Praying with Christ

And how shall we pray those psalms of unspeakable misery and suffering, the meaning of which we have hardly begun to sense even remotely? We can and we should pray the psalms of suffering, the psalms of the passion, not in order to generate in ourselves what our hearts do not know of their own experience, not to make our own laments, but because all this suffering was real and actual in Jesus Christ, because the Man Jesus Christ suffered sickness, pain, shame, and death, because in his suffering and death all flesh suffered and died. What happened to us on—Dietrich…

Posted on Tuesday, February 07, 2012 by Pastor Jerry Owen

Righteous Impatience

When I asked him about the passage in which Jeremiah cursed the day on which he had been born and suggested that such impatience was a sin, Martin Luther replied, "Sometimes one has to wake up our Lord God with such words. Otherwise he doesn’t hear. It is a case of real murmuring on the part of Jeremiah. Christ spoke in this way, ‘How long am I to be with you?’ (Mark 9:19). Moses went so far as to throw his keys at our Lord God’s feet when he asked, ‘Did I conceive all this people?’ (Num. 11:12). It can’t be—Martin…

Posted on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 by Pastor Jerry Owen

Good While It Lasted

In the beginning, all that God created on the earth was good (Gen. 1:31)….all the animals, all the plant life, all the natural processes acting on inanimate matter, and all the thoughts, decisions, and actions of mankind—functioned just as it was meant to function: in total harmony and shalom, without evil inclination, entirely directed toward and focused on glorifying God (Ps. 19). Man the image-bearer, being a creature endowed with the capacity to self-consciously do his works to the glory of God, fulfilled his calling to fill, rule, work and keep the creation flawlessly, without the slightest hint of hesitation, complaint—David…

Posted on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 by Pastor Jerry Owen