Category Archives: Uncategorized

“Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.”   (Psalm 55:22, NKJV)

The key to longevity and stability in a wide variety of aspects (e. g. moral, emotional, spiritual, relational) is the act of casting your cares on the Lord.  The more of our cares we give to Him, the more of His wisdom, confidence, and strength we receive in return.

The times we prefer to coddle our concerns in the privacy of our minds is the precise time we ought to be casting — throwing — those same concerns onto our heavenly Father.  Sharing multiplies our joys and divides our sorrows.

When we choose to keep to ourselves the very concerns that wring all of the joy from life, we deprive ourselves of a Confidant who has never revealed a secret; a Friend who has never betrayed a trust; a Defender who has never been defeated.  – Luther

Tagged , , ,

Holy Holy Week: Musical Encouragement

Luther’s note:  As we enter the second day of Holy Week, our attention is fixed on the passion of our Lord.

Many of you wrote me after hearing last Monday’s “musical encouragement.” (Thank you!) The group that recorded “It is Well with My Soul,” during the limitations of the Covid pandemic — The David Wesley Virtual Choir — has since gone on to record other hymns in the A Capella style that allows us to hear music from the world’s first instrument: The human voice.

As we ponder the valleys and the mountains of our Savior during this week of reflection, prayer, and re-commitment; I hope the words of the hymn, “Christ Alone,” will help prepare your mind and heart to receive (as John the Baptist proclaimed upon first seeing Jesus), “The Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world.”

Without Him, we have nothing. With Him, we have everything.

Click here, and be encouraged by the matchless love of God for us — in Christ alone. Have a blessed week!

“When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?'”  (John 5:6, NIV)
 
A little story (not true, but illustrative): Jesus encountered three disabled men along the roadside.  The first, He touched and he was able to walk.  He touched the second man, and his sight was restored.  As Jesus approached the third man, the man retreated and said, “Don’t touch me!  I am on permanent disability.”
 
It may be hard for some of us to fathom, but those who have spent time helping acutely needful people can attest to the fact that not all such people want to “get well”; especially if they have been in that “condition for a long time.”  Change — even good, positive, change — can be unsettling because it means releasing the old, familiar, ways.  Change means — well — change.
 
Our Lord addresses each of us at the point of our need, and He asks, “Do you want to get well?”  – Luther
 
Tagged ,