faith

Happy Reformation Day……

October 31, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 2 Comments

On this day in 1517, Martin Luther posted the 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg Germany. Number one on the list was this; that the life of a christian should be a life of repentance. When I was steeped in American Evangelicalism, I can tell you that my life was not a life of repentance; it was more of a life of trying to measure my own christian growth, to somehow quantify my spirituality by how much ‘stuff I was doing for God’. Since becoming Lutheran, I have learned a new way to think about my christian life. It is a life hidden in Christ, with nothing good to offer God save the righteousness of Christ that covers me, and with nothing to measure save the immeasurable grace bestowed on me. None of it my own doing. I am not getting ‘better and better’. I am only becoming more aware of my own sin and my total depravity. This then leads me to repentance. Which is I guess…….the point. Every day when I read God’s word and every Sunday when I hear it, those words, “your sins are forgiven” only get more and more sweet. So, how do you know if you’re growing in Christ? Listen here for a complete answer, but in short think about how you feel about God’s forgiveness. Does it bore you? Do you think you hardly need it anymore? Or do you hunger and thirst for His word of grace? Does it amaze you that He could continue to forgive you over and over again? Luther’s translation and interpretation of God’s Word changed the world forever and showed us that our ‘new’ life in Christ should be a life of repentance. To quote Dr. Luther, “We are beggars all.”

"You formed me in my mother’s womb……"

October 26, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 8 Comments

The following excerpt is taken from an article written by Robert George, law professor at Princeton on the extreme pro-abortion views held by Barack Obama.

Barack Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to seek the office of President of the United States. He is the most extreme pro-abortion member of the United States Senate. Indeed, he is the most extreme pro-abortion legislator ever to serve in either house of the United States Congress.

Yet there are Catholics and Evangelicals-even self-identified pro-life Catholics and Evangelicals – who aggressively promote Obama’s candidacy and even declare him the preferred candidate from the pro-life point of view.

What is going on here?

What kind of America do we want our beloved nation to be? Barack Obama’s America is one in which being human just isn’t enough to warrant care and protection. It is an America where the unborn may legitimately be killed without legal restriction, even by the grisly practice of partial-birth abortion. It is an America where a baby who survives abortion is not even entitled to comfort care as she dies on a stainless steel table or in a soiled linen bin. It is a nation in which some members of the human family are regarded as inferior and others superior in fundamental dignity and rights. In Obama’s America, public policy would make a mockery of the great constitutional principle of the equal protection of the law. In perhaps the most telling comment made by any candidate in either party in this election year, Senator Obama, when asked by Rick Warren when a baby gets human rights, replied: “that question is above my pay grade.” It was a profoundly disingenuous answer: For even at a state senator’s pay grade, Obama presumed to answer that question with blind certainty. His unspoken answer then, as now, is chilling: human beings have no rights until infancy – and if they are unwanted survivors of attempted abortions, not even then.

When I read this article, I immediately thought of my years in residency training in OB/Gyn.

I was on newborn nursery duty one day when there was news of a pregnancy termination due to medical complications. The rumor was that the baby had Down’s Syndrome. I was unsure of all the details but I knew that they expected this 22 week old infant to die shortly after delivery. The details of what followed will haunt my dreams until I die. The pregnancy was terminated and the baby was brought to the newborn nursery to die. The resident who brought the baby in said,

“I’ll just leave this one over here out of your way, you don’t need to do anything, should be gone soon.”

I was frozen—–with disgust, with fear, with shame.

I picked up the little baby and swaddled him in his nursery blanket and sat in a rocking chair by the soiled linen closet and did the only thing I knew to do; I rocked him and I cried and sang Amazing Grace and lost track of time and space as I watched that sweet little image bearer of God take his last breath. He looked like a little piece of heaven to me. I’m not sure for what ‘medical reasons’ his life were taken, but he had ten fingers, ten toes and the cutest little button nose. It was as if I handed him over to God on the fragile threshold that exists between life and death.

What happened that day to that sweet baby, to that mother, and to all of us in the health care field who are left to pick up the pieces was wrong and vile and should never be supported by legal systems in any civilized country.

Lord have mercy on us.

What it means to be Lutheran…Part 1

September 19, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 15 Comments

Raised as a very outspoken, dress-wearing independent Baptist,

I grew up believing that what determined how it is between God and me, depended on me. As long as I didn’t “drink, smoke, chew or run with boys that do” and as long as I really focused on MY spirituality, MY quiet time with the Lord, MY sanctification, then I was pretty much okay. Of course, the official teaching of the church is that you are saved by grace through faith alone, but everything else you see around you screams something else. The huge pitfall to this way of believing is that it turns you so inward…..you become obsessed with your own spiritual life and walk and at least in my case, second guess yourself all the time:

“Am I spiritual enough?

Am I sincere enough?

Maybe I wasn’t even REALLY saved back when I was 8?

Why else would I continue to sin?

Am I becoming more Christlike?”

You see where this is going. Pretty soon, this pietistic, self-focused form of religion leads you into a tailspin and in the end, you fall into either despair or pride. I fell into despair knowing that I was not ‘pulling’ this off. And I saw so many people around who seemed to be ‘managing it’ , somehow. So, what was wrong with me?

I nearly lost my way. Others fall into the pride pitfall. They really think they are ‘pulling it off’. They are living the ‘sanctified’ life, becoming more and more spiritual, almost not sinning any more, saying to themselves a familiar saying, “I thank God that I’m not like those people”.

So, what’s different about Lutheranism? It’s intensely cross-centered and Christ focused. No pietists allowed. Lutherans believe like Saint Paul who said he was the chief of sinners. They REALLY believe in the ‘solas’ of the reformation:

GRACE ALONE THROUGH FAITH ALONE IN CHRIST ALONE.

My salvation and my sancification are not my work. I don’t have to worry about MY sincerity, MY spirituality, or MY anything. It is through the vicarious atonement of Christ on the cross that provides everything I will ever need. This marvelous plan for my redemption leaves me free: free from self-obsession, free from the shackles of works righteousness, and most of all free to serve my neighbor. Now, all my energies can be focused on my neighbor and what my neighbors’ need is. This focus on the cross is rampant in the conservative form of Lutheranism that we are apart of (Missouri-Synod) and I would never subject myself again to the heresy of any denomination that is always focused on the christian rather than Christ.

Check this out in your own church for the next few weeks. Just listen to the sermon. Who is it about? 7 ways to be a better wife?, 10 steps to a better marriage? Becoming a better you? Almost every church marquis I pass tells me everything I need to know. It was an eye-opener to me when I looked at my own bookshelf. You probably have all the same ones: The Purpose Driven Life, Your Best Life Now, The Power of a Positive Mom, Promise Keepers, etc, ad nauseum. Our society and our churches are obsessed with self.

I only know one Man who lived the purpose driven life and who kept His promises.

We should trust in HIM alone.