Author: tylerramsbey

I have spent the past year studying church history at Sioux Falls Seminary. In the past week, we have been exploring the 20th century and the changes it brought to the Church around the world. It is during this time that a group of Christians formed the following declaration. This ecumenical statement still calls Christians in 2017 to renew their focus on the implications of the Gospel. I pray it challenges you as much as it challenged me!

As evangelical Christians committed to the Lord Jesus Christ and the full authority of the Word of God, we affirm that God lays total claim upon the lives of his people. We cannot, therefore, separate our lives from the situation in which God has placed us in the United States and the world.

We confess that we have not acknowledged the complete claim of God on our lives.

We acknowledge that God requires love. But we have not demonstrated the love of God to those suffering social abuses.

We acknowledge that God requires justice. But we have not proclaimed or demonstrated his justice to an unjust American society. Although the Lord calls us to defend the social and economic rights of the poor and oppressed, we have mostly remained silent. We deplore the historic involvement of the church in America with racism and the conspicuous responsibility of the evangelical community for perpetuating the personal attitudes and institutional structures that have divided the body of Christ along color lines. Further, we have failed to condemn the exploitation of racism at home and abroad by our economic system.

We affirm that God abounds in mercy and that he forgives all who repent and turn from their sins. So we call our fellow evangelical Christians to demonstrate repentance in a Christian discipleship that confronts the social and political injustice of our nation.

We must attack the materialism of our culture and the maldistribution of the nation’s wealth and services. We recognize that as a nation we play a crucial role in the imbalance and injustice of international trade and development. Before God and a billion hungry neighbors, we must rethink our values regarding our present standard of living and promote a more just acquisition and distribution of the world’s resources.

We acknowledge our Christian responsibilities of citizenship. Therefore, we must challenge the misplaced trust of the nation in economic and military might – a proud trust that promotes a national pathology of war and violence which victimizes our neighbors at home and abroad. We must resist the temptation to make the nation and its institutions objects of near-religious loyalty.

We acknowledge that we have encouraged men to prideful domination and women to irresponsible passivity. So we call both men and women to mutual submission and active discipleship.

We proclaim no new gospel, but the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ who, through the power of the Holy Spirit, frees people from sin so that they might praise God through works of righteousness.

By this declaration, we endorse no political ideology or party, but call our nation’s leaders and people to that righteousness which exalts a nation.

We make this declaration in the biblical hope that Christ is coming to consummate the Kingdom and we accept his claim on our total discipleship until he comes.

November 25, 1973, Chicago, Illinois

I often tremble from anxiety and rely on sleep medicine to rest.

I meet with a professional counselor on a regular basis because I am routinely overwhelmed with the demands of life, family & ministry.

More than I’d like to admit, I seek isolation rather than community. Being around people drains me.

I have an addictive & escapist personality; I fear that one day I will succumb to addiction.

I fear the judgments of man more than God. The desire to please people reigns over my actions & words.

I question my calling as a pastor on a regular basis.

Yet God has & will continue to use me. I pray this encourages you in your own brokenness. All of us are weak; only some of us are strong enough to admit it.

Grace requires weakness.
Forgiveness requires confession.
Salvation requires death.

The cross is a paradox.

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:7-10 

I have been practicing morning prayer, mid-day prayer, and evening prayer through the beautiful liturgy found in “Common Prayer – A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals.” The morning prayer for Good Friday has a remarkable reflection by John Chrysostom, a fourth-century bishop and preacher in Constantinople. I pray this meditation speaks as deeply into your spirit as it did into mine!

“Do you see how the devil is defeated by the very weapons of his prior victory? The devil had vanquished Adam by means of a tree. Christ vanquished the devil by means of the tree of the Cross. The tree sent Adam to hell. The tree of the Cross brought him back from there. The tree revealed Adam in his weakness, laying prostrate, naked and low. The tree of the Cross manifested to all the world the victorious Christ, naked and nailed on high. Adam’s death sentence passed onto all who came after him. Christ death gave life to all his children.” 

If you find this helpful, I encourage you to share it on Facebook & Twitter so others can be impacted by this powerful reflection!