Lutheran Helps for WEEK TWO

Day 8: Planned for God’s Pleasure
Baptismal emphasis: You are a child of God, and you bring pleasure to God like nothing else he has ever created. (p.63) Life is an act of worship as we bring an awareness of God into all our activities and seek to serve Jesus through them.

Day 9: What Makes God Smile?
Emphasis – we are created for relationship with God. Page 71 – Trusting God implies that God knows what is best for our lives. Think about the parent/child relationship. Like our own human experience, God doesn’t plan every event that happens. Rather, God walks with us and helps us deal with situations as they occur in our lives. Is there randomness in the world? Many Christians say yes. But God is with us in that random-ness. In fact, it is often in chaos or brokenness that we find God creating something new and good.

Day 10: The Heart of Worship
Lutherans do not use the word “surrender” much. Nevertheless, it lies at the heart of our faith. It is giving up claim to our own lives, what we want, and giving ourselves over to what God wants with us and for us.

When we are created, there is a “true self” that God intended us to be; a self created in God’s image, the image we see in Jesus. But we are shaped by our culture and the world in which we live. This is the “false self.” Often we talk about wearing masks to keep others from knowing who we truly are. Many think that we can get from the “false self” to the “true self” by willing ourselves to change, through human effort. The Bible indicates that the only way to move from the false self (the old nature) to the true self (new nature) is by surrendering ourselves to God, falling into the hands of the living God. In essence, this is what confession and forgiveness is about – a change in direction. As Luther would say, it is a daily dying and rising in Baptism; dying to our old way of living and rising to live God’s new way. This is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Day 11: Becoming Best Friends with God
Page 88 - “The key to friendship with God is not changing what you do, but changing your attitude toward what you do.” Awareness of ourselves is the first step in changing our attitudes and the way we respond.

Day 12: Developing Your Friendship with God
For Lutherans, obedience grows out of love, not coercion, not fear, not guilt. Parents hope their children will listen to what they say out of respect and love. Obedience grows out of our trusting that our parents and our God have our best interests at heart, and truly love us no matter what. Caution is needed on page 98. Why is there pain and suffering in our lives? Lutherans understand the message of the Bible to say that God pours himself into our suffering, and that God teaches us through suffering, but not that God wills it for us.

Day 13: Worship That Pleases God
Focus on the 4 characteristics: (1) accurate – “in truth;” (2) authentic – heartfelt/genuine; (3) thoughtful – engaging the mind; and (4) practical – a life that reflects love for God. Romans 12:1-2: True worship is offering our lives to God’s service, placing God first, last and only in our lives, discerning God’s will and then doing it.

Day 14: When God Seems Distant
We do not believe that God intentionally tests us with absence. However, there are times when God will seem absent in our lives. There will be arid times when our relationship is dry. Similarly, there are times when we feel separated or distant from our spouse or friends, but that doesn’t mean that they do not love us or that we’re being tested. During these periods we remember that we walk by faith, not by sight. We trust God even when everything else seems to indicate otherwise. We look to the cross and Jesus’ own experiences of feeling abandoned by God. Jesus trusted that God was with him and would ultimately deliver him and vindicate him.