Lutheran Helps for WEEK FIVE

Day 29: Accepting Your Assignment
As already stated above, Lutherans believe that we are saved from sin in order to be saved for service. We are created for ministry in the church, to build up the Body of Christ, and for mission in the world, to help bring in the Kingdom of God as a reality for others. Maturity, while the goal of the Christian life, is not an end in and of itself. Maturity leads to ministry. This is a good place to be thinking about hoe God ha gifted you for ministry in and outside the congregation.

Day 30: Shaped for Serving God
The beginning of this devotional is a little heavy on predestination. God created us for a purpose – to serve God as we use our gifts and passions to work for the Kingdom. We remember that each day is a gift in which God spreads a banquet table before us from which to feast. God gives each of us gifts. Whether we use them to serve God is our choice. (Free will) SHAPE can be a great model for understanding our giftedness.

Day 31: Understanding Your Shape
Each of us is unique. We are called to serve God’s Kingdom. If we don’t fulfill our calling, others go unfulfilled. If we don’t share our gifts or serve in the Body of Christ, we weaken it and it won’t function as God intends. Page 146 – God permits and uses our situations as learning experiences. We can learn from every type of experience, sometimes more from adverse situations than good ones. God does not wish painful experiences in our lives any more than we parents wish our children to suffer. But God uses painful situations to help us learn and trust that God is with us.

Day 32: Using What God Gave You
This chapter present a helpful exploration of Spiritual Gifts. We need to learn to accept ourselves, and our God-given shape.

Day 33: How Real Servants Act
Life offers us “tests.” With God, they become opportunities for growth and serving others. There are limits to being available, but no limits in the situations in which we find ourselves. It’s a matter of attitude, focus and orientation. Key for Lutherans: Servant attitude – how might I be Christ’s servant for/to you?

Page 262 – Lutherans do not believe we serve for reward. That is more of a cultural understanding and motivation. Rather, we serve as a means of showing our love for God as we love our neighbor. Page 263 – We can serve God’s purpose wherever we are. Place is not as important as faithfulness.

Day 34: Thinking Like a Servant
Underlying question: What does it mean to have a servant mind and heart? What does it mean for Jesus to be my Lord? Is Jesus the only one I listen to, take my directions from, and seek to honor or please?

Day 35: God’s Power in Your Weakness
This chapter emphasize learning to accept our limitations. How does our self-perception limit our responding to God? Henri Nouwen writes: we are wounded healers. God uses our brokenness as a way of bringing help to others who experience similar situations.

Lutheran Helps for WEEK FOUR

Because different folks began reading on differnt days, the Lutheran Helps make reference only to the number of the days according to “The Purpose Driven Life” and not the calendar. The Lutheran Helps are offered as a dialog partner for your reading and small group conversations. May God continue to bless us as individuals and as a congregation as we travel this Journey of Discipleship.

Day 22: Created to Become Like Christ
Lutherans would understand the goal of the Christian life is to "return to the baptismal font" until we have the mind and heart of Christ, through the work of the Holy Spirit. As Luther says in the Third Article of the Creed: I believe that I cannot by my own effort or understanding believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and kept me in true faith. In the same way the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it united with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.
We are all works in progress. We cooperate and make ourselves available to the Holy Spirit and give ourselves to the faith practices that God uses to form us. It’s not so much imitation as inhabitation. We pray that the Incarnation we witness in Jesus happens to us. God invades and occupies our lives. We invite God to do so.

Day 23: How We Grow
Baptists emphasize a conscious decision made by the individual. Lutherans emphasize God’s decision about us, and our decision to respond to Christ, through the community. WE CAN LEARN FROM EACH OTHER HERE. Jesus calls, and we respond. As Warren mentions, we are not working to “earn or deserve” our salvation. That has been won for us through Jesus. But we make conscious choices to grow in our relationship with Christ. Faith practices take intention. Just as we make conscious decisions about what we eat or how much we exercise or study, so we make decisions about praying, reading Scripture, worshipping, using our gifts, inviting others, giving of our time and resources, and serving others. To get better at music, sports or a hobby, it takes practice. That’s the way we are designed. Likewise, practicing our faith helps us live as disicples.

Day 24: Transformed by Truth
As Luther said, the Bible is the cradle in which we discover Christ. The Bible is the Word of God. It reveals God’s character, love and purpose. But the Word of God is most fully known in Jesus, the Word made flesh. The Bible is God’s love letter to us. As we read and reflect on its message, we encounter the living God.

Day 25: Transformed by Trouble
Lutherans do not necessarily believe that God has a purpose behind every problem. Our perspective is that God can use every problem/situation to serve God’s ultimate purposes. Why do bad things happen to good people? It is the question of Job and Jesus. Warren gives the sense that God allows suffering or causes it, as opposed to a Lutheran perspective of God enduring it, entering it, and overcoming it with us.

In this chapter we deal with what is sometimes called “God’s permissive will.” Does God control everything that happens or does God permit it to happen as a matter of human choice or circumstance? Lutherans believe that ultimately God will get what God wants. This is predestination. But God does not manipulate everything that happens. Romans 8:28 indicates that God is working with us to serve God’s ultimate purpose. Philippians 4 would indicate that we should “rejoice and give thanks” NOT FOR everything but IN everything.

Day 26: Growing Through Temptation
This is a good devotion on how to deal with temptation.

Day 27: Defeating Temptation
Here are some helpful strategies for dealing with temptation.

Day 28: It Takes Time
This is a good devotion on growing toward maturity. Patience is key

Below are Lutheran Helps for WEEK THREE , WEEK TWO and WEEK ONE.

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Because different folks began reading on different days, the Lutheran Helps make reference only to the number of the days according to The Purpose Driven Life and not the calendar.

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Lutheran Helps for WEEK THREE

Day 15: Formed for God’s Family
From a Lutheran perspective, Baptism is the sacrament of belonging and inclusion. This is God’s action, not ours. God initiates. God chooses us. We respond to that choice. Just as we did not choose our parents, but respond to their love, so it is true in our relationship with God. For Martin Luther, Baptism was the primary sacrament. It marks our birth into a life lived in God. It reminds us of God’s claim upon our lives and God’s desire for us to know the joy of his love. Baptism also reminds us that a life lived in God is a daily dying and rising; dying to living our way or the way of our culture, and rising to live, like Christ, in God’s way. In Baptism God claims us as children, adopts us into the family of God’s people, forgives us our sin for turning away from God, gives us the gift of his presence through the Holy Spirit, and promises us eternal life. A life of faith begins in the water and Word of Holy Baptism.

Day 16: What Matters Most
It’s all about love! Being in relationship is the training ground for learning to love and growing into maturity. We cannot do this when separated from the community of God’s people. A life of faith is a life lived for others. It is not about “me,” it’s about how I might serve you. A guiding question might be: How would Jesus respond to or love this person? How does Jesus want me to love? It’s a variation on “What Would Jesus Do?”


Day 17: A Place to Belong
The church is not a building or organization, but a people, an organism. We exist to carry on the mission of Christ! We are literally the Body of Christ in the world. Christ has no hands or feet or arms or legs or eyes or ears but ours! We need each other in order to carry out the mission Christ has left us. The community of God’s people becomes the very place where we get “on the job training” in learning to love and serve one another.

Day 18: Experiencing Life Together
Note the importance of small groups and experiencing the intimacy and support we need for the journey of faith. Note the qualities that define the community.

Day 19: Cultivating Community
Note the principles for small groups and building fellowship within the church. Where do we experience fellowship? What would it take for us to risk forming and being in a small group? Note the barriers and what is needed to overcome them. “Speaking the truth in love” is difficult, but essential. It is sharing how we affect each other, not with the desire to put down or hurt another person, but for the sake of nurturing and deepening our relationships as meaningful and whole.

Day 20: Restoring Broken Fellowship
Because God blesses our lives and restores our relationship through Jesus, therefore we work to restore our relationships with each other. When relationships are restored, we experience the peace God wishes for us. How might we be God’s blessing to the world as we work for “peace” as described in this chapter? How can we embrace diversity and yet find a sense of unity?

Day 21: Protecting Your Church
Unity not uniformity! We are called to build up, not tear down, to focus on understanding, not criticizing. What unifies us? One Lord, one faith, one hope, one Spirit, one baptism, one God and Father of us all. When we focus on personalities, preferences, interpretations, styles, or methods, division always happens. But if we concentrate on loving each other and fulfilling God’s purposes, harmony results. (P.162)