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A few months ago, in one of our evening Bible studies, the question of healing was raised: does God still heal? One of the men was convinced that God can and does still heal, and he had a lot of questions about this. And so finally, I asked him to read a book that I felt could explain both healing and prayer for him. I gave him a copy of William Vaswig’s book, I Prayed, He Answered. In the book, Vaswig, a pastor from California, tells the story of his teenage son, Philip, who was diagnosed at age eighteen as being paranoid schizophrenic. The doctors told Vaswig and his wife that their son would probably never be entirely well, and that it would likely take eight to ten years of weekly psychotherapy before they would even begin to see any improvement.

Pastor Vaswig and his wife had been praying for Philip for years, as had his entire congregation—but no healing occurred. Then Vaswig’s wife suggested that they contact a woman who, years earlier, had written a book called The Healing Light. Vaswig was skeptical, but because he was desperate he wrote a letter to the author, a woman named Agnes Sanford.  She agreed to meet with Vaswig and his son and when she did, she prayed for Philip—and for Pastor Vaswig.

Agnes Sanford prayed for Philip again five days later, then several more times over the next six months. At the end of that time, Philip seemed to be completely healed—despite the fact that he had stopped seeing his psychiatrist when Agnes began to pray for him.

Pastor Vaswig and his wife were hopeful that prayer had healed their son, but they wanted to be sure. So they took him back to be evaluated by his doctor, as well as by a group of psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric social workers. At the end of a lengthy evaluation process, the head of the team, who also happened to be a former president of the American Psychiatric Association, said, “Call it God, call it healing, call it a miracle, call it whatever you wish. The fact is, Philip is fully recovered.”

Does God still heal today? Pastor Vaswig and his wife believe that God healed their son.

Pastor Herb Mjorud, a Lutheran pastor who was one of the pioneers in the Lutheran renewal movement that began in the 1970’s. In his book Dare to Believe, Mjorud tells of his experiences with healing prayer. One of his earliest experiences was with a man in his congregation named George who tells him that he has been diagnosed with a rare heart problem for which there is no known cure. George has been told that he has only a couple of months to live. But, George tells him, he has been reading his Bible and James 5:14-15 says: “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.”

Now Pastor Mjorud had been taught at his Lutheran seminary that we could not expect God to heal—or to perform any other miracles, for that matter. And so he was hesitant to pray as George wanted him to. George, on the other hand, was quite confident. “Let’s do what the Bible says,” he told Mjorud, “Call the deacons and have them pray over me and anoint me with oil.”

Pastor Mjorud reluctantly agreed and they set a time to meet the next day. He called the deacons and went out and bought a bottle of olive oil. Then he called a few other people from the congregation that he knew were strong pray-ers, thinking that “maybe if I call enough Christians, someone among us might be able to pray that prayer of faith.”

Fourteen people gathered in the sanctuary the next day and they prayed for George, anointed him with oil, and claimed the promise of James 5. When they were finished, George stood up and said, “I feel much better.” Where he had walked in supported by his wife and a friend, he walked out on his own. Mjorud, still skeptical, was astonished when George returned a few days later to say that he had been examined by his heart specialist—twice—and that they found his heart to be fully healed! Mjorud said that George was still very much alive at the time that he wrote this story, some eighteen years after it occurred.

Mjorud wrote of many other healings that he had witnessed during his years of ministry. Among them:

• He tells of a telephone lineman whose doctor said that he would never regain consciousness after a fall; Mjorud prayed for him and three days later, the man spoke. A year later he was back at work.
• He tells of a young woman named Emily who was blind. Mjorud prayed for her and the next morning she could see a pinprick of light. After six months, tests at the Mayo Clinic showed that she had 20/20 vision.

Does God still heal today? Florida cardiologist Chauncey Crandall didn’t used to think so. Crandall used to keep his Christian faith and his profession separate—until one day when a man collapsed of a heart attack at the entrance to the emergency room and was pronounced dead. Despite being shocked repeatedly with defibrillator paddles, his heartbeat had flatlined.

As the man was being prepared for the morgue, Dr. Crandall obeyed a mysterious yet compelling urge to pray for the man even though he had already been declared dead. Despite the fact that Crandall, says “I did not know this man, and, frankly, I felt embarrassed by the impulse to pray for him,” he did. He prayed, “Father God, I cry out for this man’s soul. If he does not know You as his Lord and Savior, raise him from the dead now, in Jesus’ name.” After which he turned to the ER doctor and told him to shock the dead man again. He did and the dead man’s heart began to beat perfectly.

Crandall says that “In my more than twenty years as a cardiologist, I have never seen a heartbeat restored so completely and suddenly.”  The man is still alive and healthy today—and a strong Christian.

Crandall goes on in his book, Raising the Dead, to describe many other miraculous events that he has witnessed since that day when he began to combine the power of prayer with his skill as a nationally recognized cardiologist.

Does God still heal today? Scripture tells us that God is unchanging—that He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Our gospel tells us about two of the many healings that Jesus performed during His earthly ministry. Blind men see and a man who is mute is able to speak.

And out Old Testament reading tells us about King Hezekiah, who was healed of a terminal disease. We read that he “became sick and was at the point of death” (2 Kings 20:1). Isaiah the prophet came to see Hezekiah and told him that he would not recover, and so should prepare himself for death.

How did Hezekiah respond? He prayed—he cried out to God for healing. He prayed fervently and he wept bitterly. And God responded—quickly. We read that even “before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court,” God was sending him back to tell Hezekiah that He had changed His mind. God said, “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you” (2 Kings 20:5). God told Hezekiah that He would add fifteen years to his life. And He promised even more—He promised that He would deliver Hezekiah and the city out of the hand of the king of Assyria.

We read in the 18^th chapter of the Second book of Kings that Hezekiah became the king of Judah when he was twenty-five years old. And, we are told, “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. … He trusted in the Lord the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. For he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him; wherever he went out, he prospered” (2 Kings 18:3, 5-7).

Hezekiah was a man who knew the Lord and who was accustomed to taking all his problems to Him. And so when Isaiah told him that he would not recover, but was going to die, Hezekiah didn’t argue with him. He didn’t talk about how unfair it was, he didn’t call all his friends and ask them what they thought he should do. No, none of these things. Instead, “Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord” (2 Kings 20:2). And in his prayer, he said, “Please remember [Lord] how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly” (2 Kings 3). Hezekiah poured out his heart to the Lord. He talked to God the way that we talk to someone we know and trust. He cried out in desperation.

He didn’t just say, “Well, Lord, I really don’t want to die yet. If it be your will, maybe you could heal me.” He prayed boldly, expecting God to answer—and He did. And when He did, Hezekiah asked for more—he asked for a sign that God really would heal him. And Isaiah told him that the Lord would give him a sign: He would make the shadow go either forward or backward ten steps—Hezekiah could choose which. And Hezekiah replied, “It is an easy thing for the shadow to lengthen ten steps. Rather let the shadow go back ten steps” (2 Kings 20:10). And “Isaiah the prophet called to the Lord, and he brought the shadow back ten steps, by which it had gone down on the steps of Ahaz” (2 Kings 11).

Hezekiah understood what Martin Luther put into words several thousand years later: “Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness.”

There are a few things that all of these healings have in common. The first is that God intervened miraculously only after all available medical options had been exhausted. God has given us modern medicine; He has given us doctors and nurses for the purpose of treating our sicknesses and He expects us to use them. Dr. Crandall seems to confirm this in his book Raising the Dead. He tells a story of a time when a man broke his arm and the doctor, caught up in the excitement of seeing God’s healing hand at work, prayed for the man’s arm to be healed. Nothing happened and eventually he heard God telling him to “just set the arm.”

This is very important—there is no evidence anywhere in Scripture that God wants us pray without seeking medical treatment. On the other hand, it is clear that prayer is to go hand-in-hand with medical care. Another Old Testament king of Judah, Asa, died of disease, and we are told that “even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians” (2 Chronicles 16:12). Get medical care—but don’t forget to pray.

The healings that we have experienced here in our congregation also seem to confirm this. The people who have received healing through prayer are people who have already received all the medical options available to them.

Another thing we see from all of the stories that I have shared with you this morning is that healing involved faith—a belief that God really does hear our prayers and that He really does answer. It is our failure to pray that often results in a lack of healing. And not just to pray, but to pray boldly and confidently, to really put our trust in God—to believe that when we pray, He will answer.

Dale and the baby.

The apostle Paul wrote: “Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?” (Acts 26:8).  Why indeed? Paul also wrote to the Philippians: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God”(Philippians 4:6). Why worry when you can pray?

It’s also important to realize that God does not heal everyone—we all die eventually, and for reasons that no one really understands, sometimes God heals and sometimes He doesn’t. Even people like Pastor Mjorud, who have seen many people healed through prayer, have seen just as many who remain unhealed. Dr. Crandall totally believes in the healing power of prayer, despite the fact that his prayers were unable to save his teenage son from dying of cancer.

Another important thing to realize is that all of the people that we’ve talked about this morning were changed forever by their encounter with the living God. God healed them and He was glorified—not them. And they knew it. The blind men in our gospel went and told everyone, despite the fact that Jesus told them not to. That’s what happens when we’re touched by God—and that’s the whole point.

Hezekiah wasn’t healed just because he was faithful to God—he was healed so that we could hear his story today and know the glory of our God.

Does God still heal today? The day after that Bible study where we talked about healing, I received a phone call from the man to whom I had loaned the book I Prayed, He Answered. He had already finished the book and wanted to know if I had any more copies. When I told him I didn’t, he told me that Amazon had thirteen used copies—and he had already ordered several of them.

That book, I Prayed, He Answered, started a minor firestorm within this congregation, as people from that Bible study read it and passed it around to others. I think that most, if not all, of Amazon’s thirteen copies, were purchased by members of this congregation.

God does still heal today. Why, then, don’t we see more healings? Perhaps the reason is that when God works in a powerful way, in the way that He worked in Hezekiah’s life, or the life of any of the other people that I have talked about this morning, it is impossible to avoid acknowledging the fact that God is God. Not me, not you—but He alone is King of kings, Lord of lords, ruler of the universe. And we don’t always like that—because we like to think that we’re in charge. Maybe even that we could be king of kings, that we have all the answers, and that, if things go just right, we might have all the power.

John 3:30 “He must increase, but I must decrease.” We aren’t always so interested in decreasing. And yet there can only be one King, one Creator, one Lord, one Ruler.

Step out of the way, let God answer your prayers, not the way that you think He should, but the way that He wants to answer them. Let Him be Lord not only of the universe, but of your life, of every minute and every hour—you’ll never regret it.

Plans … we all have them. Denny and I planned to spend a few days in Minnesota this past week, and then I got the flu and didn’t even leave the parsonage for three days. An Illinois family planned to fly home from their Florida vacation on Friday to return to their regular lives when their plane crashed, killing all but the youngest member of the family.

A week ago, an AirAsia plane filled with people planning to go to Singapore crashed into the Java Sea. Not only their plans but also those of their families changed in an instant.
2000 years ago, a young girl named Mary was planning to marry her fiancée, Joseph, and, if she was like most young brides, expecting to just live happily ever after. Then the angel Gabriel appeared and told her that God had another plan for her.

Shepherds in the fields outside Bethlehem were planning on just another cold winter night with their sheep when suddenly the skies above them were filled with an angelic chorus and before morning arrived, they had met the infant Jesus, Son of God—perhaps even held Him in their arms.

Plans … we all have them. The apostle Paul knew a lot about changed plans; he knew exactly where he was headed until one day while riding toward Damascus, he met the Son of God—and his plans changed forever.

Some years later he wrote to the Ephesian churches about God’s plan. He wanted them to understand that God’s plans are as different from our plans as night and day. Our plans are always tenuous and always subject to being changed by circumstances—whether or not we realize it. God’s plans, on the other hand, are absolutely certain. God’s plan was set before He ever began to speak the world into existence. God’s plan is certain, just as the hope that we have in God is certain.
There are no circumstances that can change God’s plan and the hope that we have in Christ Jesus—because He knows all circumstances. He has given us free will, but He also knows the choices we will make, He knows everything that will happen, and He’s taken all things into account—this is the “mystery of his will” (Ephesians 1:9) that Paul talks about. We don’t understand it—but we can totally rely on it.

And what Paul is telling the Ephesians, what he’s telling you and me in this passage, is the good news, the amazingly incredible good news, the best news we’ll ever receive, the news that we—you and me—are a part of God’s plan.

Even “before the foundation of the world,” Paul says, God “chose us in him. … He predestined us for adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:4-5). Paul says that everything—everything that has ever happened, everything that ever will happen—is a part of God’s big plan, “a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:10).

God has a plan, a plan of salvation, a plan that will at some future time, unite all things. And you and I are included in that plan—before God began the creation of the world, He created a plan for my life and yours. How amazing is that? It’s incredibly amazing! And Paul wants us to get that—just look at the language he uses. Imagine, if you will, the overwhelming joy and wonder and awe that he’s feeling he writes this, the same joy and wonder and awe that he wants us to feel as we read it. He can’t get the words down on his scroll fast enough! In the original Greek, this entire passage is a single, continuous sentence.

“In love God predestined us…. He chose us …. He adopted us … He has blessed us with His glorious grace … He lavished the riches of His grace upon us … He’s guaranteed our inheritance.”

Notice also that as Paul shares his wonder at what God has promised us, he uses the word “us” six times. Because Paul is speaking not to individuals but to us as the church, as the body of Christ, a body that is filled with the Spirit of Christ Jesus.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church is often referred to as the gospel of the church, because no one could come away from a careful reading of this letter with the idea that salvation is a private matter between me and God.

We tend to get stuck on individual salvation without moving on to the saved community. We emphasize the fact that Jesus died for us to “redeem us from our sin” forgetting the part about to “purify for himself a people of his own.” We think of ourselves more as Christians than as members of the church, and our message is often more one of a new life in Christ Jesus than it is of a new society.

In Ephesians, however, Paul is passionate in his setting forth of God’s eternal purpose to create through Jesus a new society, a society that’s characterized by life rather than death, by unity and reconciliation rather than division and alienation, by righteousness in place of wickedness, by love and peace instead of hatred and strife, and by an unrelenting battle against evil rather than a grudging compromise with it.

So what Paul is saying is that God has a plan, a plan that extends all the way back before the beginning of time. A plan that is absolutely certain and that He has promised He will bring to fruition. And that God’s plan, unlike ours, is not subject to change. What God says He will do, He will do. And the amazingly good news, he says, is that you and I are a part of that plan.

You and I are not accidents of nature, we’re not just random happenings in a random world. We’re here because God created us as a part of His plan.
Then he goes on, in verses 11 and 12, to say that “we have obtained an inheritance” and that we’ve received it for a purpose: “to be the praise of his glory.”
Then, in verses 13 and 14, Paul speaks to us individually, now that we understand that while we’re individuals, we’re also a part of the larger body, the church, reminding us that when we heard the gospel and when we “believed in him, in Jesus,” we were “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.”

We’re part of God’s plan as and His children, as a part of His family, we’ve already received the gift of eternal life. And He’s sent His Holy Spirit as His seal, as His guarantee, to live within us. “Just so you don’t forget, I’m giving you a part of your inheritance right now.”

This is the church, this is the body that we were created to be. A people living in the world, but different from the world. A people so amazed and so filled with joy at the incredible gift we’ve received that we’re constantly sharing the good news, sharing our joy, with everyone we know—because we want them to experience what we have, we want them to join our family.

This is the church that God intended; it’s the church that Paul was planting on all his travels. It’s the church that we see bursting forth in Africa and South America and China.

It’s a church that we see little evidence of in this country—we’ve become more of a milk-toast body, a people more concerned about having our own way or making things happen the way we think they should happen than we are about discovering our role in God’s plan.

A good friend of mine, a number of years ago had a powerful experience with the Holy Spirit one day, and in telling me about this, she said, “I’m not sure that I want that much of the Holy Spirit in my life.” She speaks for many of us.

A former member of this church, when they were leaving a few years ago, told me that we were becoming too caught up in “this whole Jesus thing.” “We’re not the Lions club or the Legion hall,” I told them. Not that there’s anything wrong with those organizations, but the church was created for a very specific purpose: to, in Paul’s words, “be the praise of God’s glory.”

“Well, the church should be just like the Lions or the Legion,” this person told me. “It should just be about community and fellowship, because everybody else’s beliefs are just as valid as yours. In fact we should be celebrating all those different beliefs.”

God—not me—has called us to be a people set apart; set apart just as surely as those Israelite people were set apart long ago, set apart not because He loves us more, not because we’re somehow more special than all those people outside the church. Set apart for the purpose of showing His glory to all those outside people so that they, too, can come and be a part of His body. So that in the fullness of time, many who do not yet know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, will be united to Him.

We cannot do this without being different, without being set apart—without being overcome with awe and wonder at the amazing gift that we have received.
Seven and a half years ago, as I drove to Iowa to begin to serve as your pastor, I prayed to God to make this particular body a body that would reflect His glory to the world in such a way that lives would be changed, that hearts and minds and souls would come to Him. I continue to pray that prayer.

And as we begin a new year here together, I pray that this year lives will be changed, hearts that have formerly been closed to the gospel of Jesus Christ will be softened, people that we might even now think of as being beyond hope, will fall in love with our Savior. I’ve seen it happen—and I know that it can happen again.

Are you with me in this? Is this your prayer for this church in the coming year? We’ll be engaged in three days of concentrated and committed prayer this week, along with thousands of our brothers and sisters in LCMC across the country and around the world—at least I will be. And I hope that you will be, too.

Because in order to become the kind of church that God wants us to be, prayer is the answer. In his letter to the Ephesians, immediately following the passage printed in your bulletin, Paul continues, “For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance to the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Ephesians 1:15-21).

Paul prays unceasingly for the Ephesian church because of their faith and love—and he does so with an expectation that God will answer his prayers. Because he knows that God is powerful!

Paul really believes that God is able to change human nature; he really believe that God is able to take people who are spiritually dead and make them alive in Christ. Because Paul really believes in the resurrection! God overcame death when His Son, Jesus, rose on the third day—rose in a new resurrected body. And what Paul is telling us in the first chapter of his letter to the Ephesian church is that the power available to us today through prayer is the very same power that God exerted to raise Jesus from the dead.

And we, for the most part, simply ignore this power that’s available to us. Instead, we trivialize the gospel, speaking of becoming a Christian as if it were no more than deciding to turn over a new leaf and begin a new year with a new list of resolutions, resolutions that we’ll most likely have forgotten a few weeks or months down the road.

For Paul, however, and for the New Testament believers, becoming a Christian is an event so radical that no language can do it justice other than that of death and resurrection—death to the old life of self-centeredness and resurrection of a new life of love. The same God who rose Jesus from physical death can raise us from spiritual death.

And Paul’s prayer is that we may “know Christ and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10). His prayer is that the Ephesians, and us, may know the hope of God’s call and the glory of His inheritance and the greatness of His power—he wants us to know this not just in understanding but also in experience. He prays with the expectation that God will answer, that through the power of the Holy Spirit, we will experience revelation and wisdom in our understanding of Christ.

Now all of us say that we understand the importance of prayer—some of you might even have written “pray more” on your new year’s list of resolutions. And so, as we approach three days of prayer this week, I’m wondering: If you’ve thought about this at all, what are the things that you’re praying for? For yourself? For your congregation? I asked a couple of you and you said that we should pray for things like more people to be here on Sunday morning and more contributions in the offering plate and more participants in Bible study and more children in Sunday School. Or we should pray for God to resolve whatever personal problems we’re experiencing.

None of those are bad things, but they’re considerably different from what the apostle Paul says that we should be praying for. And far more narrow in terms of vision that what God is offering us.

When Paul says “blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing,” he’s not thanking God for a warm bed or a comfortable life. He’s blessing God for allowing us to be a part of His kingdom.

Are you praising God for allowing you to be a part of His kingdom? Are you thanking Him for creating you for the purpose of serving Him? Are you seeking His will for you? Are you longing for Him to use you to share His good news with the lost and broken people of this world?

Or are you, like my friend and so many others, wanting to limit just how involved you allow God to be in your life? In your church? Because if you give Him free rein, who know what He might call you to do? He might call you to join a Bible study, to feel a sense of loss when you have to miss an opportunity to worship Him in the company of your brothers and sisters in Christ? He might call you to care about those lost people in our community and in other places around the globe.

So my question for each one of you is: Do we really believe that God is all-powerful? Do we really believe in the power of prayer the way that Paul did? The way that the other disciples and so many others throughout the centuries did?

Now I doubt if any of you are sitting there thinking, “No, I really don’t believe that prayer is powerful.” And yet, if we really believe in the power of prayer, why aren’t we doing more of it?

Why do we sit here and say, “Well, I always thought that this would happen … ?” “Well, some people might not like it if …?” “Well, I think we should do this …?”
Do we not think that if we cry out to God He will make His will known? Do we not really believe that He who created this church, He who put it in this particular place, had a particular plan? And that maybe His plan isn’t yours. And if that’s the case, which plan should we pursue? And if God has promised that He will provide for whatever is needed to accomplish His plans, do we believe that?

Or do we really, deep down in our hearts, believe that the God we worship isn’t big enough to carry out His promises? Oh, maybe He really did do all those things that we read about in the Bible, but that was a long time ago, and how do we know that He can still do those kinds of things today? How do we really know that He cares about us? How do we really know that He even knows where McCallsburg, Iowa, is?

Is that what we really think?

I hope not—because the God I know, the God I love and worship, really can do all things. He knows the number of hairs on each one of our heads, He cares about the smallest details of our lives—and He’s capable of dealing with the largest issues in our world.

But He has, for reasons that we don’t understand, said that He acts when we pray. And that our prayers become more powerful as we join together. “Where two or three are gathered,” He said. Not where two or three thousand are gathered, not even where two or three hundred are gathered. “Where two or three are gathered,” we have a congregation, we have a body of Christ—and when we cry out in prayer, God hears and He answers. Sometimes in small ways, sometimes in amazing ways. The evidence exists—although reports are often noticeably absent from the mainstream media.

We all remember that last summer, the nation of Israel was battling a barrage of missiles being fired at them by Hamas, and yet there were remarkably few civilian casualties, partly due to Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. The system is effective 90% of the time, but the 10% of missiles that got through should have done significant damage–and yet they didn’t.

In one case, an Israeli Iron Dome operator/commander says that during the week of July 27, he personally witnessed the hand of God divert an incoming Hamas rocket into the sea. As reported in Israel Today, the commander said, “A missile was fired from Gaza. Iron Dome … fired the first interceptor. It missed. A second interceptor was fired and it missed, too. At this point,” he said, “we had just four seconds until the missile lands. We had already notified emergency services … and had warned of a mass-casualty incident, when suddenly a mighty wind came from nowhere and diverted the missile, sending it into the sea.”

During the same week, Col. Oer Winter, commander of the Givati Infantry Brigade, described a mysterious fog that enveloped him and his troops as they advanced on an enemy position in the early morning. Col. Winter described the fog as “clouds of glory,” and said that it was due to the fog that they were able to successfully complete their mission.

This same commander had earlier sparked debate when he told his troops to lead the charge against an enemy that “curses, defames and abuses the God of Israel.” And that he was praying that the “Lord your God go with you, to fight for you against your enemies and save you.”

Even the leaders of Hamas have taken notice. One Hamas commander recently said, “We fire our rockets, but their God changes their paths in mid-air.”
Why don’t we live in expectation for God to do these amazing wonders in our lives? The angel Gabriel told Mary that “Nothing is impossible for God”–why don’t we believe it?

Why don’t we recognize that if we, in this generation, could begin the apply God’s staggering promises regarding faith-filled prayer, our lives, cities and nations would be transformed. Pastor and author E. M. Bounds says, “Prayer can do anything that God can do.”

Many of you may remember the 2006 movie Blood Diamonds, which brought to light the ongoing civil war of 2000 in Sierra Leone that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people. What the movie didn’t show was that 50,000 rebels ransacked and terrorized the nation, murdering even small children until, in desperation, 1200 Christian leaders came together to cry out to the Lord for His deliverance.

The leader of the rebel army was arrested on the first day of prayer, but things didn’t improve immediately. Christians continued to pray, however, and in the succeeding months, the rebels eventually handed over their weapons voluntarily to UN peacekeepers who broke them up and made them into farm implements! Sounds like the prophecies of Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:4: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.”
As a result of prayer, peace, security and development returned to Sierra Leone. The current president, Ernest Bai Koroma, is a Christian who has taken a leading role in the national prayer effort. In fact, just yesterday, I came across a news article reporting that on New Year’s day, he asked the country to begin a week of prayer and fasting to end the Ebola virus outbreak that has killed more than 2700 people in the country. “Today, I ask all to commit our actions to the grace, mercy and protection of God Almighty,” he said.

And then I came across another article, dated yesterday, that reported that “Sierra Leone’s Kailahun district has gone from Ebola hotspot with up to 80 infections per week in June to a place with zero new cases in the last three weeks.”
Coincidence—or the power of God?

Brothers and sisters in Christ, fall on your knees this week and pray to God to show us the plans that He has for us. Pray that we will have the courage to pursue those plans, the love for Him to set aside our own personal plans and agendas. Pray for God to work in our lives not just in small ways, but to use us in great and mighty ways. Dare to pray for great things—and dare to believe that in God, all things really are possible. And then continue to pray those prayers in the weeks and months to come. Who knows that we have not been placed here for such a time as this?

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

New years are often associated with new beginnings, with resolutions to do things differently, to make positive changes in our lives. And even though you’ve probably heard that old saying that “new year’s resolutions tend to go in one year and out the other,” this still seems to me to be a good time to consider what we do and why we do it here in the church. To consider whether there are things that we could do better or even things that we need to do differently in order to be the church that God has created us to be.

And as I’ve been thinking and praying about this for some time now, it’s occurred to me that perhaps the reason that we don’t do a better job at being the church that God created us to be is that maybe we don’t really know what He created us to be. What is our purpose?

And as I considered this, I thought about my own experience. I’ve been a good church person all my life. I can count on one hand the number of Sunday worship services I’ve missed in my lifetime—most of them due to cancellations. In addition, throughout most of my childhood I attended Catholic schools, where I went to church every morning Monday through Friday. I’ve served on Church Councils and Mission Committees and on Parish Boards of Education; I’ve taught Sunday School and led VBS for more years than I can count. I went to Bible studies and baked cakes for funerals and helped decorate the church for Christmas and Easter—Denny and I were even involved in trying to reform the church, to bring back the authority of Scripture. And through all of this I thought that I was being a really good follower of Jesus Christ—I thought I was doing just what God wanted me to do.

And then one day God called me into full-time ministry. He led me to a seminary called The Master’s Institute in St. Paul and after several interviews they gave me a lengthy application to fill out, an application filled with questions like, “Describe your understanding of the Trinity” or “Explain the doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone.”

Hours later I made it through about fifteen pages of these questions and came to a page filled with questions requiring only one-word answers. I breathed a sigh of relief and then I read the first question—and it rocked my world in a way that changed my life forever: “How many people have you personally led to Christ?”

I was stunned! And I thought: What kind of a question is that? How do you lead someone to Christ? How do you even find someone to lead to Christ? What’s that got to do with being a pastor anyway?

I’d spent my whole life being a good churchy person—and I had believed for my whole life that being a good churchy person and doing a lot of good churchy activities made me a good and faithful follower of Jesus Christ.  “How many people had I personally led to Jesus Christ?” I thought for a long time and I came up with a couple of people who I thought I maybe had played some role in their coming to Christ—or at least in their coming to church—but I couldn’t definitely name a single person that would someday be in heaven because I told them about Jesus Christ. And then I thought about who I knew that I could possibly lead to Christ—and I couldn’t think of a single soul. I was so involved in church activities that all my friends were in the church.

I was convinced that I would be rejected by the seminary because I had to write “0” as my answer to this question. To my great amazement, however, they accepted me—and thus began an education not just in theology and the Bible, but in what it meant to be a follower of Jesus Christ. During my first few months of seminary, and really during the whole first year, I would go away on Friday afternoon feeling shell-shocked. I had read the Bible and I had listened to countless sermons and I considered myself to be more knowledgeable about Christianity than most people—and every week I was learning things that no pastor in my Lutheran church had ever talked about. Things like what it means to really follow Jesus. Things like what Jesus intended His church to look like.

In the process, of course, I realized in a way that I never had before just how awesome God is—just how much He loves me and to what great lengths He’ll go for His children. Because He could have left me right where I was—being busy with religious activity and never realizing that most of that busyness was completely without spiritual productivity. Being active in the church but doing little or nothing to advance the kingdom of God.

God could have let me live out my life—my very comfortable life—continuing to be helpful and involved in church activities, never realizing how little impact I was having on helping more people enter into the kingdom of God.

This is how I learned that one of the worst enemies of Christians can be the good things in the church. Because teaching Sunday School and serving on church boards and committees aren’t bad things—they’re good things. Unless they prevent us from doing better things.

And so then God sent me here and I came all fired up to lead people to Jesus and to do all the things that we are called to do—only to find myself often discouraged by people who seemed to prefer churchy activities to growing the kingdom of God.

But recently it’s as if God has been nudging me, as if He’s saying, “Hey, you had to learn this stuff—maybe they need somebody to teach them, too. Maybe it’s not that they’re unwilling—maybe it’s that they don’t know why I created the Church any more than you did before I sent you to seminary. Maybe that’s why I brought you here.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus did not come into the world to live among us so that we’d build big fancy buildings where we’d gather to sing hymns and say a few prayers and listen to a message about being a good person. He didn’t come to make sure we understood that He’s good, we’re bad, and we need to try harder—that message isn’t even in the Bible!

Matthew includes this morning’s passage in his gospel so that we’ll understand this; he gives us this story that includes three groups of people: King Herod and “all Jerusalem”, the chief priests and scribes of the people, and the wise men. Do any of you have any trouble at all identifying which group you want to be associated with? King Herod is a pagan who likes his world the way it is; he sees Jesus as a threat and so just wants to get rid of Him—he cares about Jesus, but not in a good way.  The chief priests and scribes are indifferent—when Herod asks them about the Christ, they know their Scripture. They can tell him that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem, but they show no curiosity whatsoever about the wise men and their quest for the child. They don’t ask if they can come with them—apparently they just return to business as usual. Who needs God to be good churchy people? Religion can carry on just fine without a Messiah or Savior—in fact, bringing God into the picture can change the agenda and cause all kinds of problems.

The wise men, however, were eagerly seeking the newborn king of the Jews. Nearly 600 years earlier, Daniel spent 70 years in exile in Babylon. During his time there, he repeatedly found favor with the king, and, like Joseph in Egypt centuries earlier, rose to positions of great authority in this foreign land. Daniel became the head of the Magi or wise men and, as he was never afraid to talk about his God or to give Him glory, the wise men surely learned from him about the Messiah that the Jews were waiting for.

We’re not told how the wise men knew that the star was the star of Jesus, but we are told that as soon as they saw it, they came to worship Him. It wasn’t enough for them to just know that the Messiah has been born—they wanted to meet Him personally. Just as each one of us is called to meet Jesus personally. Daniel shared the glory of God in such a way that even centuries later, the knowledge that the wise men had of this God of the Jews was such that they would go to great lengths to meet Him.

Isaiah tells us that “darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples”—but that “the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen unto you” (Isaiah 60:2). We’re in darkness when we don’t know Jesus—and currently it’s estimated that, on this planet of 7 billion people, about 2.7 billion of us don’t know Him. Another 1.5–2 billion people have heard of Jesus—they know about Him, but they don’t know Him in any personal way.

It was because Jesus knew that this would be the world of the twenty-first century that He invented the Church—a body unlike any other that has ever existed, a body, not a religion.

This is what Paul is talking about in his letter to the Ephesian church. In the passage you heard earlier, Paul is reminding the Ephesians that God made him a minister of the gospel because God had a plan to “bring to light for everyone” (Ephesians 3:9) “the plan,” which is knowledge of Christ Jesus. To bring light in the gospels always refers to bringing Jesus. We live in darkness until we meet Jesus.

But what Paul is talking about is far more than knowledge—far more than just knowing about Jesus. when Paul says, “I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles” (Ephesians 3:1), he’s saying that he’s given up his right to his own life. He’s given up his right to do what he want to do and has chosen to do what Jesus wants him to do, which is to share the gospel with the Gentiles, the pagans—to tell them about Jesus.

The purpose of the Church of Jesus Christ is to search out Jesus Himself, to develop a personal relationship with Him, and then to bring that light wherever there is darkness—to tell others about Jesus so that they, too, can have a personal relationship with Him.

We are to be like the wise men—if we know something about this king, this shepherd, we are to seek Him out, to discover Him, to meet Him up close and personal. And then we’re to go and share the good news. Although the wise men are never mentioned again the Scripture, church tradition says that they were so strongly affected by their encounter with the baby Jesus that they became Christians—either immediately or later when one of the apostles came and preached the gospel—and that they were eventually martyred for their faith.

The point is that when people came seeking Jesus, he never offered religion. He offered Himself. He offered a relationship. And so relationship was extremely important to the early members of the church. They were so clear in their understanding of the church as a “body”—as a group of believers connected to one another and all connected to Jesus Christ as the head—that it was unthinkable to them that any believer would not be part of it.

And so it is to this kind of a body that Paul is referring in verse 10 when he says that “through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known” (Ephesians 3:10). The purpose of the church is to make the “manifold wisdom of God … known.” And: “This was … the eternal purpose”(Ephesians 3:11).

Paul, in this letter to the Ephesian church, is saying that the purpose of the church is to be the display of God’s wisdom, which brings God glory. God’s wisdom, which, Paul says, is manifold, a word meaning, “much, diversified, many.” It reminds me of Paul’s words to the Roman church: “Oh, the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways. … For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”

Paul is telling us that while we—meaning this local church—can do many good things, ultimately it is what God has done both for and in the church that brings him glory. In this regard, being is more significant than doing. It’s who we are that matters the most. And who we are, first and foremost, are children of the Most High God. This is why Paul will instruct us in the next chapter of Ephesians to “live a life worthy of the calling you have received” (Ephesians 4:1). Our primary calling—yours and mine and that of every follower of Jesus—is to bring glory to God.

We become children of the Most High God, members of His Body, when we enter into the church, into His family, through Holy Baptism. That’s why baptism is so important. Kynlee.

We do this, he says, “so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 3:10). Paul told us in chapter one that we’re “blessed in heavenly places” (1:3), and that Christ ascended “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, above every name that is named” (1:21). In chapter two, he tells us that we, too, have been raised up and seated with Him in the heavenly realms (2:6). Now, he’s saying that, like a million laser beams illuminating the heavens, the church penetrates even to the realms beyond with our display of God’s wisdom—when we’re displaying it.

Matthew in his gospel wants us to know that this baby born in Bethlehem, is not just the king of the Jews; He’s not even just the King of the world. He’s the King of the universe—a king whom even the stars in the sky obey, a king worshiped by wise men from distant lands, a king for all people in all places and all times. A king who will eventually ascend back to His heavenly throne, leaving behind a small group of people who form the beginning of His Body, His Church, here on earth. A group of men and women who clearly understood that their purpose was to share what they had been taught, to shine the light of Jesus Christ into the world. A group of men and women who, like Paul, were willing to set aside their own ideas about what their lives should look like to become “prisoners for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles” (Ephesians 3:1)—they gave up their personal agendas for the sake of those people who were living in “thick darkness” (Isaiah 60:2).

This is the purpose of the church—it was the reason that Jesus invented the church in the first century and it’s the reason that the church continues to exist in the twenty-first century. It’s the church that He wants us to be. And so as we begin this new year, I want us to begin to pray about how we can best do this. And I believe that God is calling us to a five year plan to become a part of His Body that reflects His glory so brightly, that we, like the wise men of long ago, will know what it is to “rejoice exceedingly with great joy” (Matthew 2:10) as we worship our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.