Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

But if an unbeliever or an inquirer comes in while everyone is prophesying, they are convicted of sin and are brought under judgment by all, as the secrets of their hearts are laid bare. So they will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!”

• 1 Corinthians 14:24-25

Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” These people are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.

• Jude 1:14-16

“Something that always puzzles me and others is the forgetfulness we experience in regard to impressions made during a night of bombing. Only a few minutes afterward, almost everything we had been thinking is already gone, as if blown away. For Luther it took only a bolt of lightning to change his whole life for years to come. Where is this ‘memory’ today? Isn’t the loss of this ‘moral memory’—what a dreadful term!—the basis for the ruin of all ties, of love, of marriage, of friendship, of loyalty? Nothing sticks; nothing holds fast. Everything is short-term and short-winded. But good things like righteousness, truth, beauty, and all great accomplishments in general need time, constancy, ‘memory,’ or they degenerate. Those who are not inclined to be responsible for the past or to shape the future are ‘forgetful,’ and I don’t know how to reach them and make them aware. For every word, even if it makes an impression at the moment, is subject to forgetfulness. What is to be done? This is a great problem in Christian pastoral care.”

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I Want to Live These Days with You (devotion for July 23, devotions compiled from his writings)

Oh, how I can relate?  I recently wrote that I have gotten angry with people who cut me off in traffic.  I just called them an “idiot.”  I did not go into road rage and treat them poorly, but my wife would remind me that we were still in the shadow of the church.  It had not taken Satan, or one of his minions, long to knock the pastor’s sermon out of my head.

Frankly, we blame Satan or a fallen angel, but I heard a talk back in high school.  The speaker talked about how we should beware.  A fallen angel might lead us astray for a while, but once a habit of sin is established.  The fallen angel can go on to other business.  Our own fallen mind, with its sin nature, might think of diabolical sins to commit, far beyond what the fallen angel might whisper in our ear.

But the point is that when the bombs are falling, we will confess to a multitude of sins.  We will swear that we leave them at the feet of Jesus never to return, but when the bombing stops, we look around us for any fragments of those sins to hold onto.

And Bonhoeffer might have written this while in prison.  He wrote to friends and family about the bombings that he could hear from his prison cell.  Our bombings might be closer to what Martin Luther experienced, a lightning bolt, or even a bout of stomach disorder.  I have curled into a fetal position on the bathroom floor, willing to promise anything as long as the pain would even lessen.  The Holy Spirit speaks to me, and I am sure you also, in those times of perceived peril.  But then, with the peril behind us, we realize how weak we are.  And Evil offers a “solution” for that weakness.

I have certain times during the day that I have to change my patterns, or I will sink into temptation.  Have you noticed that Satan (or whomever) attacks us with temptation like he did with Jesus?

When do you feel tempted the most?  At bedtime?  We are weak because you went to bed to get restful sleep.  Before a meal?  Again, we are weak, and we need nourishment.  Evil tempts when we have a physical weakness.

When I was growing up, I would grab a cookie from the cookie jar and my mother would yell, “Put that back!  You will spoil your appetite!  Can’t you see me cooking supper?!”  Yes, I could see her cooking supper.  No, my appetite was adequate to eat the cookie and also eat everything she put on the table.  She cooked enough for four or five people when there were only 3 people at the table, and, in my teenaged years, I was called, “the garbage disposal.”  We rarely had leftovers to put in the refrigerator.  So, one cookie was not going to put much of a dent in my appetite.

But I felt hungry, and the temptation struck with a vengeance, even knowing my mother had eyes in the back of her head and I would not get away with it.

But God has a lot of Mercy to spare.  He loves us a great deal.  But we should practice moral memory.  We should remember rather than forgetting when we place a sin at Jesus’ feet to “never return to again.”  God forgets our sin, but we can only forget that sin when we have practiced moral memory of how that sin had damaged the relationship we have with God.  Only then can we fully share in the blessings God has for us in this life.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.