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The CLC in Convention: “In the Footsteps of the Reformers”

CLC_Conv_Graphic“Which will we follow?
Where are we heading?”

For Lutherans, the date of October 31 calls to mind Luther’s posting of his Ninety-Five Theses, the event that sparked the Reformation. Next year, that date will furnish an especially strong reminder because 2017 will mark the five-hundredth anniversary of that significant event. CLC President Michael Eichstadt and Moderator Paul Nolting anticipated this approaching anniversary with this year’s convention theme, “In the Footsteps of the Reformers.” This theme resonated throughout the Thirty-second Convention of the Church of the Lutheran Confession, held June 23-26, 2016, on the beautiful campus of Immanuel Lutheran College in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

In his convention address, President Eichstadt spoke of the “countless billions of people who over the course of history have left their footsteps on the earth, making paths in every imaginable direction,” and asked, “Which will we follow? Where are we heading?” We want to follow in the steps of Martin Luther because he followed the Word of the Lord Jesus.The CLC in Convention: “In the Footsteps of the Reformers”

“BREAD OF LIFE” READINGS August 2016

Date Verse Reading Comments

Aug 1TLH 297Ecclesiastes 5:1-7Close your mouth and open your ears, for in His Word, God blesses you.

Aug 2 TLH 456 Ecclesiastes 8:10-17 We cannot know God’s deepest ways, but why must we? The important thing is that He knows us. Aug 3 TLH 203 1 Kings 12:1-20 [The Women Visit Jesus’ Tomb] Rehoboam foolishly rejected the word of his elders,
but the Lord used the incident to fulfill His own word.

Aug 4 WS 788 2 Corinthians 9:6-15 Giving to those in need was an act of faith, an expression of thanksgiving to God for His own indescribable gift in Christ.“BREAD OF LIFE” READINGS August 2016

Faith Is a Gift from God

“I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, that you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord”

(1 Corinthians 1:4-8).

LS_Aug_2016_59_2_Hands2Photo_TSr2_4c_fnlThe Apostle begins many of his letters with thanksgiving to God for giving his readers faith in Christ and eternal salvation. How much more shouldn’t we thank and praise God daily for the faith which He has given us? Scripture emphasizes over and over that the faith which receives forgiveness and salvation in Christ is a gift of God’s grace.

Our conversion was worked entirely by God. It had to be, because by nature we were spiritually blind (Ephesians 4:18), but “The Lord opens the eyes of the blind” (Psalm 146:8). We were spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1), “But God . . . made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (Ephesians 2:4-5). We were enemies of God (Romans 8:7) and could not receive the things of the Spirit, for they were foolishness to us (1 Corinthians 2:14), but “we have received . . . the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12).Faith Is a Gift from God

Election Coverage

Election coverage seems as if it has been going on “forever.” But in reality, it was only last spring when candidates began announcing their campaigns to be the next President of the United States. Since then, the news media have been covering the campaigns and discussing things like polls, “favorability,” and “electability.” Such coverage will continue until the election on November 8th.

Let’s consider a much grander, more glorious kind of election. This election really has been from “forever.” The Apostle Paul writes that this election took place “before time began” (2 Timothy 1:9), “before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4).Election Coverage

God’s Institution of Marriage

It’s the “Same Old Same Old”

“Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said,  ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman,” for she was taken out of man.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh”

(Genesis 2:22-24 NIV 84).

“Same old same old.”

This is the answer I received from a friend when I asked how things were going for him at work. He went on to share that he was feeling a bit burned out and yearning for something new and different from his daily work routine.

People generally use the phrase same old same old in a negative sense to describe situations that are boring or annoying (and which they might like to have changed). Yet there’s a sense in which it may be understood positively. Take God’s institution of marriage, for example. Though large segments of our society are attempting to morph it into something new (the thinking goes something like “Why should we stay mired in the same old tired ideas of yesteryear? We need to change marriage’s definition so that it includes couples of the same sex”), yet for us Christians, marriage remains the “same old” lovely institution God ordained at the dawn of time when He created Eve for Adam (Genesis 2:19-22). We hold fast to what God teaches about marriage and His “same old” definition: marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman living together as husband and wife.God’s Institution of Marriage