I've had an Epiphany!

The Lord has given to every man his work. It is his business to do it, and the devil's business to hinder him -- if he can. So, sure as God gives a man a work to do, Satan will try to hinder him. He may present other things more promising; he may allure you by worldly prospect; he may assault you with slander, torment you with false accusations, set you to work defending your character, employ pious persons to lie about you, editors to assail you, and excellent men to slander you. You may have Pilate and Herod, Ananias and Caiaphas all combined against you, and Judas standing by to sell you for 30 pieces of silver. And you may wonder why all these things have come to pass. Can you not see that the whole thing is brought about through the craft of the devil, to draw you off from your work and hinder your obedience to Christ? Keep about your work. Do not flinch because the lion roars. Do not stop to stone the devil's dogs. Do not fool around your time chasing the devil'...

Not long ago a well-meaning group of laymen came from a neighboring church to see me. They wanted me to advise them on some convenient and painless method of getting rid of their pastor. I'm afraid, however, that I wasn't much help to them. At the time I had not had the occasion to give the matter serious thought. But since then I have pondered the matter a great deal, and the next time anyone comes for advice on how to get rid of a pastor, here's what I'll tell him: 1. Look the pastor straight in the eye while he's preaching and say "Amen" once in a while and he'll preach himself to death. 2. Pat him on the back and brag on is good points and he'll probably work himself to death. 3. Rededicate your life to Christ and ask the preacher for some job to do, preferably some lost person you could win to Christ, and he'll die of heart failure. 4. Get the church to unite in prayer for the preacher and he'll soon become so effective that som...

Theodore Epp, founder of Back to the Bible radio ministry, realized something was wrong when he stopped receiving critical mail. Convicted that he was not challenging the flock enough, he changed his preaching. "I'm afraid that when I'm pleasing everybody, I'm not pleasing the Lord," he later said, "and pleasing the Lord is what counts." This is not to suggest that a pastor is only successful when he is upsetting people! But he must be certain that he is first and foremost faithful to the One he serves. He is fulfilling a divine commission when he preaches. Just as an ambassador is entrusted not with his own message but with his superior's message, so the minister is entrusted with the Word of God. Before it is delivered, therefore, every message should be laid at the foot of His throne with one questions: "Is it faithful to You, my Lord?" Or as one German pastor would always pray in the pulpit, "Cause my mind to fear whether my hear...

Since I have been contemplating a Divine Call, this week I thought I’d share with you some various articles I’ve found on the public ministry. Some are serious. Some are humorous. And some are thought-provoking. Imagine that we are TV sportscasters standing on the sidelines of a football game to give the play-by-play. The team nearest us is standing together, heads bowed in prayer, with the coach in the center. Suddenly they give a great cheer, and the coach trots out onto the field by himself. The players go sit on the bench. "What's going on?" we ask as we stick a microphone in front of a 250-pound guard. "What's the coach doing out there?" "Oh, he's going to play today." "All by himself?" "Sure, why not? He's had a lot more experience and training than the rest of us. We've got a lot of rookies on this team, and we might make mistakes. Anyway, they pay the coach well. We're all here to cheer and support...

The Lord of the Church certainly knows what He is doing. The Lord called the right person to be the associate pastor at Bethlehem Lutheran Church and School in Hortonville. Many of the same struggles they are facing, we have faced here. Increasing the enrollment in their school, calling the straying into the fold and reaching out to the lost in the community are all things the Lord has trained me to do both in Radcliff and in Racine. I could certainly do the work in Hortonville, but the Lord is not finished me here yet. There is much more to accomplish here at Epiphany, WLS and in Racine. Yesterday I returned the Call to Bethlehem. I remain here as your pastor. We have almost unlimited potential here – for additional members in our congregation, for students in our classroom, for additional called workers in our church and school, for spiritual growth among the members in Bible studies and worship, for outreach in our community and music in our services. People were reminding me,...

Genesis 8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible. 6 After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface ...

I. THE NEED FOR A CALL 1. What is personal ministry? (John 20:21-23; 1 Peter 2:9; Matthew 5:16; Mark 16:15) 2. What is the public ministry? (Philippians 2:19-23; 1 Timothy 5:17; Hebrews 13:7) 3. What are some forms of the public ministry? 4. While every Christian has the call to proclaim Christ to the world, how does a Christian receive a call into the public ministry? (1 Corinthians 14:40; Romans 10:15) 5. Should a pastor preach, teach, or administer the sacraments if he does not have the call to do so? Our Lutheran Confessions assert: “Our churches teach that nobody should preach publicly in the church or administer the sacraments unless he is regularly called.” (A.C. XIV) 6. Martin Luther states emphatically: “I dare not preach without a call. I must not go to Leipzig or to Magdeburg for the purpose of preaching there, for I have neither the call nor the office to take me to those places. Yes, even if I heard that nothing but heresy was rampant in the pulpit at Leipzig, I ...