A Restored Soul

Sunday, July 21, 2019
Pastor Mark Aune

Psalm 23

Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace. Amen

Can you remember a time in your life when a biblical text or story did for you exactly what it said it would do in a moment when you really needed to know the presence and the power of God in your life?

A time or moment in your life when the power of God’s word and the promises in that word restored your soul.

I can still remember the first time that happened for me like it was yesterday when a biblical text revealed to me in real time and in a specific situation the power of God’s word to actually do something.

The date was December 31, 1979. I was in New Zealand as part of a Lutheran Youth Encounter outreach team. Our team was leading a New Year’s Eve camp for a small group of Lutheran youth in New Zealand.

We’d been in the country for 2 months. We were homesick having spent Xmas on the other side of the planet and we received a phone message that the father of one of our team members had been in a car accident back in Minnesota and wasn’t expected to live.

He was a Lutheran pastor. Our group of eight was scattered around the camp and as we slowly assembled and shared the news we all felt very vulnerable, far from home and our hearts were breaking for Susie, the daughter and our fellow team member.

We were huddled together in a room, trying to comfort and support Susie and one another. There were a lot of tears. I remember distinctly reaching for my bible to read something, anything and the first text that came to mind in that moment was Psalm 23.

Yes the 23^rd Psalm. I was still in the process of learning what was in the bible but I knew about this psalm. It was familiar. Like it is to so many.

So I read the Psalm and something happened. The words had power and the power was in the promises of this beautiful Psalm. The power was real in that moment of hurt and despair and we all felt the presence of God as shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

This was a strange thing to hear when all we wanted for was this news to be wrong, for the despair we felt to disappear and for all of us to not feel so alone and isolated in a place so far from home.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

This is not an easy thing to understand when all you want is for whatever has just happened to you not be true.

It is not surprising to me yet it is fascinating to me how we reach for this psalm when we are in need and we say the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

When I asked the Tuesday bible study group why this psalm is so powerful I filled a full page of notes from their responses.

It has been put to verse and sung.

It speaks directly to you, comforting and it gives you strength.

It is declarative. It is not a psalm that is asking God to please help me or saying I’m in trouble. It is not a psalm where we are doing the asking.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.

Pay attention to the verbs. Pay attention to God’s action, God’s movement, God’s promise to you and me.

When we are in desperate need, the good shepherd is there leading us to still waters, green pastures and down the right path for His name sake and because of this promise, we shall not want. The good shepherd restores the soul.

What does a restored soul look like for you?

Is it moral perfection, a life without sin?

Is it to be disengaged and immune from the day to day challenges of this life we are living?

It is perfect alignment God and God’s will in your life?

It is not these things at all.

A restored soul can say with complete confidence, I shall not want and actually mean it.

I shall not want means
I shall not worry,
I shall not doubt,
I shall not underestimate the power and the presence of God to do whatever it is I need to have done in my life at this moment in time no matter what my need may be.

A restored soul allows itself to be lead to green pastures and still waters and it recognizes the need for these kinds of places because they are places that create space for the soul to simply be present with God the good shepherd.

Green pastures, still waters, refuge in the midst of turmoil and stress and heartbreak.

Are you not in need of places like this?

Have you allowed the good shepherd to actually lead you to these kinds of places when you are all tied up in knots inside over what it going on in your life right not. Or are you trying to go it alone because you think you can go it alone.

A restored soul understand and lives out the difference between a need and a want.

I need a shepherd to lead and guide my life.

Faith recognizes and confesses our own insufficiency and looks to a shepherd rather than trying to go it alone.

A restored soul keeps walking. One step at a time. Moving forward even when we cannot see what is in front of us or where we are going.

Walking is as basic as it gets.

Oswald Chambers says, “There is no thrill for us in walking, yet it is the test for all of our steady and enduring qualities.”[1]

And so the restored soul walks. It keeps walking

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me.

You know about valleys. We’ve all been in them. The sides are steep. You cannot see what is over the ridge on either side. You cannot see where the valley ends and the only way through a valley is to walk through it.

Perhaps this is the promise that makes this psalm so beloved, so powerful, and so real. Is this not the heart of Psalm 23?

Even though I walk through the darkest valley. Notice it doesn’t if I walk through the darkest valley or maybe I will walk through the darkest valley. No, it says even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me.

This is what it means to say I shall not want. This is what it means to have a good shepherd whose rod and staff bring comfort, peace and strength.

And when we walk through the valley, led by the good shepherd of the sheep, we come to understand how and why our souls are restored, again and again and again.

Each time an unexpected grace, a fulfilled promise of hope that a broken soul can and will be restored by the good shepherd of the sheep.

Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. My sheep hear my voice and they follow me and I give them eternal life.

The final restoration. The promise fulfilled where goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long. Amen

[1] My Utmost for His Highest July 20

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Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

The book of Romans is a letter. An actual letter. Like, a letter written by hand and then sent to someone else for them to read. Paul, the author of this letter, wrote a lot of letters. Paul was an apostle, that is, someone who is sent – in this case, he is one who is sent to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to the furthest reaches of the known world. He’s really, really good at it.

At the time that Paul writes this letter to the church in Rome, he’s been doing this work for probably twenty years and is at the peak of his career. He’s developed a great pattern in his work: visit a place, get to know the people, continually share his faith with them, help gather a community of believers from all walks of life, and stay with them while they learn how to be followers of Jesus. Then Paul leaves – after all, he’s got other places to visit and more people to teach. He is an apostle – he is sent. But he doesn’t leave the church abandoned. He writes letters back to these churches, especially when he hears about crises or conflicts. Sometimes they need comfort, sometimes challenge, sometimes critique, but always he writes as one they know and love. They welcome his input.

The letter to the Romans is not like that. Paul has never been to Rome. There is already a Christian church there, one brought over likely from Jerusalem very early in the faith. And the church in Rome has recently seen conflict. A few years before the writing of this letter, the Roman emperor expelled all the Jews from Rome. Because Christianity was effectively a form of Judaism at the time, Christians were also exiled. After the emperor died and the Jewish Christians returned, they found a church that had continued to grow and develop – this time with Gentile Christians.

It’s hard for us to understand how shocking and despicable this would have been. Two weeks ago I preached on Acts 10, and how Peter’s vision of God calling all animals clean and good to eat flew in the face of millennia of culture, history, and society for Jewish Christians. Jesus himself was Jewish and kept these laws – surely if anyone else wanted to be Christian, they could likewise follow these rules. Peter’s vision and the general movement of the church revealed otherwise.

That didn’t mean it made things easy. It is hard to let go of tradition and expectation and legislation as the Spirit moves us to new places. I hear people struggle when someone sits in their pew or wears sweatpants to church. Let’s be honest: those are enormously trivial things. If still we grind our teeth at the thought of these worthless infractions how much more might faithful people be driven to despair by moving on from the purity laws ordained by God?

This is the faith community to which Paul writes. He writes to a church redefining and fighting. It is a church that feels a deep rift, a painful split, one that goes deep into matters of identity and righteousness, one that threatens to dissolve into name-calling and condemning and finger-pointing and disgrace to the very name of God in whose name they mean to gather – and if we’re honest, we know how that feels. Those fears are not unfamiliar.

So how does Paul start his letter? He has no standing in that church in Rome. They don’t even know who he is – and if they do, it’s possible that they might still remember him as he was in his youth, an aggressive persecutor of the early faith. What can he say that would possibly invite them to listen to him, to hear the word he will share, to receive the message that he hopes will join them together in the work of the gospel?

He keeps it simple: he tells them the truth. He tells them who he is, and it is fully wrapped up in who Jesus is. His self-introduction is the story of the gospel. Nothing he can say about himself means more than who he is in Jesus Christ.

He tells them he wants to come see them, that he wants to be with them, that he hopes he can share some spiritual gift – but even more than that, so that they might mutually encourage each other in faith. He doesn’t want to come to them because he’s better than them, because he can fix them so they can get things right, because they’re obviously sinful mess-ups who just haven’t been taught the truth. No, he wants to join them for mutual encouragement in faith. He wants to walk with them. He hopes he has something to offer them in his teaching and leadership, but just the same, he knows he will grow by being with them as well.

What if that’s how it’s supposed to be? What if we’re supposed to talk about what we believe and why, not because we’ve got it right and we want to establish our superior knowledge, but because we know that God works through our mutual encouragement in faith? What if we were not ashamed of the gospel, not afraid of getting it wrong, not worried that someone would think we were weird for talking about what we believe and why and then asking others the same? What if we trusted that the power of God was at work in this mutual encouragement? What if we were not so proud and short-sighted as to think that the way we see God is the only way God works in the world? What if we actually believed that God is at work in the world, that God has already been working long before we showed up, that we arrive as much to learn as to teach?

Ah, but I know the argument against it: we’re supposed to keep polite conversation, right? What don’t you talk about at the dinner table? Religion and politics, right? Look where it’s gotten us. It’s gotten us to a place where we can no longer have civil discourse, where we are more likely to condemn than to seek to understand, where we claim a Christian can only look one way, live one place, vote one direction, take one moral position. It’s gotten us built up and walled off and fighting against our own beloved members of the family of God.

So don’t do it. Take Paul’s example. Tell people who you are. Tell them where you’re from. Tell them what you believe. And then invite them to do the same. Make your story of faith as natural a part of your introduction as where you work and where you live and who’s in your family. And when someone’s story is different, listen to it. Hear it. See God at work in it. Be amazed. Allow for the mutual encouragement of faith, because this is how the gospel is shared.

No matter where you go from here, no matter where you find yourself, no matter what comes next for you – you can do this. You are called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel which is the power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith – no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen.

A Restored Soul

Sunday, July 21, 2019
Pastor Mark Aune

Psalm 23

Past Sermons

Crying Out

Waiting

A World Shaped by God’s Power

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

Crying Out

Waiting

A World Shaped by God’s Power

About Augustana

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A Restored Soul

Sunday, July 21, 2019 Pastor Mark Aune

Psalm 23

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019 Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

Sunday, July 21, 2019
Pastor Mark Aune

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson