Greetings to you all in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. One thing vicarage is teaching me is that you can never be fully "caught up". As soon as you think you are making progress, you realize you have seven Lent sermons to write. Now I understand Lent is not for awhile yet, but I want to have the entire series done before the season actually begins. I have decided to use the seven Penitential Psalms as my series for the Wednesday nights of Lent. I will be preaching every Wednesday night and Pastor will preach every Sunday. I will be focusing in on the different ways the Penitential Psalms focus in on their sinful condition and their faith in God. I am hoping it will be a good series, plus everyone knows my love of the psalms. Speaking of the psalms, I am starting my devotions on the psalms again today. I kind of took a month and a half off from writing them, which means I didn't post any either. I am going to start them back up today and will be posting them here shortly.
The Mission Trip to Lyons, Colorado was the best trip I could have asked for. Everything went so smoothly and it was just such an enjoyable week. Friday, January 3rd, I went to campus and got one of the schools 12 passenger vans. Since we are a technical organization on campus, we were allowed to use the school vehicle. This cut our transportation costs in half. I had it figured up what we ended up paying the school in mileage on the van was pretty close to what just rental fees would have been for a van from somewhere else. So we didn't have to pay for any gas, and saved all of that money. It worked out very nicely. We also got the school's newest nicest van which was pretty sweet. We had originally thought we would pull a small enclosed trailer behind us for all the students' gear, luggage, winter clothes, and our tools we took. However, since I only ended up taking seven students plus myself we had enough room to pack everything in the van without the trailer. This also made the trip twice as nice because we drove in a lot of wind and that little trailer would not have had enough weight in it to not bounce around and be a pain. Also, we did drive on some snow covered roads up in the mountain which was scary enough, let alone with a trailer. So I got the van Friday. Saturday afternoon, we packed up the van with all of the students' stuff, had a short devotion, and then hit the road. The worst road conditions we had were actually leaving Brookings. It had rained the night before so everything was ice. However, once we got a little south, the rest of the roads were smooth sailing. We drove down to Grand Island, Nebraska. I have to give a huge shout out to my dear friends Ben and Shalee Peters. Ben is a life-long friend I made in college. He and his wonderful wife Shalee, let us stay in their house even though they were not home. So we spent Saturday night at their farm house. We got up the next morning and headed the rest of the way west to Colorado. Wed made it to Boulder about 4 P.M. Mountain Time. They had gotten 12 inches of snow the night before, but most of the roads were cleared off already. We met the pastor of the University Lutheran Chapel of the University of Colorado. He actually is a previous vicar of Brookings so I had met him and heard about him and his vicarage here. We had church with him and two of his students that Sunday night in their chapel. Then they went out to eat with us in Boulder. We slept in the fellowship hall of the chapel that night on either couches or air mattresses.
Monday morning we got up and went to Lyons. We met Pastor Curt at a house in Lyons. They had breakfast for us and then we had an hour Bible study. This is how we started our day every day that week. He is a Pastor affiliated with Calvary Chapel in Florida. He was definitely not Lutheran, but yet still a great guy and knew the Gospel very well. He led the Bible study, but I took notes on things that the students and I talked about later. There were just some comments or things he said that did not quite line up with what we believe. Then after Bible study and breakfast, we would go out to his trailer and get tools. He has a huge enclosed trailer with every tool you could ever imagine it in. Him and his wife, Mary Jo, are disaster relief missionaries. They travel throughout the U.S. going to the next disaster and helping out with whatever they can. They specialize in organizing work for groups like ours who come in and want to help. So we would get our tools out of the trailer every morning, and then head to the job sight. There was also a group of 13 students from Oregon, not Lutheran, but from the school George Fox just outside of Portland. We split in to three crews between the two groups. I was a crew leader for one crew. I had with me three of my students and two from the Oregon group. We went up into the mountains into the town of Pinewood Springs to do deconstruction to a basement up there. They had cedar 1x12's diagonally on the walls. So we had to pull off all of those. Then behind those was drywall that had to come out, and then the insulation too. They only had a couple inches of water in their basement, but they wanted everything out to just start over from scratch. We spent three days but we got the entire basement done. We found out that the crews for hire that come in and do what we did would have charged them between ten and fifteen thousand dollars. That was also a good feeling knowing they can now spend that money on fixing it back up instead of just tearing it out.
The second crew was the other four of my students plus two or three from Oregon. They worked on a house in Lyons that had over a foot of water in it. They had to tear out everything up to four feet on the walls. They had to even rip out all of the flooring though to the point it was just the running 2 x 6's that stand vertical to hold the floor up. You could see the dirt right below the house through these runners. This crew also got their house done within the four days they were there. Then the third crew that consisted of the rest of the Oregon students was at the local community church putting dry wall back up.
We worked Monday through Thursday. Mary Jo told us that most crews take at least a week if not two to get a whole house done and our group got two houses done in the four days we were there. Everyone out there was so impressed with the students. Not only their work ethics, but just their general behavior, manners, and positive attitudes. I was very proud of my group.
We stayed with Pastor Paul Rhode in Longmont Monday through Thursday nights. They fed us two nights and were such gracious hosts. It was nice having a house with beds to sleep in. We would spend our evenings playing cards and just relaxing after working hard all day. We did run up to Fort Collins the one night to see a couple of the students' cousin. She took us out for supper to the local brewery and restaurant. It was a fun evening and they had some good beer. We only had two students who were under 21 and they behaved themselves. Then Thursday night, the church fed all of the workers and volunteers. This was nice because the students from our group and the students from Oregon got the chance to interact and get to know each other. Then we went out to a local micro-pub and restaurant for the evening.
Friday morning we packed up the van, and Pastor Paul had a devotion with us as we went on our way. I cannot thank him enough for everything he did for us while we were there. Then we drove up the mountains just west of Boulder and went skiing. It had been sunny and nice all week as we worked. Then Friday as we are skiing, it was cold with sixty mile per hour winds blowing snow. We bundled up though and spent all day skiing. I found out mountain skiing is much different than Midwest skiing, but I did get the hang of it. I even made it from the very top of the mountain to the bottom all in one run without falling down so I can say I defeated the mountain. I also went down a black diamond or two too. It was a blast even though it was cold. Then Friday night we stayed at the chapel in Boulder again. Saturday we got up and drove the whole drive back in one shot. I had two students who were drivers and each took a turn to help me out.
Again, I cannot thank the Good Lord enough for such a perfect week. We had so much fun and a lot of laughs. We had zero accidents or injuries. And we worked hard to help others in a time of need. We did not get to do a lot of direct witnessing, but the second crew did get to witness to a guy who had been hurt by the church. He was a neighbor who was helping them work. They had been warned he had a foul mouth and did not act very Christian. By the end of the week, he apologized to the students and said he was going to work on his language. He also told them he was beginning to think differently about the church after meeting them and seeing how they worked and acted. When the student told that to the church in our presentation, one member said that right there made the entire trip worth it even without all the work you did. It truly was a blessing to the students and myself, but also hopefully to the people we helped in Lyons.
I could go on and on for another four pages but I have a sermon to write. I will leave you with this, Lyons is going to take about another several years to fully recover from this flood. So if you know of any groups in the church looking for a mission trip or opportunity to serve, tell them Lyons is in desperate need. Also, Colorado is becoming the number one state in the nation of unchurched people. So the more Christians we can send in to help, the more opportunities there are to show the love of Christ through the abilities He has given us. Pastor and I are already considering a second trip this summer with church members and I would go back in an instant. I continue to pray for them and that not only the work gets done, but the light of Christ may shine in their darkness. If you have any questions about our trip, do not hesitate to ask. The Lord bless your day this day.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Monday, January 27, 2014
First Sermon of 2014
Happy New Year and greetings in the name of our Lord, Christ Jesus. I realize this is my first blog of 2014 and I apologize for it taking so long. January has been such a busy month I haven't had time to think straight. I will post later this week about our mission trip, but it was the most perfect week it could have been. Everything went not only smoothly but absolutely amazingly rewarding and fun. I will try to include some photos too. Last week Pastor took a week vacation and trying to cover his stuff on top of mine almost drove me to insanity trying to keep up with everything. However, I survived and got everything that had to be done accomplished. Showed me how crazy the ministry can be at times.
Here is my sermon I preached this last Sunday. God's blessings to you.
Text – Matthew 4:17-22
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text for today in Matthew’s Gospel comes right at a transition point of the Gospel. The first three chapters of Matthew focus in on the life of Christ prior to His ministry. Then here in chapter four we see Jesus begin His ministry. He has just been triumphant over the devil tempting Him in the wilderness. He comes out of the wilderness and then He finds out that John has been arrested. He moves north to Galilee, and He goes north preaching the same message in the same wording that John was preaching, “Repent, that the kingdom of God is at hand.”
It is here in the way Matthew sets up His gospel that we get a small glimpse into how our God actually works. God sent His Son into this world to be the Savior the one who was promised throughout all of the Old Testament. Jesus is the Christ, the messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He was born into this world in the flesh to live a life of teaching, preaching and healing. Jesus performed numerous miracles, healing the lame and the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, opening the ears of the deaf and even casting out demons. He astonished all who listened with His parables and sermons. Everything He did was according to the will of the Father who sent Him, and by the power of the Spirit who was with Him. He could have done it all by Himself, He didn’t need help, I mean after all He is the Son of God. But this is what we see about our God in this text, that even though He can do everything Himself, He still uses humans to help do His work.
Here is my sermon I preached this last Sunday. God's blessings to you.
Text – Matthew 4:17-22
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text for today in Matthew’s Gospel comes right at a transition point of the Gospel. The first three chapters of Matthew focus in on the life of Christ prior to His ministry. Then here in chapter four we see Jesus begin His ministry. He has just been triumphant over the devil tempting Him in the wilderness. He comes out of the wilderness and then He finds out that John has been arrested. He moves north to Galilee, and He goes north preaching the same message in the same wording that John was preaching, “Repent, that the kingdom of God is at hand.”
It is here in the way Matthew sets up His gospel that we get a small glimpse into how our God actually works. God sent His Son into this world to be the Savior the one who was promised throughout all of the Old Testament. Jesus is the Christ, the messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He was born into this world in the flesh to live a life of teaching, preaching and healing. Jesus performed numerous miracles, healing the lame and the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, opening the ears of the deaf and even casting out demons. He astonished all who listened with His parables and sermons. Everything He did was according to the will of the Father who sent Him, and by the power of the Spirit who was with Him. He could have done it all by Himself, He didn’t need help, I mean after all He is the Son of God. But this is what we see about our God in this text, that even though He can do everything Himself, He still uses humans to help do His work.
Think about it, why did Jesus need the disciples? The crowds and other followers were witnesses to everything He did, so He did not specifically need disciples who would follow Him to be witnesses. He didn’t even need them to tell their story after He would be gone. I mean Luke wrote a Gospel and he was never a disciple. So why did Jesus need the disciples? That’s the point, He didn’t need them, but yet our God chose to work through them anyway. Our God who is all-powerful, almighty, all-knowing chooses to use us sinful, weak, certainly not all-knowing human beings to help accomplish His work. We see this in Matthew’s gospel as He shows us Jesus begins His ministry and the very next thing we see is the calling of the first disciples.
Jesus is walking along the Sea of Galilee and ends up gaining four disciples. All four men were fishermen and working at their current job as Jesus comes to them and says “Follow me”. Jesus called these men, but this call is in three different ways. First and most simply, He calls them to be believers. He invites them to have faith in Him, trust Him, and follow Him. He is calling them to accept His proclamation that they do indeed need to repent because the kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus invites them to follow him in the same way the crowds and masses will follow Him around listening to His teachings and seeing His miracles. The people in these crowds are not called fishers of men or disciples. They are simply believers, followers of Christ, and this is the first thing Christ calls these four fisher men to be.
Christ calls them to be believers, but He does also call them to be His personal disciples too. This is the second part of their call. I do not think they realize quite everything that will be included in this call as they follow Him in ways the crowds and general believers do not. They must leave their nets, boats, and jobs behind. For James and John, they leave their father behind as well. They will spend almost all of their time either with Christ or traveling around spreading His gospel of repentance. Being a disciple gives them a much more personal one on one relationship with Christ than anyone of the crowds gets. They get to be on the boat with Him when He leaves the crowds on shore, and they get to witness Him calming the storm and walking on water. They get the personal explanations to the parables. They will get to be with Him at His last meal and hear the original words of institution. They will be there when He is arrested. But yet they are the ones He appears to after the resurrection with His message of peace. He appears to the crowds as well, but not behind locked doors where He lets them see His wounds and touch His side. They are called to be believers, but they are called to be His personal disciples also.
They will be His disciples throughout His entire life on this earth. They would have to give up more, witness more, and experience more than I think they ever realized when they dropped their nets and walked off their boats. However, their most challenging call will be their call as apostles after His ascension. Now they no longer have Him with them to correct their mistakes, adjust their thinking, and show them the way. They will be challenged, chased out of town, arrested, stoned or even crucified. All of their time is now dedicated to traveling and preaching in order to do what Jesus told them to do in the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s gospel. This is when they will truly become the fishers of men. Christ taught and prepared them for this calling, knowing they would not always have Him right there with them. This is how he will make them fishers of men, by training them for their apostleship and the work they will continue after He goes back to His throne. We know there were at least seventy other disciples who were called to be believers and disciples, but were not called to be apostles like these four men. Jesus calls these four fishermen to give up everything in order to serve Him, eventually even their own lives as His apostles.
So Christ called these four men to be believers, disciples, and apostles. He calls them by simply saying, “Follow me”. Just as He invites all Christians to “follow Him”, calling them into the faith. Christ has called everyone who has been a Christian into the faith. The explanation to the third article of the creed in the Small Catechism states, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him.” There is not a single one of us who decided to believe in Christ as our Lord without being called into faith by the power of the Holy Spirit. We have been invited by our Lord to follow Him.
He has called you to be first and foremost a believer. If you didn’t even have that call you wouldn’t be here this morning worshiping Him. So Christ has come to you and invited you to follow Him, and you accepted. However, just like the four fisher men’s calling was different than the crowds, the other disciples, and all the other followers of Christ, we each have our own calling too.
We each have our own calling because we each have our own vocations, opportunities, strengths, and abilities. God uses all of us who He has called into the faith to help Him accomplish His work of spreading the gospel and strengthening the faith of each other. But again how He uses us may look a little different in each of our own lives. If you are a husband or a wife, you have a vocation through which you can serve God and He can work through that a single person does not. And yet that single person may have more free time or other opportunities through which God works through him or her that a married person does not have. We strive to use each one of our individual vocations to be faithful followers of Christ.
Pastor Wurm and myself believe we have a divine call into the ministry. That’s why he went to the seminary and has now served two churches. It is why I am attending the seminary and very blessed to be serving my vicarage here as well. However, just as I already mentioned, not every believer was an apostle, not even the all of the other seventy disciples were apostles. Not every Christian can be a pastor or a full time church worker. We thank the Lord that He has called and led a lot of men to be pastors and go through the seminary in order to serve the church, and we thank Him for all the women He has called to be deaconesses. This is a call from the Lord that they have accepted, but it is not the only call or the only way to follow Christ.
The church needs good lay leaders too. I am so thoroughly impressed with the amount of volunteers and number of people who serve on boards and as teachers in this church. It truly is an awesome thing, and I thank all of you who have felt that this is the way you are being called to serve your Lord.
Not all of us are even necessarily called to be lay leaders in the church. There are some people who would not feel comfortable at all serving in one of these positions or teaching children’s Sunday school. That is not a bad thing. Looking at the text the majority of the people who follow Christ are the believers in the crowd. Just because the people of these crowds are not disciples or apostles does not mean Christ is not working through. Look at the four men who lower their paralytic friend down through the roof to be healed by Jesus. It saws when Jesus saw their faith, he told the man his sins were forgiven and then He healed him. It was the faith of all of them, the friends and the man. These friends who lowered Him down were not disciples or apostles and yet God worked through them and the faith He called them into.
All of our callings look different. We as faithful Christians strive to use these vocations He has blessed us with to serve Him so that He can work through us. He has chosen to include us creatures in His work, and so we try our hardest to make sure He is able to work through us.
Now we are still sinners and there are times, much like the disciples, that we mess things up, miss opportunities, use our talents and abilities for the wrong things, and do not strive to be the best we can be in each vocation. We tend to get lazy, fixed in bad habits, or even get stubborn and know were wrong but don’t give in anyway. And if it were truly up to us and how well we followed Christ that mattered for our salvation we would all be damned. But this is why Christ was the one who accomplished the plan of salvation on His own. He is the one who was born into the flesh to live a perfect life. He is the one who died on the cross for all sins, and He is the one who would rise from the dead to defeat sin, death, and the devil. That part of God’s plan, His plan of salvation, Christ did 100% on His own. He did it 100% on His own because He knew we never could. Now that He has accomplished that part, and our salvation is guaranteed He lets us help Him with the spreading of that Good News we know is true.
It is important to remember all the words that Jesus gives to the disciples in the Great Commission though. He sends them out to make disciples of every nation, baptizing them in the name of our Triune God, but He gives them the true Gospel message of “I am always with you, to the end of the age. God has called us into the faith, and has given us vocations, opportunities, and abilities to serve Him in that call. However, He doesn’t just send us out alone and expect us to do this on our own. He is always with us, working through us, blessing us and our service because it is He who chose to use us in the first place. He is the one who is truly at work, while we strive to be the best follower of Christ we can be. We know we will slip up, we know we fail at times, but through His grace and mercy we have His forgiveness and our eternal salvation is secure. He is working through us to share that comforting news we live by everyday with those who have never heard it or even other believers who are having doubts or questions. It is His ministry; we are simply accepting our call to follow Him to the best of our ability with His help and guidance so that He may work that ministry through us. He has called us into the faith, assuring us of our forgiveness and salvation, and He has chosen to use us, promising to always be with us, to bring the Good News of the Gospel to a world that so badly needs to hear it.
In the name of the one who secured our salvation, the one who called us into the faith, and the one who is always with us, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Jesus is walking along the Sea of Galilee and ends up gaining four disciples. All four men were fishermen and working at their current job as Jesus comes to them and says “Follow me”. Jesus called these men, but this call is in three different ways. First and most simply, He calls them to be believers. He invites them to have faith in Him, trust Him, and follow Him. He is calling them to accept His proclamation that they do indeed need to repent because the kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus invites them to follow him in the same way the crowds and masses will follow Him around listening to His teachings and seeing His miracles. The people in these crowds are not called fishers of men or disciples. They are simply believers, followers of Christ, and this is the first thing Christ calls these four fisher men to be.
Christ calls them to be believers, but He does also call them to be His personal disciples too. This is the second part of their call. I do not think they realize quite everything that will be included in this call as they follow Him in ways the crowds and general believers do not. They must leave their nets, boats, and jobs behind. For James and John, they leave their father behind as well. They will spend almost all of their time either with Christ or traveling around spreading His gospel of repentance. Being a disciple gives them a much more personal one on one relationship with Christ than anyone of the crowds gets. They get to be on the boat with Him when He leaves the crowds on shore, and they get to witness Him calming the storm and walking on water. They get the personal explanations to the parables. They will get to be with Him at His last meal and hear the original words of institution. They will be there when He is arrested. But yet they are the ones He appears to after the resurrection with His message of peace. He appears to the crowds as well, but not behind locked doors where He lets them see His wounds and touch His side. They are called to be believers, but they are called to be His personal disciples also.
They will be His disciples throughout His entire life on this earth. They would have to give up more, witness more, and experience more than I think they ever realized when they dropped their nets and walked off their boats. However, their most challenging call will be their call as apostles after His ascension. Now they no longer have Him with them to correct their mistakes, adjust their thinking, and show them the way. They will be challenged, chased out of town, arrested, stoned or even crucified. All of their time is now dedicated to traveling and preaching in order to do what Jesus told them to do in the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s gospel. This is when they will truly become the fishers of men. Christ taught and prepared them for this calling, knowing they would not always have Him right there with them. This is how he will make them fishers of men, by training them for their apostleship and the work they will continue after He goes back to His throne. We know there were at least seventy other disciples who were called to be believers and disciples, but were not called to be apostles like these four men. Jesus calls these four fishermen to give up everything in order to serve Him, eventually even their own lives as His apostles.
So Christ called these four men to be believers, disciples, and apostles. He calls them by simply saying, “Follow me”. Just as He invites all Christians to “follow Him”, calling them into the faith. Christ has called everyone who has been a Christian into the faith. The explanation to the third article of the creed in the Small Catechism states, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him.” There is not a single one of us who decided to believe in Christ as our Lord without being called into faith by the power of the Holy Spirit. We have been invited by our Lord to follow Him.
He has called you to be first and foremost a believer. If you didn’t even have that call you wouldn’t be here this morning worshiping Him. So Christ has come to you and invited you to follow Him, and you accepted. However, just like the four fisher men’s calling was different than the crowds, the other disciples, and all the other followers of Christ, we each have our own calling too.
We each have our own calling because we each have our own vocations, opportunities, strengths, and abilities. God uses all of us who He has called into the faith to help Him accomplish His work of spreading the gospel and strengthening the faith of each other. But again how He uses us may look a little different in each of our own lives. If you are a husband or a wife, you have a vocation through which you can serve God and He can work through that a single person does not. And yet that single person may have more free time or other opportunities through which God works through him or her that a married person does not have. We strive to use each one of our individual vocations to be faithful followers of Christ.
Pastor Wurm and myself believe we have a divine call into the ministry. That’s why he went to the seminary and has now served two churches. It is why I am attending the seminary and very blessed to be serving my vicarage here as well. However, just as I already mentioned, not every believer was an apostle, not even the all of the other seventy disciples were apostles. Not every Christian can be a pastor or a full time church worker. We thank the Lord that He has called and led a lot of men to be pastors and go through the seminary in order to serve the church, and we thank Him for all the women He has called to be deaconesses. This is a call from the Lord that they have accepted, but it is not the only call or the only way to follow Christ.
The church needs good lay leaders too. I am so thoroughly impressed with the amount of volunteers and number of people who serve on boards and as teachers in this church. It truly is an awesome thing, and I thank all of you who have felt that this is the way you are being called to serve your Lord.
Not all of us are even necessarily called to be lay leaders in the church. There are some people who would not feel comfortable at all serving in one of these positions or teaching children’s Sunday school. That is not a bad thing. Looking at the text the majority of the people who follow Christ are the believers in the crowd. Just because the people of these crowds are not disciples or apostles does not mean Christ is not working through. Look at the four men who lower their paralytic friend down through the roof to be healed by Jesus. It saws when Jesus saw their faith, he told the man his sins were forgiven and then He healed him. It was the faith of all of them, the friends and the man. These friends who lowered Him down were not disciples or apostles and yet God worked through them and the faith He called them into.
All of our callings look different. We as faithful Christians strive to use these vocations He has blessed us with to serve Him so that He can work through us. He has chosen to include us creatures in His work, and so we try our hardest to make sure He is able to work through us.
Now we are still sinners and there are times, much like the disciples, that we mess things up, miss opportunities, use our talents and abilities for the wrong things, and do not strive to be the best we can be in each vocation. We tend to get lazy, fixed in bad habits, or even get stubborn and know were wrong but don’t give in anyway. And if it were truly up to us and how well we followed Christ that mattered for our salvation we would all be damned. But this is why Christ was the one who accomplished the plan of salvation on His own. He is the one who was born into the flesh to live a perfect life. He is the one who died on the cross for all sins, and He is the one who would rise from the dead to defeat sin, death, and the devil. That part of God’s plan, His plan of salvation, Christ did 100% on His own. He did it 100% on His own because He knew we never could. Now that He has accomplished that part, and our salvation is guaranteed He lets us help Him with the spreading of that Good News we know is true.
It is important to remember all the words that Jesus gives to the disciples in the Great Commission though. He sends them out to make disciples of every nation, baptizing them in the name of our Triune God, but He gives them the true Gospel message of “I am always with you, to the end of the age. God has called us into the faith, and has given us vocations, opportunities, and abilities to serve Him in that call. However, He doesn’t just send us out alone and expect us to do this on our own. He is always with us, working through us, blessing us and our service because it is He who chose to use us in the first place. He is the one who is truly at work, while we strive to be the best follower of Christ we can be. We know we will slip up, we know we fail at times, but through His grace and mercy we have His forgiveness and our eternal salvation is secure. He is working through us to share that comforting news we live by everyday with those who have never heard it or even other believers who are having doubts or questions. It is His ministry; we are simply accepting our call to follow Him to the best of our ability with His help and guidance so that He may work that ministry through us. He has called us into the faith, assuring us of our forgiveness and salvation, and He has chosen to use us, promising to always be with us, to bring the Good News of the Gospel to a world that so badly needs to hear it.
In the name of the one who secured our salvation, the one who called us into the faith, and the one who is always with us, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.