The Secret Wireless

Husbands and Men Seeking Wives, First, I address this to "men seeking wives" because if you are a boy, you should not be seeking a wife, and if you are just dating around "for fun" then you are not a man, nor are you seeking a wife.  You have some growing up to do and some decisions to make before this advice is really applicable to you. For those of you still reading, husbands are to lead their wives.  Men seeking a wife are to lead the woman of their interest into a godly decision for or against marriage.  And once married, husbands are to lead their households. In Ephesians 5:22-33 Saint Paul tells men that they are to lead their households in love.  Wives are to submit to their husbands as to the Lord.  They are to follow him as the Church follows Christ.  Husbands, then, are to lead.  And they lead by loving their wives as Jesus loved the Church. The part about the wives gets a lot of attention because the word "submit" sounds like Pa...

G.K. Chesterton had an interesting observation about boredom: "The sun rises every morning.  I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction.  Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising.  His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.  The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy.  A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life.  Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged.  They always say, 'Do it again'; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.  For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.  But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. ...

Gentlemen, It is long overdue that the Church takes a closer look at what it means to be a husband and father.  We have decried the devaluation of men.  We have lamented the dearth of leadership on this subject.  We have moaned and complained, but no one seems to be doing much about it. One major issue is that we too often take our visions for manhood, husband-hood, and fatherhood from the culture, particularly the popular culture, and not from the Scriptures.  Martin Luther started us off on the right track when he filled his Table of Duties in the Small Catechism with Scriptural references that concern our various vocations.  It would be fitting for us to expand on that work, to consider what the Scriptures say concerning the roles, duties, and vocations, of husband, father, and man. The importance of all this was highlighted to me this past year when preparing to teach a lesson on I Timothy 3.  In 7th and 8th grade reli...

  Can a Lutheran say, "My sin killed Jesus"?  Or is it better to say, "The wrath of God the Father killed Jesus on the cross"? The question was posed by a fellow pastor on Facebook a few days back and stirred up a few answers from various people.  Here is my response: If my sin did not kill Jesus then the Gospel is null and void.   Not only is this statement "ok", it is a necessary aspect of the proclimation of God's Word. The concern raised by several pastors was that by placing the blame for Jesus' death upon my sin I might be attempting to take some credit for the redemption of the cross.  This is, of course, not the case as anyone could easily tell you.  Saying that my sin caused the death of Jesus does not give me any credit from the positive effects of that death and more then saying that my drunkenness killed three innocent bystanders gives me credit for the foundation started by their family to combat drunk driving.  When I say t...

Matthew 11:25-30 Ever since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit the question for humanity has been: “How can I avoid death?”   How can I fix the fact that I am no longer what God created me to be?   How can I become right with God?                 From these questions spring forth every doctrine, every religious practice, every value system on the planet.   We have asked the question, and there are always plenty of teachers out there ready to give us an answer.  Jesus says, “ Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.   For my yoke is easy and my burden is light .”                 The yoke was an image that rabbis in the days of Jesus used to describe their teaching and the teaching of the law.   A true yoke ...

If you have only seen the movie you are missing a big piece of the picture. The Princess Bride by William Goldman was famously transformed into a film directed by Rob Reiner in 1987.  The movie is a favorite of many for its delightful combination of romance, chivalry, adventure, fantasy, and humor.  What many do not know is that the book is even better. Goldman's book claims to be an abridged "good parts version" of an earlier work of fictional author S. Morgenstern.  Goldman states, over the course of a 27 page prologue, that his retelling is what his father used to read to him as a boy, leaving out all the boring stuff about politics, economics, and history, while delighting him with the story of true love and high adventure.  One cannot help but smile when you realize that this is precisely the part of the book you are going to skip over the next time you read it. The actual story is, obviously, far more detailed than the movie version....

Philosophers have measur’d mountains, Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings, Walk’d with a staffe to heav’n, and traced fountains: But there are two vast, spacious things, The which to measure it doth more behove: Yet few there are that sound them; Sinne and Love. Who would know Sinne, let him repair Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair, His skinne, his garments bloudie be. Sinne is that presse and vice, which forceth pain To hunt his cruell food through ev’ry vein. Who knows not Love, let him assay And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike Did set again abroach; then let him say If ever he did taste the like. Love in that liquour sweet and most divine, Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine. --George Herbert ++++++++++++++++++++++

To have faith in Jesus Christ is to bear a cross.   To believe in Him as the Son of God, to confess Him as Lord, to trust that He alone can save us from the just wrath of God in heaven, is to strap those two splintery, wooden beams to our backs and carry them to the point of death.                 We often miss that when we read passages like Matthew 10 , but we need to be reminded of it.   The cross is not merely an instrument of suffering, although that is certainly included.   The cross is an instrument of death.   People die on crosses.   That is their entire purpose.                 So, to have faith in Jesus Christ is to die.   It is to die toward anything that would compete within us for our love, trust, and fear of Him.   And in Matthew 10 Jesus tells us what a few of those ...