Ascension Newsletter

Transcription

1 Ascension Newsletter Dear Friends in Christ, St. Paul prayed three times about what appears to have been a persistent problem a thorn in the flesh. There were three very special times when the apostle gave special attention to this problem in prayer, an earnest appeal that God would remove the thorn. The Lord s answer is the really important thing here. So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. 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 of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). We call this the Theology of the Cross. God s strength, shown in mercy, is made more evident, more perfect, in our weakness, not our own strength. Our failures, as surely a carpenter s Son carrying His cross up a hill appears as a failure to our eyes, our failures are the occasions for God to succeed in Christ. The seed we sow must die before it can bear fruit. The kingdom often is found working in the rot and decay. Fertile soil is filled with dead and rotting things. You might just call it the compost principle. God s kingdom has always worked in ways that seem upside down and backward to the world. Our expectation of God is often that success is measured in an easy life. But this is the theology of Glory when we think this way. We want to glorify ourselves. Instead God says that His grace is sufficient and His power is made perfect in weakness. This is the God who won the victory by dying on the cross. Christ has put his stamp on this kingdom when He wore a crown of thorns and hung on a cross. This is the God who did not choose emperors and senators and generals for his disciples, but fishermen and tax collectors and zealots. Our weaknesses, our vulnerability, and our sins make us people who cannot say that we are here because we got it right. We are here by His grace and God is therefore built up, boasted about, and glorified. St. Paul himself is the archetype of this, he was a persecutor of God s people, turned into the preacher of God s love through Jesus. But you know that the story of his wicked past must have haunted his ministry. August Ascension Lutheran Church 8888 County Road 64 Daphne, AL Rev. David Tilney, Pastor Church: Cell: Home: Officers John Peterson, President Richard Tellman, Vice-President Jim Dube, Treasurer Deanna Brown, Recording Secretary Kathy Schulz, Financial Secretary Directors Donna Scully, Evangelism Cheryl Pitts, Stewardship Susan Dube, Fellowship David Ellis, Buildings & Grounds Lucille Hogancamp, Public Relations Elders Eric Marrero Jim Pitts Jerry Randolph Michael Schulz

2 You can imagine anyone who disagreed with Paul and learned about his prior career as a toady for the High Priest in Jerusalem, a fire breathing Jewish Pharisee, would have found that irresistible. The apostle Paul turned his past into the very occasion of grace in his preaching. Again and again his story has repeated itself. St. Augustine, one of the early church fathers, will make much of the fact that he was sexual promiscuous before his conversion. John Newton was pulled off a slave trading ship by his father before he wrote Amazing Grace. The fighting of the early churches gave us the Nicene Creed. This list could go on. The apostle Paul declares, Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong (vv. 9-10). For the Christian today it is a reality check on the expectations we might have. While sometimes we get to see amazing success, there is no promise of that, only a promise that the Lord is with us, helping us, and he will make our lives meaningful in his kingdom his way. The blood of martyrs was often the seed of the church. That leads to the second thing we do. We are given to see our past and present as a reality laden with potential for the Lord to work and we come to our future with great hope. Our Lord and God works via weakness, even our weaknesses. Jesus became helpless, suffered at the hands of ruthless men, so that he might save the world. Likewise that cross is evidenced today in the suffering, weak, and otherwise cross-like lives of His people. God s grace is sufficient. It not only suffices for the present moment but continues to suffice. His power is being perfected, finished, or completed in weakness. God continues to bring Paul close to his spiritual goal and blesses others through Paul s work, despite Paul s weaknesses day by day. We see that it is God s power and not ours most clearly when it works despite our weaknesses. While some of the weaknesses we bear may never go away in this life, our true strength is found in the One who is not only our Savior and God, but our Brother and Friend. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have One who has been tempted in every way, just as we are yet was without sin (Heb. 4:15). And He does not merely sympathize with our weaknesses: He has overcome them. Therefore, as it is written: Let him who boasts boast in the Lord (1 Cor. 1:31). St. Paul writes in 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? In other words, since the Lord has taken care of the greatest need we will ever have, which is salvation in Christ alone, He can then take care of all other needs as well. His grace is sufficient. His power is made perfect in our weakness. When we are weak, then we are truly strong in Christ. In Christ s Service, Pastor David Tilney Pastor David Tilney + + +

3 Christian Discipleship Opportunities Sunday Morning Bible Study A five centuries-old man building a huge boat on the startling news of coming floodwaters - sounds like the makings of one remarkable story. Noah: The Man, The Ark, The Flood is hosted by Rev. Kurt Klaus and filmed on location at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, this four-part DVD Bible study from Lutheran Hour Ministries looks at the biblical character of Noah, his life and times, and the remarkable vessel he built to escape the waters of the flood. Along the way, commentary from numerous specialists considers the issue of extreme human age, how building such a watercraft was possible, the extent of the flood's reach, how a single vessel could hold such a multitude of animals, and the phenomena of far-flung flood stories in other cultures. This study meets Sunday mornings at 9:15 a.m. Pastor Tilney leads this study. Wednesday Morning Bible Study The Book of Esther is a beautiful portrayal of courage in the face of danger and the triumph of good in the face of powerful, sinister forces. Although the name of God is not mentioned, The Book of Esther implies divine providence throughout. This study meets Wednesday mornings at 9:00 a.m. Pastor Tilney leads this study. Men s Bible Breakfast Men are invited to the Men s Bible Breakfast. It will be held at the Cracker Barrel at the Eastern Shore Center on 181. This group meets 1 st and 3 rd Thursdays of the month. Prayer Chain If you have a prayer request for the prayer chain or would like to join the chain to pray for special requests, please call Lucille Hogancamp at or Deanna Brown at Please note that these requests will not appear in the Sunday bulletin, nor in the public prayers of the church. Please contact Pastor Tilney with those requests. Sunday School Jesus said, Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these (Luke 18:16). Ascension s Sunday School always welcomes new students and visitors, so please come join us! Sunday School helps to nurture a lifelong faith in the following ways: 1.) It offers a regular weekly encounter with the Word of God. 2.) It exposes children to additional faith role models. 3.) It allows students to interact with Christians of their own age and talk about faith together. 4.) It provides an opportunity to further investigate themes of the Bible. 5.) It provides parents with an opportunity to start "faith talk" based on what the child learned that day. Make a difference in your child's spiritual life, consider Sunday School. Ascension s Sunday School meets every Sunday at 9:15 a.m. Thank You Notes Received We received a thank you note from the family of Ethan Wright for the financial help for their on-going medical bills. Ethan, the grandson of Thomas and Elaine Spradlin and great-grandson of Bob and Ruth Grose, has Ewing s Sarcoma. We also received a thank you note from Trinity Lutheran School in Mobile for the financial gift to their low-income school. Ascension s Sunday School donates the offering to the School. All of the notes are the bulletin board in the hallway

4 In Her Own Words Lisa Slaff I was born and raised in the Southern Baptist Church, where I was indoctrinated that: Not being baptized at age 9, kissing a boy before marriage, dancing, watching Soul Train on TV, befriending black people, and not being in church anytime the doors were open all meant that I was doomed to hell. When both of my parents kicked me out (soon as I turned 18, two months after high school graduation) for the crime of having kissed a boy, forcing me to live alone and support myself, with no college experience/education. I happily let go of what little faith I had ever had. Nearly 4 years later, while my friends were graduating college, I was giving birth to Ryan, alone during a 30 hour labor, in a non-english-speaking hospital in Miami, Florida. It began to dawn on me that he was a miracle, which could only mean that muse be something bigger than myself out there. When Ryan was 2 years old, I met and married Ted, who adopted Ryan, and together we had a son, Tim. We moved to the Pittsburgh, PA area, where Ted was an editorial artist for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and we flourished. Still not particularly religious, I knew how lucky I was to (finally) have a normal (i.e. loving) home life. Ryan, who had been born to a young, poor, single mother with zero support system was defeating the odds: he was becoming a well-adjusted teen, very popular, extremely talented on the basketball court, a gifted musician (of percussion, brass, and woodwind instruments,) tested with an IQ score of 136 at the end of the first grade (Stanford Biret III test), in gifted classes. He was on the country s all-state basketball team each year during middle school. He loved his fellow man. He was also one of only a few 7 th graders nationwide chosen to take the SAT- he almost broke 1000 (he had no algebra yet.) Tim adored his big brother, while becoming known as the life of the party (everybody s best friend.) Ryan awoke one day at the end of the 7 th grade with a limp wrist. 72 hours later, after a consultation with the local country doctor, then specialists at Allegheny General, we were told he had an aplastic astrcytoma. He had apparently had it since he was 8-24 months of age. That summer was non-stop radiation treatments, the chemo treatments started then too. Ryan put a stop to them in January of the next year when a second tumor was discovered, and he had become blind and bedridden at the age of 14. It was around this time that Ryan told me to get any local minister to his bedside ASAP he was giving his life and heart and soul to Christ, wanted to make confession, wanted to pray, wanted to take communion, and wanted to be anointed with oil. Observing these miracles, at my 14 year-old s death bed, I realized that he knew where he was going-that it was real that it was true. That there is a God a loving God a God who will safe keep any man-child for me til I can be with him again: a God who sacrificed His Son Jesus for me. There were many silver linings in the story of Ryan s illness and death which are too numerous to share here. But the gist of it, for me, is that how could I not believe in God after that 14 1/2 year long experience? The people who brought me into this world led me away from Him, but sweet redemption! The one I brought into this world, and led me back to Him. Amen. Lisa Slaff, 06/08/

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