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.

Psalm 115

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            We don’t talk too much about idolatry or idol worship anymore, even in the church.  After all, nobody in Western society really bows down to human-made little idols like in other cultures and prays to inanimate objects.  Or do we?  Most Westerners think that money talks; that sports rules; and, that others should bow to American ways.  We even have places of worship for our idols on Wall Street, the local mall, and the stadium.
 
            I’m not down on shopping, making money, watching the next NBA playoff game, or American democracy.  It’s just that we are fooling ourselves if we think that idolatry speech is not relevant to us.  We replace the worship of God and Christ’s Church with all kinds of things.  Our hearts do not always love God with all our mind and strength.  Like the pagans of old, we are just as prone to trust in products of our own construction in order to get our sense of security and fulfillment.
 
            The simple spiritual practice of giving glory to God for every good thing in our lives can help inoculate us from the propensity to trust in our own ingenuity and production.  In short, we need God – all the time.  Whatever practices we can put in place to remind us of that truth will bring the kind of blessing that we often search for in other gods.  Starting the day with inhaling the words “more of you” and exhaling with the words “less of me” gives God his due place in our lives and puts us on a trajectory of giving God glory throughout the day.
            Great God Almighty, I will bless your name today and every day.  Wean me away from the idols of my heart so that I will learn to trust you more and more in daily life.  To the glory of Jesus I pray.  Amen.

Acts 1:1-11

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            Today is the recognition and celebration of the Ascension of our Lord.  Each year the Church Calendar marks the fortieth day after Easter when Jesus ascended to heaven in full view of the disciples’ wide eyes.  Unlike Christmas and Easter, the Ascension is quite often overlooked by the church.  Yet, it has profound theological significance and is a redemptive event as much as any in the life of Christ.
 
            The Ascension of our Lord means that Jesus is indeed King over all creation, exalted above the earth and its inhabitants.  Since Jesus is ascended, glorified, and exalted, Christians have the confident hope that he will return and that they will experience bodily resurrection along with him.  During the interim, our Lord is busy interceding for us at the right hand of the Father, attentive to our prayers and our earthly situation.  We are neither alone, nor without help.
 
            Christ’s Ascension also means that Pentecost is right around the corner, when the power of our risen Lord will come upon every believer for service and living the Christian life.    The appropriate response to this special day is to rejoice and to submit; we can celebrate the reality that King Jesus is Lord of all, and we can humbly give our hearts to Christ’s gracious and benevolent rule in our lives.  So, we continue to pray that God’s kingdom will come and his will be done here and now because Jesus Christ has ascended to heaven.
            King Jesus, I recognize and celebrate your powerful and merciful rule over your creation.  Help me to so know your gracious leadership that in everything I say and do Jesus is exalted and glorified.  Thank you for this great grace to me in making it possible to participate with you in your kingdom.  Amen.

Overcoming the World

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
Everyone who is truly born of God overcomes the world because such a person believes in Jesus as the Son of God and seeks to obey him in all things.  Faith, love, and obedience are tightly woven together to such an extent that to pull one of them out is to unravel the whole bunch.  These three characteristics of the true Christian are vital and necessary to living the Christian life.  They all must be present in order for the church to overcome the world (1 John 5:1-5).
 
            God saves us from sin and grants us forgiveness; the action is on his part.  We simply are recipients of his good grace toward us.  Our actions are a result of God’s action to us.  In other words, to put it simply:  to be a person born from God means that the Christian will engage in the activities of faith, love, and obedience.  Just as a newborn baby first breathes, then learns to eat, sleeps, grows-up, learns to walk, and over time develops into an adult just like his/her mother and father, so the Christian who is born again from God exhibits faith, learns to love, and grows up developing the skills of obeying Jesus and following him, learning to walk in his ways, becoming just like him.
 
            In the same way that a child must learn and grow in order to have the skills to face the world in all its bigness, trials, and temptations, so the Christian must also develop the commensurate abilities necessary in order to take on the world and overcome it.  The indispensable skills that Christians need are faith, love, and obedience.  Without them we will not be able to deal with the world; but with them we experience a practical victory over the world.
 
            The term “world” in the book of 1 John is used in the sense of the patterns, systems, and operations of the world in contrast to how God operates.  The world engages in revenge and payback when wronged, whereas the Christian learns to believe that God will be the Judge, loves the person who has offended him through prayer for his enemy, and obeys God by engaging in good works that seeks the welfare of the other.  The world uses other people as either objects of their pleasure or to get ahead in life, whereas the Christian believes God will take care of her needs, will seek to love the other person instead of use them, and would rather obey God by cutting off her right hand off than engage in selfish behavior.  The world thinks nothing of lying, cheating, and stealing if they can get away with it, whereas the Christian believes that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, loves being a person of integrity, and obeys God even when it hurts.
 
            The way to overcome the world with a practical victory is to be about the business of faith, love, and obedience.  Where do we feel “the pull” in life from?  Do we feel it from the world, or from God and his Word?  Yes, it is true that our society is becoming more and more secular and worldly.  We must learn to navigate the worldly elements of our society that upset us through faith, love, and obedience to God.  We must also learn how to deal with the worldly elements of our society in which we feel a pull and a tug to go along with it and want to give in to it.  This requires a community of Christians that engages the world through faith, love, and obedience in order to overcome.
 
            Our task and our call as Christians cannot be reduced to just survive the world.  If anyone could have had that kind of mentality, it was Helen Keller.  Deaf, mute, and blind, she could have settled into just getting by and waiting for heaven.  But she accepted her situation, coped with it, and even transcended her limitations.  She did more than survive – she thrived.  Helen Keller once said, “The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were not limitations to overcome.  The mountaintop would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.”
 

 

Overcoming the world is a high calling from God.  It means using faith to put aside fear and take the kind of risk God wants churches to take.  It means using love means to forsake hate, even when it hurts.  It means using obedience to cast off selfishness and choosing to do what is best for another person’s welfare.  Being characterized by these three Christian virtues will have the effect of overcoming the world.  It is not a burdensome or heavy way to live.  It is not an isolated individual thing, but a communal way.  It is the way of Jesus – a way every believer and every church must follow.

Deuteronomy 11:1-17

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            God has boundaries.  That is, he does not just flit about doing whatever seems alright for the moment because he is firmly secure in who he is and what exactly he wants.  God is not okay with his creatures, us, having no boundaries.  Since we are people created in his image, we are to reflect him in all things, including having the established boundary of taking charge of our own spiritual lives and obeying him in all things.
 
            God has opened the way of redemption to his people, first in the incredible event of the exodus from Egypt, then in the culmination of our freedom through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Therefore, God expects us to live into this opportunity without acting like all our problems are his fault.  Just because God stands up to people and does not cave into their demands and their whining does not make him mean or unjust – it simply means he doesn’t need people to give him props.  God is secure enough to not be dependent on humans.
 
            God is quite clear on what he wants, and where the boundary lines fall:  “You shall therefore love the LORD your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always.”  There is no fudge factor to that statement, scratching our heads wondering what we ought to be doing.  If we will obey God, we will experience life as it ought to be lived – free from all the machinations of sinful brokenness and insecurity, yet, securely confined within godly boundaries.  God can tell his people to be strong and take the land because he has made it possible for them to do so.  He has acted in history, and expects us to respond in obedience to the boundary lines he has established that will allow us to flourish and grow as people in a new land.
            Great God Almighty, I choose today to obey you in all things out of the grace given to me because of Jesus Christ.  I want to please you in all I say and do, so that you will be seen as the glorious and exalted king of the universe.  Help me to live up to my standing in Christ in the power of the Spirit as I step into your world with the keys of the kingdom.  Amen.