Author: Tim Ehrhardt

I'm just a common ordinary pastor, chaplain, father, grandfather, and dog owner who loves the smell of a genuine leather Bible and the aroma of its message. I'm on a quest to track down the best Bibles, how to best read and use them, and to discover the encouragement inside.

Jeremiah 23:9-22

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
            Martin Luther King, Jr. was much like a modern-day prophet.  In all he said and did he kept asking people to close the distance between the values they espoused and their actual behavior.  The terrible treatment King and his allies received during the civil rights movement in marches and demonstrations brought-out the awful gap between our American values of freedom, fairness, and tolerance and the reality that African-Americans really did not possess these in any manner close to the white population.  King’s prophetic ministry forced many people to come face-to-face with the disparity between beliefs and behaviors.
 
            The prophet Jeremiah knew all about such a gulf between expressed values and actual conduct.  And it was a very large chasm.  Like King, Jeremiah was imprisoned, had rocks thrown at him, and was jeered for his message of calling people to live up to God’s agenda for humanity.  White supremacy, or at least white privilege, was taken for granted in much of America before King.  In the same way, Israelite privilege was taken for granted in Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s day.  False prophets kept proclaiming Jewish supremacy and insisted that the Lord would be on their side of things.  “But, I, the LORD, tell you that these prophets have never attended a meeting of my council in heaven or heard me speak.”
 
            The spirit of the age simply accepted power, privilege, and pedigree as the norm that ought to always endure.  But God thinks different.  And he sends his prophets to call us back to true justice, righteousness, and peace for all persons – not just for some privileged people who take their freedom for granted.  An exercise in healthy introspection would be to consider what our most cherished values are, and ask whether they are God’s values.  If so, then are those values truly being expressed in our everyday actions and behaviors?
 

 

            All-Seeing God, you know the true state of every heart and every people group.  Do your work of making me holy in all I do and say so that the treasure of Christ’s salvation might be expressed through me in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Luke 20:45-21:4

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
While everyone was listening to Jesus, he said to his disciples:
Guard against the teachers of the Law of Moses! They love to walk around in long robes, and they like to be greeted in the market. They want the front seats in the meeting places and the best seats at banquets.  But they cheat widows out of their homes and then pray long prayers just to show off. These teachers will be punished most of all.
Jesus looked up and saw some rich people tossing their gifts into the offering box.  He also saw a poor widow putting in two pennies.  And he said, “I tell you that this poor woman has put in more than all the others.  Everyone else gave what they didn’t need. But she is very poor and gave everything she had.”
 
            You often cannot tell a fake by the external appearance.  A pious religious person on the outside may not necessarily be a genuine Christ follower on the inside.  The teachers of the law and the Pharisees in Christ’s day liked to do things for a show, for the attention.  They were important and respected people, desiring and enjoying the accolades of others.  They lived to be noticed.  But it was really all just a façade, a carnival sideshow.  The outside and the inside were not synced together.
 
            There is a marked contrast between the rich Pharisee and the poor widow.  Whereas the rich religious man put a wad of money in the temple offering for everyone to see, the impoverished widow put barely anything in, but it was everything she had to give.  The widow’s outward giving and inward disposition were perfectly matched.  She gave everything out of the abundance of her heart.
 
            The kingdom of God is not a matter of outward eating and drinking and ostentatious displays of spirituality, but is a matter of inner righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.  Aim for the heart, and the hands will follow.
 

 

            Loving God, my heart longs to worship you with everything I possess.  Transform me from the inside-out so that all my thoughts and motives may humbly express my words and actions.  May Jesus be praised.  Amen.

1 Corinthians 9:19-23

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
19 I am not anyone’s slave. But I have become a slave to everyone, so that I can win as many people as possible. 20 When I am with the Jews, I live like a Jew to win Jews. They are ruled by the Law of Moses, and I am not. But I live by the Law to win them. 21 And when I am with people who are not ruled by the Law, I forget about the Law to win them. Of course, I never really forget about the law of God. In fact, I am ruled by the law of Christ. 22 When I am with people whose faith is weak, I live as they do to win them. I do everything I can to win everyone I possibly can. 23 I do all this for the good news, because I want to share in its blessings.
 
            What will it take?  What will it take to win the world for Jesus Christ?  What will it take to win your neighbor?  What will it take to win your relative, co-worker, or friend?  It will take becoming a slave.  That is, winning others to see the glorious and incredible good news of forgiveness and new life in Jesus takes giving up our rights and our freedoms in order to have a ministry of presence.  We have to be around other people in order to win them.  That’s why winning the party-crowd takes going to the bar.  It’s why winning young moms takes sitting with them at the park while the kids play.  It is why it takes being present among people in the community in order to reach them, instead of wishing that people will magically show up at church in order to experience our friendliness.
 
            The turn of thought that we need is this:  Other people do not need to show up on our turf and become like us.  Instead, we need to show up on their turf and become like them.  If it weren’t in the Bible we would think it blasphemous to say such a thing.  But there it is, and we must wrestle with its implications for our lives.  So, what needs to change?
 

 

            Merciful God, you want to cut me into the action of what you are doing in the world.  Help me live wisely among those who don’t yet know you, so that they can see the light of Christ in me, hear the words of Christ from me, and experience the salvation of Christ.  Amen.

Mr. Lucifer

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
            Most believers, it seems, have never looked a real demon in the face.  They have not been a part of an exorcism, or seen demonic manifestations occur right in front of them.  That is likely because the enemy of our souls is much more crafty and subtle than to put blatant evil out there for everyone to clearly discern that something insidious is among them.  Rather, Satan cleverly disguises his dark agenda in ways that are sometimes barely discernible.  In fact, it can be so subtle that we even take the presence of evil for granted.  I hope that last statement scares the be-jeebers out of you because our struggle as Christians is not a contention with humanity, but with unseen dark forces and powers.
 
            If you have ever felt like your Christian life or your church is just plain dull, as if things were like a perpetual gray sky with no sunshine, it is quite possible that an evil canopy hovers above.  I’m not really talking about a literal cloudbank of evil, but a palpable intuition that something is askew and not quite right.  The true face of evil is ordinary and common, shallow and superficial.  When expecting to see the sight of evil in the apparition of a devil with a pitchfork, the real presence of evil is a well-dressed and well-groomed gentleman name Mr. Lucifer.  He looks more like a pencil toting paper-pusher than the architect of severe systemic evil in the world.  While far too many Christians are wasting time on witch hunts, the respectable looking Mr. Lucifer strolls unopposed into the church.
 
            Mr. Lucifer says things that make sense to church folk:  “I’m quite sure it has never been done that way before;”  “Perhaps you ought to induce a little guilt in order to get the people to serve;” “Well, not everyone can really follow Jesus like Billy Graham or Mother Teresa;” “Everyone in our town already knows about God, so there is no intelligent reason to plant another church – after all, what about us and our needs?”  Maintaining the status quo at all costs is at the heart of the satanic agenda because life transformation through the power of the Holy Spirit is Mr. Lucifer’s greatest nemesis.
 
            “Zeitgeist” is a German word.  It roughly translates in English as “the spirit of the age.”  In other words, zeitgeist has to do with what is already assumed around us.  It takes for granted the way things are, and feels threatened if anything is new or different.  Because God desires spiritual growth and maturity in his people, Mr. Lucifer will oppose anything that develops others into disciples who learn to follow Jesus.  And he does it not through pitched open battles, but in the shadows.  Parking lot conversations, church prayer chains, and meetings that never seem to get anything accomplished are his standard fare.  Anything that takes place in the dark and keeps people in it is the realm of his power.
 
            Make no mistake about it:  not only is there a Spirit of the Church; there is also a spirit of the church, a zeitgeist, a low-lying snake-crawling yawn-inducing banality that wants to keep slipping demonic roofies into the after-church coffee.  The effects of it inevitably lead to a preference for discussing the weather and last night’s football game over how to put the just-listened-to sermon into practice.
 
            The good news of it all is that God wiped out the charges that were against us because of Mr. Lucifer.  God took all our disobedience and shame and nailed it to the cross.  It was there that Christ defeated all dark powers and forces (Colossians 2:14-15).  God has given us a new lease on life – one in which we no longer have to succumb to unthinking conformity to the way things presently exist.  We have the freedom to question, to fail and get back up again, to love without fear.
 

 

            “Dear friends,” the Apostle John said, “don’t believe everyone who claims to have the Spirit of God.  Test them all to find out if they really do come from God” (1 John 4:1).  Evil is much closer than you think.  And the solution to it is yet even closer.