Orientation

Hello again.  Ok, since I have not had the internet the past few days I do have a couple things I want to write about from the previous few days.  I arrived to Concordia Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri on Tuesday morning.  This is my first experience in a big city, and St. Louis welcomed me with thirty miles of stop and go traffic. I was thrilled since I had just driven four hours on three and a half hours of sleep and reeeaaallly had to pee.  However, since then, the two times I have left campus have not been that bad, and campus is secluded enough that minus the sirens, I do not feel like I am in a big city.  I am sure all of that will change when I start doing my field work and have to drive around.
But none the less I am here at the beginning of my four year journey.  This week has been full of orientation, hence the title, and other than some welcomes and ice breakers they actually have been giving us some useful seminars.  The first seminar was on Spiritual Warfare.  Now they aren't really giving us weapons or preparing us for battle, although I would not be opposed to going to the gun range for some target practice :).  Spiritual Warfare simply is dealing with the fact that now we are here to study for the ministry, the Devil is going to personally persecute us as hard as he can.  When you stop and think about that, its kind of ironic that all of us came here to learn God's Word and be His servants, and yet it's the Devil who we talk about right off the bat.  However, it makes complete sense.  The last thing the Devil wants is more trained men and women to spread the Word of God.  We are now personally on his radar as his enemies.  So we had the seminar on the Devil going to be attacking us with every temptation he can.  In our small groups we talked about what struggles he may throw at us and how he wants to isolate each of us to make us weaker.  The seminar continued today with pornography and sexual addiction.  It was a great topic for us to all talk about and realize how big a problem it truly is for our world and especially for our church.  And my small group agreed that just because we will be men of God, does not make us exempt from this temptation or addiction.  So it was a fascinating seminar and they told us it will be addressed more specifically in some of our classes.
However, the main thing I wanted to talk about came from a different part of orientation.  One professor was talking about our fall class we will have with him titled: The Lutheran Mind.  He started with the fact that every Christian is a theologian.  As Christians we all ask questions about our faith and try to answer them, thus making us all theologians.  He expressed that our purpose for being at the seminary was to become GOOD theologians.  Then he put up on our slide the question that is suppose to be the main point of this post.  What will make you a Doctor of Theology (Pastor or Deaconess)?  The answer: SATAN.  If we did not have Satan out in our world turning everyone away from God, we would not need Pastors to bring them back and keep them strong in their faith.  With out the Devil causing the fall of man, our world would still be perfect just as God created it.  It just made me stop and think about it.  Lately I have been so deep in thought about God and wanting to serve Him, I didn't really stop and think about the reason I have this vocation available.  It is because of the Devil.  I don't know, maybe this is so obvious I shouldn't have been stunned by it, but it certainly struck me as interesting.  "Satan is what makes the pastor role necessary" seems to be an oxymoron sentence in my mind.  Now God is still the one who blesses us with gifts and talents and makes us good pastors, but we are his foot soldiers battling the common enemy.  I guess when you look at that metaphor it makes sense.  If our country was constantly at peace, we wouldn't need a military.  Same is true of religion.  If we didn't have the Devil messing everything up all the time, disturbing our peace, we wouldn't need the religious military (pastors and clergy).  Just something to think about and keep in the back of your mind as you  do mission work or spread your faith.  The reason you are doing so is to serve your Lord and to fight back against the Devil.

Dear Heavenly Father, 
I ask that first of all you be with all of your children dealing with sexual temptations and addictions.  Our world has made pornography and sexual temptations so readily available and accepted that it is easy for any of us to fall to them.  Strengthen our faith and strengthen those who have already fallen into addiction.  Help them to find fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who can help them through this.  I also ask that you be with all of us here at the seminary.  That as the Devil begins to attack us, you be with us and protect us.  Help us to remain true to Your Word and live lives pleasing to you.  Thirdly I just ask that as we grow in our studies here, we never forget why we are here.  We are here to serve You, to protect and guide Your flock from the evil that is always approaching.  To remind all believers and nonbelievers that the only true peace left is found in Your Gospel.  Your Son, our Savior won our peace for us on the cross, and that is our hope in this sinful world.  Keep us all in the true faith always, In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit hear our prayer O Lord.  Amen.