The Trinity

God is for you. God the Father is for you. God the Son is for you. God the Holy Spirit is for you. One God, three persons, all for you, all of the time. This is how God saved the world, and you. The Father sent the Son to become man and reveal the unutterable love of the Father to the world. The Son became incarnate and revealed the unutterable love of the Father to you, on the cross. During His three-year ministry, Jesus only did what He saw the Father doing (John 5). He had compassion for God’s people and healed them: the lame walk and the blind see, the deaf hear and the mute speak, even the dead arise and live again.

The Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit to call, gather, enlighten and sanctify you through the Living Word. The gift of the Spirit is faith in what God has done for you in Christ. And that is the kicker, the real problem. You cannot make yourself believe in Christ your Lord, even if you wanted to. Even the pious and socially obedient cannot save themselves; they cannot be born again of God’s breath—His wind and spirit—by their own efforts, behavior, thoughts, or deeds. Being born again is the work of “God-the Verb,” the Holy Spirit.

Through the folly of human preaching, God sends the Holy Spirit to give you faith in Christ, and all the things that God has done for you through Christ crucified and risen for you.

And God keeps sending the Holy Spirit into your heart every day. Every single day of your life… All the days of your life… to keep you safe in the one true faith… You are never alone. God is always with you. He is protecting you, guiding you, preserving you, being God for you for eternity. Amen.

Augsburg Annual Chaplain Training

Military chaplains and chaplain candidates endorsed by Augsburg Lutheran Churches gathered at the DoubleTree Hotel in El Paso, TX, for their Annual Chaplain Training on February 10-15, 2019. The theme for the week was “Freeing the Prisoners” and the featured speaker was Dr. Jonathan Sorum, the Dean of Academic Affairs at ILT. Dr. Sorum taught the graduate class, “Bonhoeffer and Preaching” (PT450) Monday through Friday. Fifteen participants received Bonhoeffer’s example of addressing the cultural horizon and maintaining the integrity of the text. The class be taken for graduate credit through ILT, or continuing education. The 2020 Annual Chaplain Training and Augsburg Gathering and will be held on February 9-14, 2020, at the DoubleTree Hotel in El Paso, Texas.