05.07.2022 EChurch@Wartburg : Richard Foster: An Inward Life of Confidence Before God

Sunset on Lake Superior link

Prayer of Ambrose of Milan, c 339-397 link

O Lord, who hast mercy upon all, take away from me my sins,
and mercifully kindle in me the fire of thy Holy Spirit.
Take away from me the heart of stone,
and give me a heart of flesh,
a heart to love and adore thee,
a heart to delight in thee,
to follow and to enjoy thee,
for Christ’s sake.
Amen

Prayer of 1 Clement c. 96 link

We ask you, Master, be our helper and defender.
Rescue those of our number in distress;
raise up the fallen; assist the needy;
heal the sick; turn back those of your people who stray;
feed the hungry; release our captives; revive the weak;
encourage those who lose heart.
Let all the nations realize that you are the only God,
that Jesus Christ is your Child,
and that we are your people and the sheep of your pasture.
Amen

The Lord’s Prayer link

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.

Benediction: The Aaronic Blessing (Numbers 6:24–26, NIV)

The Lord bless you
and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn His face toward you
and give you peace.
Amen

Comments

05.07.2022 EChurch@Wartburg : Richard Foster: An Inward Life of Confidence Before God — 11 Comments

  1. From Richard Foster’s talk, he quotes:
    “Beloved, in whatever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.” 1 John 3.20.

    So we have confidence in God over what our human hearts tell us… and Foster explains that would our hearts condemn
    God would do the opposite. An inward life of confidence before God.

    Wow. 1 John 1 actually tells us more: “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

    The predator whose own heart would justify his predation is never justified by God, because “God knows all,” as 1 John 3.20 finishes the statement.

    Do these preachers not connect the dots that predators engage in church for the teachings that justify, restore, give grace for, heal, render confidence for, and reconcile their predation?

    Guess not, since Renovaré does not seem to address predation via church engagement & church teaching.

    Thank God for Dee, Todd, TWW, Julie Roys, et al. Somebody had to weigh in and clean up the grace, reconciliation, healing, confidence, restoration, and justification church preaching game. Ever grateful for these who stepped up. Bout time.

  2. Thanks Dee; Foster is always stimulating, and has been for decades. I do have a few bones to pick here, though.

    Not meaning to be contentious, but I think that “self-doubt” is adaptive. There’s way too much hubris in the churches today. A challenge is to find the right standard by which to evaluate oneself.

    Perhaps the pervasive sense that ‘something is not right with the world, with the situation, with me’ is valid as a high-level intuition, though it is very easy to misinterpret the details and draw flawed conclusions.

    The meditation on how we tend to worry about “how to get to a place where God will bless us” stimulates the thought that it might be better to not worry about “how to find God’s blessing?” and to focus more on “how might it be possible in this situation to be a blessing to others?”. The seemingly shortest route to happiness is often not the path that superficially appears to be the most direct; an oblique approach is often much more fruitful. Find ways of creating grounds for others to rejoice, and then ‘rejoice with those who rejoice.’ That might be a limitless source of comfort. And discovering that the Creator is able to employ you as an instrument of His goodness toward others might do wonders for your ‘confidence.’

    An awful lot of Evangelical religion is so preoccupied with the first great command that it significantly neglects the second. I don’t think the two can be separated without harm.

    1 Jn is an amazing text. I’ll end with the beginning 1-3 of the chapter JF read from:

    “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”

    I suspect that the hope itself is a purifying hope, but it might also function as motivation to take concrete day-to-day steps in the direction of realizing the goal. “Love one another as I have loved you.”

  3. Samuel Conner,

    Thank you for your comments. My goal is to survey the landscape for different pastors for EChurch. I chose Foster precisely because he is stimulating. I also am grateful for those who look at the sermon critically.

  4. Happy Mother’s Day to all who love the Lord Jesus Christ. May you know how much you are loved by the King in spite of the false church systems propagating leadership over Jesus Christ!

  5. Samuel Conner: There’s way too much hubris in the churches today.

    That’s a wide swathe. IMHO, it depends on whom you are talking about. Psalm 138:6 “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

    It’s not one size fits all. Quite the contrary. There are many more such references in the Bible RE: God elevating the downtrodden and bringing down the predatory proud. Fact. Two opposite directions; two opposite acts of God. Jesus modeled this in how He interacted with individuals.

    The one-size-fits all is NOT accurate teaching with reference to:
    -grace
    -forgiveness (Luke & Acts 3.8, & Zacchaeus’ example, mandate specific FRUITS/acts of repentance)
    -restoration
    -reconciliation
    -“healing”
    -confidence.

    All have sinned. Jesus died for all. However:
    – a victim who was violated by clergy but then finally approaches God 1) to finally believe in God, 2) to live with faith in God after being violated by clergy, and 3) to trust God to guide them into hopefully a safer situation …
    ……………is far different from
    – a predator approaching God 1) to confess violation of victims, 2) to compensate $$$ to victims for damages, and 3) to face LE & DOJ consequences while doing a 180 in behavior for a whole new life of law-abiding clean transparent living.

    Psalm 138:6 “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

  6. I’m trying to cut back on video watching but I hugely appreciate (in addition to this one) Dallas Willard having been brought to us last week. I am going through DW’s wonderful essays on logic topics.