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Last September I woke up one morning with severe pain in my left wrist. It came on all at once. I thought I must have slept on it wrong. But it didn’t go away. I had just recovered from surgery to release two trigger fingers on my left hand, and now this! When I went back to the doctor who had done the surgery on my fingers for what should have been my final appointment, he told me I had something called De Quervain’s Tenosynovitis.

I don’t know who De Quervain was, but I wish he had kept this affliction to himself! It was so painful that I was unable to play the guitar, something I love to do. I tried an injection of steroids –  which was probably the most painful injection I’ve ever had in my life, and I’ve had shots in my eyes – but it did not grant any relief. I prayed that God would grant me healing. I was finally able to have surgery to cut open the sheath around those tendons in my wrist on February 20th. There is still a lot of healing that has to take place, but last night I pulled out my guitar and for the first time in almost six months I was able to play and sing a couple of songs. There was a bit of pain still, but nothing like before, and I didn’t push it too far so that the healing could continue.

I thanked God for the healing. I had left it in His hands, and He chose to grant me relief. I thanked Him for my surgeon and all those who went before him that figured out how to perform this procedure. It reminded me of just our good and kind and gracious our God is. I am well aware that God does not always give us what we ask for, but this time He did, and I recognize it as a tremendous gift from my loving Father.

Romans 8:32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

The last song I played and sang last night was a prayer of praise and thanksgiving to the one who not only gave me His Son to secure my salvation, but healing as well. The song was written by Chris Tomlin, but when I sing it I always add a verse from an old hymn that you might recognize.

The splendor of the King, clothed in majesty
Let all the earth rejoice All the earth rejoice
He wraps himself in Light, and darkness tries to hide
And trembles at His voice Trembles at His voice

How great is our God, sing with me
How great is our God, and all will see
How great, how great is our God

And age to age He stands And time is in His hands
Beginning and the end Beginning and the end
The Godhead Three in One Father Spirit Son
The Lion and the Lamb The Lion and the Lamb       

 How great is our God, sing with me
How great is our God, and all will see
How great, how great is our God

Name above all names Worthy of all praise
My heart will sing How great is our God

Then sings my soul, my Savior, God, to Thee
How great Thou art, How great Thou art
Then sings my soul, my Savior, God, to Thee
How great Thou art, How great Thou art

 How great is our God, sing with m
How great is our God, and all will see
How great, how great is our God

Just this week someone asked me if grace was a one-time thing. He was having a discussion with someone who thought that grace was only given to help us be saved and then we were on our own.

I would hate to live with that mindset. That would mean that the new life to which God calls us would be something we have to do without any help! But that is the opposite of what God tells us in His Word.

Ephesians 2:6–10 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

When God’s grace reaches out to save us, those who believe live in a state of grace. That means it is ongoing, from now on. Those who have put their faith in Jesus by the power of God’s grace have the certainty that He will continue to be gracious to us. Grace is God’s doing, something He gives and keeps on giving. It is always available, especially during difficult times when we tend to be more aware of our need for God. We will find grace each time we go to God.

Hebrews 4:16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

2 Corinthians 12:9  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

That “power” is God’s grace, an ever-present reality in the lives of His people. God’s grace is what keeps us connected to Him even when we stumble and fall.

John 15:5 I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

And we have the assurance of God’s Grace through the means He uses to bring it to us. You are constantly being renewed and forgiven by God through the the sacraments and the preaching of the Word. You are reminded of and strengthened in God’s Grace when we read the Word, when we remember our Baptism, and each time we receive the body and blood of Jesus in, with and under the bread and wine. These means assuring us that His death was our payment for sin and strengthen our connection to Him.

I like the way the hymn writer tells us God’s grace is new each morning:

It is Thy work alone That I am now converted;
O’er Satan’s work in me Thou hast Thy pow’r asserted.
Thy mercy and Thy grace That rise afresh each morn
Have turned my stony heart Into a heart new-born.

The Lutheran Hymnal #417 stanza 2

1 John 1:7b (ESV) …the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

I was the guest preacher at a church earlier this month. At their contemporary service, one of the songs was Chris Tomlin’s “At the Cross (Love Ran Red).” This is the refrain:

At the cross, at the cross I surrender my life
I’m in awe of You, I’m in awe of You
Where Your love ran red And my sin washed white
I owe all to You, I owe all to You Jesus

When we look to the cross, we should be filled with awe at what happened there. Something believers have learned and need to be reminded of is that the love of God ran red at the cross. Jesus bleeding there is the display of God’s love for mankind. It was love that put Him on that cross in your place. He would not have had to go to that instrument of pain and torture were it nor for our sin. In fact, that was the entire reason He came down to this earth as one of us and lived among us.

1 John 3:16a (NIV84) This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

We keep this tremendous love in mind when we confess our sins to God, whether that is in worship with other believers or in our private confession to God in our home. We admit to God that we have sinned, that we continue to sin, and that we trust His promise to forgive us for the sake of Jesus. We remember that love that ran red when Jesus shed His blood for us.

God is pleased to hear our confession. He hears and forgives us because of what Jesus did. We believe He paid our debt and that gets us the benefit of what He did. Your sins have been washed, God sees you as clean, white as snow, and you owe it all to Jesus.

We have moved into the time of the year that marks the first anniversary of the death of seven of our friends and family members in a very short period of time. In each of these cases, they had professed their faith in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. As I have been thinking of each of them recently, I thought, “Good for them!” We continue to grieve and mourn, but those who believed and trusted in Jesus are now with their Lord. They knew He died to pay their penalty and rose to give them victory over death. They are with their Lord now. So I say of each of them again, “Good for them!”

That is what tempers our grief when we lose a fellow believer. They are with Jesus. And we will see them again. Paul wrote about that for us.

1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.

Since I was raised using The Lutheran Hymnal, a lot of those old hymns are in my memory banks. These stanzas came to mind as I was thinking about my friends have family who died with faith in Jesus Christ.

Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds Is like to that above.

 Before our Father’s throne We pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, Our comforts and our cares.

 We share our mutual woes, Our mutual burdens bear,
And often for each other flows The sympathizing tear.

 When here our pathways part, We suffer bitter pain;
Yet, one in CHrist and one in heart, We hope to meet again.

This glorious hope revives Our courage by the way,
While each in expectation lives And longs to see the day.

From sorrow, toil, and pain, And sin we shall be free
And perfect love and friendship reign Through all eternity.

The Lutheran Hymnal #464

Romans 8:35–39 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Superglue is a wonderful invention. I have repaired a lot of things with it over the years. While it will not stick to a few things, it works very well on others. One of the things it seems to work best on is skin! I have ended up with it on my fingers several times, and they get firmly attached to each other.

The passage above describes the relationship between God and those who have put their faith in Jesus. It is even stronger that superglue. Nothing can separate them. When you believe that Jesus died to pay for your sins, God’s love has a hold on you that will not let you go. No matter what you do, you can and will be forgiven because of your faith in Jesus. Nothing in this world can tear you away from His loving grasp. The only way you could be separated from Him would be for you to not believe that Jesus is your Savior.

You know who Jesus is. You know what He has done for you. You believe that He died in your place. You have faith that He rose again on Easter to show that He had beaten death for you. His love has a hold on you stronger than superglue, stronger that anything in this world, a hold that will not let you go.

Words have a way of taking on different meanings over time. I recently read an article that listed words we use today that originally meant something quite different than our current usage. Here are a few examples.

Nice: This word used to mean “silly, foolish, simple.” Today it is a compliment.

Awful: Awful things used to be “worthy of awe” for a variety of reasons, but now it has a very negative connotation.

Senile: Senile used to refer simply to anything related to old age, so you could have senile maturity. Now it refers specifically to those suffering from dementia.

I know the words “queer” and ‘”gay” have very different meanings today than they did 100 years ago. You can probably think of some other examples.

I have noticed this happening in the church as well, and I have in mind one word in particular: COVET.

Exodus 20:17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

This verse contains the Ninth and Tenth Commandments (at least in the way our tradition numbers them). When I received catechetical instruction in what we called “Confirmation Class,” I was taught that “covet” meant to sinfully desire something. It described an intense desire for something that belonged to someone else, being discontent with what you have to the point of wanting to have something that was not rightfully yours.

However, I noticed about fifteen years ago that many people in the church started using this word in a different way. There was a phrase that became very popular that didn’t sit well with me: “I covet your prayers.” They would explain that they were simply trying to convey that they earnestly desired your prayers. The reason I didn’t like this usage of the word (and I still don’t like it) is that it takes a word that describes sinful behavior in God’s commandments and tries to alter its meaning. Using this “new definition,” those commandments simply tell us not to earnestly desire our neighbor’s spouse and possessions, which is not an accurate reflection of what God was saying.

I was raised to believe that words have meaning and we should be careful how we use them. This is especially true of the Word of God. In our world today, many in the church are denying that things called sin in Scripture are still sins today. When you use words that describe sin in a positive way, you are adding to the confusion.

If we are to convey God’s Word to others, we should not confuse the message by attaching different meanings to the words. We need to be able to clearly share His Law, which shows us our sin and our need for assistance. We also need to clearly share His Gospel, the good news that Jesus has paid for all sin by His perfect life offered as the sacrifice that would cover all people.

Those who have taken this message to heart have the assurance of forgiveness and eternal life. We want to respond by living the new life to which we have been called, which includes using God’s Law as the guide for how He wants us to live. That includes being careful how we use our words.

2 Timothy 1:9b-10 This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

A number of years ago I heard a speaker at a convention of the Lutheran Women in Mission (also known as the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League) say these words: “God loves you so much that He would rather die and go to hell than spend eternity without you.”

That is exactly what Jesus did: He died, He went to Hell on that cross, and then descended to that place of torment to declare His victory. He died and went to Hell, defeating death and the devil so that He would not have to spend eternity without you. All you have to do is believe what God says and make that your own certainty.

An email shared the story of a five-year-old girl who came home from her first week of school and declared, “I’m just wasting my time. I can’t read, I can’t write, and they won’t let me talk!” You and I may feel similar frustrations at times, but we don’t have that restriction of not being able to talk in our lives. In fact, just the opposite is true. While we sometimes act as though God has told us not to say anything about our faith, the reality is that God wants you to talk about the hope that is in you, the confidence that your sins have been forgiven, that you have been washed in the blood of the Lamb and made clean, that even though you die, you will live forever with the Lord. People need to hear that.

You are to tell people that God loves them so much that He would rather die and go to hell than spend eternity without them. And that is a good phrase to use as you do it!

How will you share that in your life today?