesus showed to us sinners.

in Christ,

Steve