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.

Sitting at Jesus’ Feet

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
We are barely into the New Year but already many of us are feeling guilty about our broken resolutions and/or are despondent about the lack of change in our lives.  We feel guilty because we have not let up on the gas pedal of our lives enough to accommodate any of those new pledges to live differently.
 
            But, you might reason, things will eventually settle down – but somewhere on the inside you really know that is not true.  Things probably won’t settle down because we are like Martha in the Gospel of Luke – busy doing things we believe are necessary, as if we are living on the belief that constant busy-ness and activity is what really pleases God (Luke 10:38-42).  The gospel story about Mary and Martha is a monkey wrench in our plans.  So, what we often do when exposed to a story about Jesus setting priorities for us is that we simply feel guilty, then just move on with our all our hard work without ever doing the even harder work of stopping long enough to sit at the Lord Jesus’ feet.
 
 
 
            We don’t sit down because, like Martha, we are distracted.  After all, there are too many plans and preparations to be made.  But the one reality that we must come to grips with is this:  Jesus is here, and since he is here, what will we do?
 
            I’m not going to give you some sage advice about how to plan your life, or some nifty tips concerning how to fix your schedule.  Instead, I can tell you that, based on the Word of God, the one thing that we must do is be with Jesus and sit at his feet.
 
            For that to happen we really need to see that we identify more with Martha than we do with Mary.  We may not say it out loud, but Mary just seems weirdly irresponsible and maybe even a bit lazy to us.  She has, we might think, her head in the clouds to the point of being no earthly good.  And Jesus seems like he is not being very realistic or understanding of what a real life in today’s world is like, and what a hectic schedule we keep.  For Jesus to identify with Mary sitting at his feet listening to him, and gently rebuke Martha for being pre-occupied with supper seems strange to our American Protestant work ethic.  After all, there are things to do, people to see, family responsibilities, work projects and deadlines, school papers, plans and preparations.  Martha isn’t a bad person, we rightly recognize.  She was doing important work, hard work, and that is good.  It’s not like she was idly sitting at her computer watching kittens breakdance on YouTube; she wasn’t wasting time surfing the web on her smartphone; she wasn’t next door gossiping to the neighbor, or being a busybody.  We need people like Martha, people who will roll up their sleeves and get lots of work done, people like me, we reason.  That’s what Martha was feeling, anyway.  But we still must deal with this inescapable truth:  Jesus didn’t feel that way.
 
            Many of us go day after day, month after month, anxious, upset, troubled and even frantic over every dirty dish, each upcoming project or event, and every responsibility whether it is big or small.  Truth be told, we are slaves to our schedules rather than being masters of our time and commitments.  What ends up happening is the thing that matters most is squeezed out and pushed to the margins of our lives.  We walk around and are quick to spout to anyone who will listen to us moan about how busy we are and how we don’t have time to read our Bibles, engage in focused prayer, let alone serve the church.
 
            Being busy is not bad.  But the point here is that the best practice we can engage in each and every day is to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to him.  This is a reminder to keep first things first.  Martha wasn’t doing anything wrong; she was just distracted and was missing out on learning from Jesus and making him priority.  We all know what we have to do; but are we doing the one thing that is necessary?
 
            If you are sick and tired and being sick and tired because of your ridiculously sinful schedule, then do this one thing:  devote yourself to the Word of God and prayer every day.  For that to happen we must not approach this in a legalistic way and end up rushing through reading the Bible and praying in a few minutes because we have to get to work.  That only misses the important picture of unhurried time with Jesus.
 
            We also need to avoid coming to the Scriptures as something to master or conquer or control because that misses the picture of simple humility and obedience at Christ’s feet.  We really have to believe that sitting at Jesus’ feet is important enough to rearrange our lives without making excuses about it.
 
            Most people are really not looking to be lazy.  Most Christians I know have a high sense of responsibility and obligation – and that is good.  We do not like letting people down or leaving things undone.  We do not like running late or being idle.  It is not wrong or bad to go through seasons of being overwhelmed with things that must be done.  Every family is busy.  But we must not wear that busy schedule as a badge of spirituality, as if we are trying to earn God’s good favor.  There was a time in my life when I worked fifty hours a week, went to graduate school, and either preached or taught nearly every Sunday – all when my girls were still young and I was trying to be a good Dad and husband.  I was up by 4:30 every morning and went to bed at 10:00 or later every night, and every minute of my days were filled to the full.  There were no Sabbath days off; no vacations; nothing idle; I was constantly doing and going.
 
 
 
            I only mention this because I learned something very important once I got through that crazy busy season of my life – something that I could not see while I was in the middle of it:  my busy-ness actually caused everyone else around me to be as crazy busy as I was, especially my gracious wife.  When there are no margins in your life, then every problem or change in schedule becomes a Martha-like experience of having to have other people step up in order to make your busy schedule possible.  You then become the center of time, not God.  People don’t do less when you are crazy busy – they do more, and the person who suffers the most is Jesus.
 
            If we are so busy that we cannot hear the Word of God; if we are so upset and frustrated to the degree that we cannot listen to Holy Scripture; if we are preoccupied with thinking about Monday morning; if we are distracted making speeches in our heads and mumbling to ourselves about other people and how they should be here and do this and that; if that is us, then we have an issue, and that issue is not with the Mary’s of this world, but with our own Martha mentality.  There is a difference between living a full life, and being obsessed with doing more and expecting others to do the same.
 
            Christianity is a life.  It is primarily a relationship, and relationships must be cultivated and given attention.  Jesus loves you, and he wants you to be with him.  Kevin DeYoung in his book Crazy Busy rightly says it’s not wrong to be tired and it’s not bad to feel overwhelmed.  It’s only normal to go through seasons of a chaotic schedule.  But what is both wrong and foolish, not to mention heartbreaking, DeYoung insists, is to live with more craziness than we should and have less Jesus than we need. 
 

 

So, instead, may we live unhurried lives, yet accomplishing more, because we have been with Jesus, sitting at his feet learning from him.

Jesus Is Making Everything New

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
The world as we now know it will someday pass away.  Christians have a future hope – it will literally be heaven on earth.  There will be a renewed earth and God will descend to dwell with us, and, so, will bring us to the original design God had in the garden with Adam and Eve – an unhindered relationship between God and humanity in which we are no longer dogged by our sinful nature, a sinful world system, and all the temptations that the devil uses to exploit for his own purposes.  Tears, death, sorrow and pain will a thing of the past.  Eventually, our struggle with sin will be completely over (Revelation 21:1-6).  To know that problems are temporary and that Jesus will change everything is a great comfort and help to believers in their present troubles.
 
            One of the problems we experience in this present age is that we are impatient people; we want good things to happen, and to happen now!  All of God’s people throughout history have been looking ahead for the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promises.  God said to the prophet Isaiah:  “Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth.  The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.  But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.  I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more” (Isaiah 65:17-19).
 
            When Jesus came in his first Advent, God’s people thought for sure all these promises would be fully realized.  But, like a young couple in their engagement period, the promises of God had been initiated and promised, but not yet realized or consummated.  There have been people throughout the centuries that have said, as the Apostle Peter identified (2 Peter 3:4):  “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised?  Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”  Peter responded, in part, by reminding Christians (2 Peter 3:8-9):  But do not forget this one thing, dear friends:  With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.  The Lord is not slow in keeping his promises, as some understand slowness.  He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
 
            Jesus is making everything new.  God is even now in the process of moving history to its final stage.  Can we be patient, as God is, in letting him do his work until that final day comes, or will we be impatient?  We live in an amazing time where we have instant communications and can travel anywhere in the world in a relatively short amount of time.  The earth is a big place, but we can traverse it by plane in less than two days.  It used to be that a ship going across the Atlantic Ocean took about three months from Europe to America.  Now, we fly across the ocean in a matter of hours.  Yet, we freak out that we have to be to the airport two hours before a flight and grump and complain about standing in a twenty minute line to board a plane.
 
            And it used to be that communication moved at the same pace as a ship.  Knowing about a significant event that happened in Europe would take three months to reach America.  Now we can know about what kind of bread some Frenchman ate for breakfast almost instantly after he eats it because he posted it on social media.  We complain if we have to wait a few extra seconds for something to load on our computers and smartphones, as if the world were about to end.  Well, actually, it is about to end.
 
            Yet, in the meantime, we are not to simply wait for the end to come and spend our remaining time trying to figure out exactly the day and hour of Christ’s Second Advent.  Instead, when Jesus said “I am making everything new” he means that he is now at work transforming all things which will culminate is his Second Coming and the final passing away of the old order of things.  We properly anticipate Jesus coming again when we let God change our hearts and lives, our neighborhoods and workplaces, our families and churches, to be just like Christ.
 
            God is now in the business of preparing for Christ’s return by doing away with the old in order to make room for the new.  The Apostle Paul put it this way to the Corinthian church (2 Corinthians 5:17):  If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  With every changed life, there is the reminder that God is not slow in keeping his promises, but is active in transforming lives for his own glory.
 
            The book of Revelation helps us to break our fixation with the past and holding onto the ways we have always done things and are reminded of God’s capacity and action for renewal.  We can walk now in newness of life.  Christians are people, according to Paul (Romans 6:4) that “were buried with Jesus through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
 
            Looking to the future work of God in ultimately destroying the old and bringing in the new is to help us see that God is now in the process of renewal, changing lives so that Christ can dwell in our hearts through faith as the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, as the One who has no room for any other God.
 
            In order to not be impatient, but to keep enduring and persevering, it is necessary for us to know the whole story of God and what he has done, is doing, and will do.  In the fall of 1991, a car driven by a drunk driver jumped its lane and smashed headfirst into a minivan driven by a man named Jerry Sittser. Sittser and three of his children survived, but Sittser’s wife, four-year-old child, and mother died in the crash. In his book, A Grace Revealed, Sittser shares the following interaction some months after the accident with his son, David, who was one of the children who survived:
“Do you think Mom sees us right now?” he suddenly asked.
I paused to ponder. “I don’t know, David. I think maybe she does see us. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t see how she could, Dad. I thought Heaven was full of happiness. How could she bear to see us so sad?”
Could Lynda, my wife, witness our pain in Heaven? How could that be possible? How could she bear it?
“I think she does see us,” I finally said. “But she sees the whole story, including how it all turns out, which is beautiful to her. It’s going to be a good story, David.”
 
            God knows the whole story; he knows how everything is going to turn out.  When everything passes away, when all is stripped from our lives, when the world as we know it is done away with, what are we left with?  We are left with participating with God in the renewal of all things, through alleviating and doing away with the evils and troubles of this world.  Whenever we seek to do away with things like global poverty; when we work to end the world of sex-trafficking or abortion; when we help others come to grips with the evil of this world through changing old satanic ways of operating; when we come alongside others in their trouble; then, God is using us to make everything new.
 

 

            The end is coming, but it is not yet here.  God is presently working to make everything new by bringing his salvation to all kinds of people.  Let us allow God to that work both on others, and in us.  Soli Deo Gloria.

God With Us

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
I haven’t always been a Christian.  I know what it is like to feel alone and feel like there is no God, as if I were in a deep, dark pit with no way out and no one there to hear.   I resonate with David in Psalm 40 when he said that God “lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.”
 
As a Pastor, people have often asked me the question: “where is God?” in reference to their own slimy pit experience.  What I have learned since in my own dark night of the soul is that God was there all the time.  So, in response to that question of where God is, I can say with both confidence and compassion that he is right here, weeping with you; he is right here, walking alongside you; he is right here, sitting beside you; right here with you if you will have the eyes of faith to see.  I know God is here because it is Christmas; God came down and moved into the neighborhood with us in the person of Jesus, Emmanuel, which means God with us.
 
It was not just Mary that was pregnant with Jesus, but history itself was pregnant because the time had fully come for the kingdom of God to break into this world through a child who would save the people from sin, through an infant, Emmanuel, God with us.
 
What I believe we need to know more than anything is that God is with us!  God is so great that he is not somehow trapped in heaven; he can come down; he wants to come down; he did come down, literally becoming one of us – he is Emmanuel, God with us.
 
            God did not come to this earth with a big advertising campaign letting us know of the grand opening, or with a huge and expensive party to draw attention.  Neither did God come through a rich and powerful family.  Instead, in order to fully relate to us, to genuinely be with us, he came in through a lowly stable.  There are many theologians and scholars who are able to articulate this truth for all kinds of curious intellects of how this could take place, that God became man.  Yet, sometimes it simply takes a personal story, a testimony so to speak, to bring clarity.  Bono is the lead singer for the pop/rock band U2.  He tells of a time when he returned to his native Dublin, Ireland for Christmas and, on a whim, decided to sit in a church service.  At some point in the worship, he came upon the great realization, with tears streaming down his face, of what it is all about; he says,
            “The idea that God, if there is a force of Love and Logic in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough.  That it would seek to explain itself by becoming a child born in poverty, in manure and straw, a child, I just thought, ‘wow!’  I saw the genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this…. Love needs to find a form, intimacy needs to be whispered…. Love has to become an action or something concrete.  It would have to happen.  There must be an incarnation.  Love must be made flesh and dwell among us.”
            God has descended to our messy, mixed up, broken world, standing with us in our suffering and shame, plunging head long into our pain and hurt and loneliness.  Paul Louis Metzger has wisely pointed out that a God who is simply nice and decent would take pity and send some help, maybe an angel or a prophet – at least some sage advice for us.  And, we would respect that, maybe even be satisfied with it.  But the good news is that God went far beyond nice and decent.  On this very day God became a naked baby.  He was a fetus, then an unwanted pregnancy, then a slimy, screaming baby – he grew up and ended up a criminal, stripped naked, tortured by those who knew not who he was, and condemned to die.  There is nothing nice and decent about that!  It was done for us. 
 
            Perhaps you are not feeling close to God this holiday season, but rather far from God.  Perhaps this holiday season brings you more sorrow than joy.  Perhaps the weight of a situation that seems beyond your control has caused you immeasurable worry and concern.  Maybe you are wondering where he is.  I will tell you:  he is right here.  And he is waiting for you to respond to his coming, his Advent, his incarnation.  Throughout the New Testament Gospels Jesus is presented as God with us.  He was with the disciples when the storm struck and threatened their lives, and he rebuked the wind and the waves and saved them; Jesus was with his people as they were rejected by others for preaching that the kingdom of God had broken into this world through the Emmanuel.  Jesus is not an idea, not a myth, not a historical figure to be debated, not a nice guy with some pithy wisdom; he is Emmanuel, God with us!  And he is with us to the point that whatever happens to us, happens to him.
 
            Since he is here, since Jesus is Emmanuel, now is the time to recognize him for who he is.  God with us means that God is here!  Since he is present with us, we can and must respond to his presence by admitting that we have made a mess of things through living by the illusion that we are in control of our lives and living as if he weren’t here at all.  But God is here, and he is looking for us all to center our lives on the person of Jesus, and to give up going our own way and instead pursue knowing God in Christ.
 

 

            Maybe you are a person who has gone to church all your life, and like me years ago, are familiar with the baby Jesus and Advent wreaths and Christmas carols and worship services.  Yet, you have not come to the point in your life where you seriously and deliberately responded to the presence of God in Jesus and devoted your life to him so that everything centers on him and not you.  One of the realities of Christmas is that God is calling us all to feel the impact of the baby Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, and to let that joy fill our souls to overflowing.  The Christmas story is a story of invitation.  We are invited into the story of Jesus.  Come and see the angels singing glory to God; come and see the shepherds praising God for what they have seen and heard; come and see Mary and Joseph rejoicing in the birth of Jesus; come and bend down and look into the smelly, lowly manger, and you will see God with us.   You are invited into a new life.

Missed Expectations

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
Many times it is true that our expectations determine our level of emotional and spiritual health.  Unmet expectations that we have can put us in, at best, a funk, and, at worst, into a profound period of disillusionment.  Yet, there is another option when what we expect does not look like it will materialize for us – we go back to see if what we were expecting is really accurate or true, whether it is really from God or not.
 
            In John the Baptist’s case, he was expecting the Messiah, the Deliverer, to come (which was true); he expected that the Messiah would come and execute justice and establish his kingdom on earth (which was also true).  But what John expected to take place immediately that did not materialize in his lifetime was when God’s judgment and wrath was going to take place.  What John did not see is that the Messiah would not come once, but twice – that there would be two Advents of the Christ.
 
            John was experiencing the first coming of Christ, while expecting that this first Advent would be like the second.  Christ willcome again, and shall judge all things.  Yet in this first coming, there would not be judgment, but healing.  Christ came in his first Advent in order to give the blind sight, to make the lame walk, to cure, raise, and preach good news to the powerless of the gracious coming of God.
 
            What, or whom, are we expecting?  Is Jesus the one we anticipate, or are we expecting someone or something else?  And, if Jesus is the One we are expecting, what is it we presume he will do?  Like John, do we suppose that the Messiah will beat up our enemies, have everything go our way, and establish a godly government?  Or are we looking forward to Christ coming and healing that which is broken?
 
            It is quite possible that, even though we might not admit it to another person, we are rather disappointed with Jesus.  He just has not come through for us in ways that we think he should have.  It is not hard to imagine why people would have their doubts.  I have heard my share of wonderings about God from others.  Listening to a woman wonder where God was when she was attacked and raped; hearing the person with chronic pain wonder why God has not answered prayer; remembering with another person a past of abuse and neglect – these and many other scenarios of brokenness are real, and the doubts about God just as real.
 
            John ended up in prison (Matthew 11:1-13).  He did not volunteer for it.  “Okay”, John thought, “I’m in prison – I’ll deal with it.  If Jesus is really the Messiah, he will spring me from the joint!”  But day after day, the deliverance did not come.  Eventually, John was beheaded in prison.  He ended up dying and never seeing his expectation realized.  John’s understanding was that the Messiah, the Deliverer, would come and take charge, beat up the Roman occupation, and establish his firm and strong rule on the earth.  Prison just did not fit the equation; it was not part of the plan. 
 
            If God is so all-powerful and loving, why doesn’t he rescue me?  That is an important question, and one that should not be dismissed by those who have not experienced the terrible evil of this fallen world.  If you are in any way disillusioned this holiday season, you are in good company with John the Baptist.  Yet, at the same time, we all need to examine our expectations.
 
            God often works in ways that we do not expect.  Sometimes we expect God to rescue us from harm, but instead he sends someone to walk alongside us in our time of need.  Sometimes we expect a miracle to be performed, but instead God gives us the ability to face the painful trial in front of us.  Sometimes we expect God to execute his judgment on those who have hurt us, but instead God gives us the grace to forgive.              
 
            If we are honest, at some time or another, we all have been disappointed by a Messiah that did not live up to our expectations.  We want Jesus to come and to come right now.  We want clear and helpful answers to our questions.  We want to be relieved of the burden of waking up every day without knowing what the next step is.  We want the Christian life to be like a simple math equation, where if we do our part, God will do his.  We want to put our hand under the pillow and find the answer there, like a quarter from the tooth fairy – but morning after morning all you feel is the sheet.  There was a particular time in my life some years ago when, every morning in the shower I would ask God to take me home – I was so disillusioned with my life and what was going on that I was just looking for heaven.
 
            I want to put a thought in your head that maybe you have not considered:  missed expectations are a gift.  When we don’t receive what we expect, we discover that God does not always conform to our agenda.  When we experience a missed expectation, we begin to see our own selfish desires.  When we don’t get our expectations met, it causes us to seek and trust God in new and fresh ways.  And, instead of trying to make sense of everything, we are free to discover God, who he really is and what he is really all about.  Every letdown becomes an opportunity to know God, and knowing God is our highest calling in life.
 
            Did God fail to come when you called?  Then maybe God isn’t a divine Santa Claus.  Did God fail to punish, or at least correct, the people who hurt me?  Then just maybe God is not a policeman who exists to give out tickets to lawbreakers.  Did God fail to make all my plans run smoothly?  Then maybe God isn’t some cosmic mechanic who always fixes every problem.  If God isn’t any of those things, then Who is God?
 
            We need to follow the trail of grace that points us to the Savior, Jesus Christ.  Instead of coming and erasing suffering, God is next to us in our pain.  Instead of making us successful and on top of the world, God humbles us and helps us to identify with those on the bottom.  Instead of always making us strong, God teaches us to trust him in our weakness.  Instead of destroying our enemies, God calls us to love and pray for them.  Instead of doing something spectacular, God came in a lowly manger and lived a life of self-sacrificial love.  Instead of taking us home in order to avoid hard circumstances, God asks us to be patient and do the work of reaching all kinds of people with the good news of Jesus.
 

 

            The message of Advent is this:  in the person of Jesus Christ, God is with us.  God is not going to let us simply run on cruise control; he wants us to think deeply about who he is, and what his followers are to be and to do.  So, Jesus was purposely cryptic, speaking in parables and alluding to things without coming outright and saying things plainly.  It is actually important, maybe even necessary, to question God, because God wants us, more than anything, to discover him, know him, and trust him.  Maybe we need to ask the question this year:  what does God want for Christmas?  Blessed is the person who does not fall away on account of Jesus, but who comes to terms with the true and living Christ.  Just as John came as a lowly messenger seeking to prepare the way for the Lord to come, so the person who identifies with Jesus in the lowly manger is the person who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  God wants us to want him above all else – to rely on him and walk with him.  Will you give your life to him this Christmas?