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.

"What Do I Say?"

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
            So far this year I have had an unusual amount of persons within my congregation who have and are experiencing significant health issues, especially cancer.  The church, of course, has a wonderful opportunity in such occasions to offer prayer, comfort, and encouragement.  However, oftentimes church members struggle with knowing what to say to persons going through such physical trials.  They may feel unable to truly say something helpful, so they do not say anything at all.  They might avoid going to visit someone in the hospital because they are too intimidated about the situation.  Even pastors and church leaders may feel so inadequate and small in dealing with some parishioners’ overwhelming pain and disease that they fail to say anything substantive.  This is a problem that does not really need to be a problem because we possess the words of God contained in Holy Scripture.
 
            Here’s the deal:  it is not really our words that bring health and healing to a person in need; it is God’s words.  Much more important than believing our speech is going to make or break a patient or victim’s health or happiness is our very presence.  Taking the time to be with someone in need and simply hold their hand and sit for a while can communicate more comfort and care than a bevy of forced words out of our mouths.  So, then, when we visit someone either at home or in the hospital our presence coupled with God’s Word are the vital tools of building encouragement into a patient’s heart. 
 
            Knowing the Bible is crucial to knowing what to say to a person in need.  Even the most shy among us does not need to put pressure on ourselves to come up with something to say when we are equipped with the Book of Psalms.  Whether it is reading Psalm 23 with its comforting promise of God’s provision, protection, and presence, or Psalm 91 with its grand vision of a God who shelters His people in a time of upheaval, the psalms offer us words to say that transcend anything we might come up with on our own.  More than once I have gone into a hospital room or a bedroom at home and simply spent my time reading Scripture after Scripture and allowing the Spirit of God to seep down into the fearful recesses of a person or a family’s innermost soul, bringing a sliver of light into the clouds of doubt and darkness that loom within.
 
            Another great fear of the one who would like to comfort another is whether they will be able to answer the difficult questions brought forth by the afflicted.  And, yes, they do often have questions of life and death on their lips, like an impetuous four year old peppering his mother with inquisitions for which she becomes exhausted over.  Yet, as human beings, we are not so grandiose as to have the answers to questions that only God glories to know.  “I don’t know” is a phrase that is not only perfectly acceptable to say, it may even be the best response to a large query.  Trying to drain all the mystery out of life by claiming to know the hidden places of the universe strikes me as, at best, hubris, and, at worst, leaves a person feeling more awful than they did before their inquiry.
 
            The only obstacles that stand in the way of our ministering care and compassion to a hurting person is our own self-made walls of excuses and fears.  If our presence and God’s Word are truly the best companions, then we can walk with confidence into the life of another and know that we are being conduits of grace to those who need it most. 
 

 

            If you are not sure about what kind of Scripture to use in a person’s life, every pastor on planet earth enjoys suggesting portions of God’s Word to use.  If you do not want to go alone to encourage another, there is likely a genuine follower of Jesus who would jump at the chance to be with you and assist in any way possible.  Too many hurting people’s pain is compounded by a well-intentioned person who simply says and does nothing out of a misguided belief that they have nothing to offer.  To feel ill or dying is to feel discomfort; to feel ignored is to suffer a terrible agony worse than death.  May God’s people use God’s Word to edify God’s people and transform God’s creation for God’s sake.

Experiencing Grace… Again

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
It may be that, at some point in your life, you were deeply touched by a profound encounter with Jesus Christ.  You found peace, love, and joy.  Your mind and heart was swept up in the awe and wonder of God.  Perhaps you were deeply moved for a few hours, days, or weeks.  And then, eventually, you returned to a more normal routine of daily existence.  Over time you drifted from your spiritual experience and got caught up in the demands of career and family.  What happened next is that you began to treat Jesus like some old friend from another town whom you dearly loved in years past but have just lost track of.  Of course, it was unintentional.  You simply allowed circumstances to separate the relationship.  Preoccupation with something else took over.  Now, you often find yourself with this low level irritation, frustrated with others and unable to love as you ought.  You have become what the late author Brennan Manning called a “Christian agnostic” – people who do not deny Jesus, but just ignore him.
 
            If your days are trivial and hectic; if the clock determines what you do; if you are numb to the news and headlines around you; if you are all jangled and jittered by life’s circumstances; if phones and computers and gadgets rule your day; if there is little room for responding to humanity humanely; if you have settled into a comfortable piety and a well-fed virtue; if you have grown complacent and lead a practical life; then you are in need of being touched again by the grace and love of God in Christ by treating Jesus as if he were your very best friend as well as the awesome Son of God.
 
            We are all still here walking on this earth because none of our failures and lack of faith have proved terminal.  We are alive today because of God’s radical grace.  The forgiveness of God is a gratuitous liberation from guilt and regret.  It is an extreme amnesty.  Through looking in the mirror and seeing personal sinfulness we amazingly end up encountering the merciful love of the redeeming God.  The grace of God says to us, “Hush, child, I don’t need to know where you’ve been or what you’ve been up to; just let me love you.”  When we have experienced that kind of love, we are then in a position to love one another deeply from the heart.  It is a new life of love, the kind of love that comes from God – an unconditional love that is permanent and will never go away – it is imperishable (1 Peter 1:17-23).
 
            What this all means for us as God’s people is that we will not just show love when we are assured that we will be loved in return; we will not just wait for others to show love to us first; we will not expect to reach some higher level of knowledge or spirituality in order to be gracious and loving; we will simply love with the kind of love that has been given to us by Jesus. 
 
As God’s born again people, we love with a gracious, sacrificial, vulnerable, and desperate kind of love.  It is the kind of love that is like the intensive care waiting room in a hospital.  I have spent hours with people in such waiting rooms.  In the intensive care waiting room we are strangers, but there is a loving vulnerability to being together.  I have sat waiting with anguished people and listened to urgent questions: Will my husband make it? Will my child walk again even she lives? How do you live without your companion of thirty years?  The hospital waiting room is different from any other place in the world. And the people who wait are different. They can’t do enough for each other. No one is rude. The distinctions of race and class melt away. Each person pulls for everyone else.  Vanity and pretense vanish. No one is embarrassed about crying or asking tough questions.  In that moment their whole world is focused on the doctor’s next report. Everyone intuitively knows that loving someone else is what life is all about.  By God’s amazing grace we will all learn to live like that without having to learn it the hard way in a place of intense anxiety and suffering.
 

 

            There is always someone who needs God’s love as much or more than we do.  Christ’s resurrection is not some flash-in-a-pan – it has staying power – it is real and permanent.  And it is our hope of living a new life of gracious unconditional love.  Scores of people today look for love in all the wrong places.  As followers of Jesus, let’s show them the source of true love:  Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.  Jesus has come to you and shown you the full extent of his love through the cross.  Jesus chose to enter this broken world and limp through life with you.  Jesus actually expects more failure from you than you expect from yourself.  And he gives grace.  So, all of our failures to love as we ought can be laid before Jesus because there is grace that covers it all – a deep love that forgives, redeems, and makes new.  Amen.

A Lifestyle of Grace

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
            I just want to say straight-up that last week was a very difficult time for me.  My wife, Mary, had surgery two weeks ago.  Praise God that the surgery went as planned with no surprises.  After two nights in the hospital she was released to come home.  However, she ended up having severe complications and landed back into the hospital.  Quite honestly, it was a serious situation and hard for me to deal with.  She literally has no memory of all that transpired in those days.  Mary is now home again and seems on a more normal trajectory of recovery.  But, I have to tell you, that I did not at all like what I saw in myself during those hard days of last week.  I found myself being irritated, frustrated, and even angry instead of caring, nurturing, and loving. 
 
            In the middle of that difficult time God and I ended-up having a spirited come-to-Jesus-meeting together.  In that rather intense prayer meeting, which was more like the Lord’s gracious confrontation to me, God showed me that I was not living according to my highest value in life.  You see, I really do believe that everything in life and ministry ought to, and needs to center completely and totally around the grace of God in Christ.  But what I was doing was extending love and caring for Mary as long as she reciprocated that love.  In other words, my love was conditional and God called me on it. 
 
Mutual love is a beautiful thing.  But what happens when only one person can give love?  What do we do when grace is the only option?  I had to come to the point of giving the very same kind of love that God shows to me in Christ.  I had to decide that grace was going to be my lifestyle.  I decided that it just did not matter what condition Mary was in; it did not matter what she said or did not say; nothing on her part mattered.  What mattered was my loving her deeply from the heart each and every hour I was with her; and, it did not matter if she was able to love me back or not.
 
            Since Christians are redeemed people; since they have acknowledged the truth of Christ’s redemptive events of crucifixion and resurrection; since they are recipients of God’s great love in Jesus, every believer must make the decision to live a life of grace and love no matter what!  It does not matter what others may do or say, or fail to do or say; as God’s redeemed people, purchased by the precious blood of Christ, the church will love one another unconditionally.
 
            I do not often read novels because frankly I am really an egghead who enjoys delving into thick theological and historical books.  But lately I have been reading a novel written by a Swedish Lutheran bishop back in the 1930s.  The book, entitled The Hammer of God, is a story of a pastor in Sweden who got into the ministry as a respectable option for his life’s work.  The problem was that his life and ministry revolved around the Law.  Everything was about being the right kind of person and doing the right things, of preaching what people ought to be doing and what kind of people they ought to be.  But something happened to him, and that something was grace.  The love and grace of God in Christ got ahold of this pastor just at the point when he was removed from his clergy position by no fault of his own, but because of mean-spirited persons who wanted to see him gone.
 
            The pastor’s response to the congregation and his fellow pastors, many of whom were simply awful to him and glad to see him go at the denominational body’s ruling of ousting him was not to blast them all for their lack of love, but this:  “Not until today have I really understood the depth of the message I ought to have preached.  Now I beg you all to forgive everything I have said and done that has been lacking in love.  When it comes to zeal, I regret that I have been too lukewarm in seeking the good of your souls, and that I have made a distinction among people, so that I have loved the little more than the big.  With regard to love, I regret that I have wounded and chastised more than I have bound up and healed.  But most of all I am sorry that I have so seldom preached the full gospel of unmerited grace, which I long for and need more than any of you.  My only prayer now is that God in his grace may wipe away the memories of all that was faulty and wrong and let that grow and increase which has truly been the work of his incorruptible Word.  And I pray also that there may now be peace and that our hearts may be free from all hard feelings, just as I now would thank God that he still, perhaps, may have some use for me, a sinner, in his church.”
 

 

            Although this is not what the people listening to the pastor deserved to hear, he told them what he needed to tell them.  Grace means loving people when they are unlovely, or when they have no ability to love you back.  It is not an overstatement to say that every problem and situation in the church can be effectively and lovingly dealt with by means of grace.  People wrangle and wrestle with each other because their love has limits and conditions to it.  If we would all learn to walk in the ways of Jesus and determine to live a lifestyle of grace no matter what, then, it seems to me, the church would explode with love and there would not be enough room to handle all the people in need of God’s touch.

Suffering and Joy

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
Easter is not only one Sunday on the calendar, but is a season in the Christian Year spanning seven weeks, or fifty days, until Pentecost.  In the Easter season the church explores the theme of resurrection and new life in Jesus.  Our Lord Christ did not only die so that we might have forgiveness of sins; He also died so that we might live a new life with a clean slate to follow him daily.  God saves us and forgives us, regenerates us, in order that we will live a new life in Christ.  This regenerated life is not really a matter of making new resolutions or turning over a new leaf – it is a faith response to the grace of God displayed in Christ by dying on the cross and rising from the dead for us.
 
            One of my all-time favorite stories is Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.  It is primarily a story of grace and new life.  The main character is Jean Valjean, who spends nineteen years in jail for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving family.  The experience in prison caused him to become a bitter man.  By the time he is released, he is hard and angry at life.  Since ex-convicts were not treated well in 19thcentury France, he had nowhere to go.  In desperation he seeks lodging one night at the home of a Catholic bishop, who treats him with genuine kindness, which Valjean sees only as an opportunity to exploit.  In the middle of the night he steals the bishop’s silver, but is caught by the police.  When they bring him back to the bishop’s house for identification, they are surprised when the bishop hands two silver candlesticks to Valjean, implying that he had given the stolen silver to him, and says, “You forgot these.”  After dismissing the police, the bishop turns to Jean Valjean and says, “I have bought your soul for God.”  In that moment, by the bishop’s act of mercy, Valjean’s bitterness is broken.
 
 
 
            But that is only a small part of the story; his forgiveness is the beginning of a new life.  The bulk of Victor Hugo’s novel demonstrates the utter power of a regenerated and redeemed life.  Jean Valjean chooses the way of mercy, as the bishop had done.  Valjean raises an orphan, spares the life of a parole officer who spent fifteen years hunting him, and saves his future son-in-law from death, even though it nearly cost him his own life.  There are trials and temptations for Valjean all along the way, but what keeps him pursuing his new life is mercy.  Whereas before being shown mercy Valjean responded with a brooding melancholy and inner anger.  Now, after being shown grace, Valjean responds to each case of unjust suffering with both mercy and joy, deeply thankful for the chance to live a new life full of grace.
 
            Suffering and joy.  They seem to be opposed to each other.  And, if we conform to this world’s thinking, they are taken as opposites.  Only Christianity has the worldview perspective that sees suffering as an occasion for joy, and not just senseless, random, and empty grief.  Followers of Jesus imitate their Savior in going in the way of suffering.  We are told in Scripture that these sufferings are trials to our faith, that is, they are the means by which our faith is developed, used, and strengthened.  Just as gold is refined by being put through fire, so our faith is refined and proven genuine through the purging fires of life’s trials and troubles.  Walking in the way of our Lord Jesus, adversity is our teacher, helping us to know Christ better and appreciate the great salvation we possess in Jesus (1 Peter 1:3-9).
 
            The most miserable people I know are those who do not know grace, have not been taught by mercy, and, therefore, do not know the joy of extending grace and mercy to others.  There is a tendency for many Christians today towards being stoic through the trials of life.  We try and keep a stiff upper lip and simply endure.  Taking the approach of “It is what it is” only works for so long.  Eventually “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” is a more appropriate response to trouble. But it is precisely during those times when human hope fades that we rejoice, even though the rejoicing is through tears, in the living hope that is kept for us and not by us. This spiritual inheritance of hope is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. That means we can live through a difficult day or week or month or even, dear God, a year or longer, and not add to the weight of our troubles by blaming the failure of faith.   
        
            Our goal in this life is not to escape the world because at the end of time when our salvation is completely consummated, heaven comes down to earth and both are joined together.  “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.  I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of god is with men, and he will live with them.  They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:1-4).  This is our inheritance in Christ.  But we must come prepared for this encounter with God by presently undergoing grief in all kinds of sufferings; these trials to our faith are the pre-marital sessions that prepare us for our marriage with Jesus.
 

 

            Eventually, suffering will have done its work and we will be with Christ forever.  Until that day, however, let us not hunker down and stay in the garage of life.  Let us explore the open road that God has for us, embracing both the meaning and the mystery of faith.  Let us live with confidence and run the race marked out for us.  Let us not be complacent or slow in doing the will of God, but work for God’s kingdom purposes on this earth, in this age, while it is still called Today.  And let us allow the trials of this age to do their work in us, responding to them with joy knowing that our faith is being strengthened for the benefit of loving the world.  Even so, come Lord Jesus.