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Pray for the
Heart Work of the Holy Spirit in Our Church Body
“Setting
Hearts on Fire,” the new theme for synodical leadership and
mission, is the worthy and necessary goal for our church body as
we face our uncertain future.
In
recent years we have devoted plenty of attention to the
essential head work of clarifying doctrine and practice. But it
is the heart that turns knowledge into energy for Christian
living and engagement in church ministries.
Head
and heart. Heart and head. The two go together. One without the
other is not the Christian life or ministry understood by our
Lutheran forefathers. C.F.W. Walther could advise a fellow
pastor, “Seek to work on the hearts of your hearers.”
Holy
Spirit Work
Heartfelt
response to the Gospel is Holy Spirit work. We can say all the
right words, but it is the Spirit who brings responses of faith,
zeal and unity.
Conflict
seems to be escalating in our church body, while energy for
cooperative ministry is waning. We need the Holy Spirit’s
heart work.
Over
the centuries the Holy Spirit has indeed renewed hearts and
minds within many church bodies in decline. He certainly did so
in the 16th Century Reformation. We in today’s LCMS
especially need the Spirit’s renewal.
Church
historians find patterns in the way such renewals actually
happen. Almost always they are preceded by widespread prayer and
repentance.
President
Kieschnick, our spiritual leader, is pointing us in the right
direction with his call for prayer, repentance, and spiritual
renewal in the LCMS (Pastoral Letter, October 2003).
Pray
for Renewal
The
Holy Spirit comes through the Means of Grace. Our role is to
prepare room through repentance and prayer.
Is
the Holy Spirit’s renewed impact important enough to pray for
it frequently and fervently? Such prayer prepares us. It also
moves God.
So
teaches Jesus with his promise that those who ask will receive,
those who seek will find, and those who knock will have the door
opened. In Luke 11 he follows this promise with another: Our
heavenly Father is ready to give the Holy Spirit to those who
ask him.
How
serious are we about wanting God to send his Spirit?
Repentance
God
does not do much with people who are full of themselves and
think they have life under control. Repentance is necessary to
prepare room for the Spirit who does not bring enlightenment and
enlivenment to followers who no longer see need for those gifts.
We continually have to turn away from reliance on our own
inevitably sinful human ways, even and especially in church
affairs.
Who
is at fault for our current LCMS conflict? The history is
complicated. Such a question, though, misses the point about
repentance for renewal. The Spirit needs to move each and every
one of us in heart and mind. This may indeed happen in ways none
of us can anticipate.
Will
you support President Kieschnick’s call for prayer, repentance
and spiritual renewal? Accept the challenge to think creatively
how this can be a church-wide effort.
Come, Holy Ghost, God and
Lord,
With all your graces now outpoured
On each believer’s mind and
heart;
Your fervent love to them impart.
Lord, by the brightness of
your light
In holy faith your Church unite;
From every land and every
tongue,
This to your praise, O Lord, our God,
be sung.
(Martin Luther, 1524)
Editors
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