John Koza

Dear Friends in Christ, 

On Saturday April 22, there was a book sale in the Murphey Gallery where several books “found me.” The first book to find me is titled Celtic Daily Prayer: Prayers and Readings from the Northumbria Community. Among the many fascinating poems and prose are two cycles of daily readings: Aidan Readings and Finan Readings, both named for Bishops of Lindisfarne. 

I was especially intrigued by the entry for May 4 from that book:

“We need to clarify for the unchurched that intellectually believing in Christ is only part of the answer. One way is to use a Bible verse that provides a spiritual equation that spells out with math-like efficiency what it really means to become a Christian.  

“As I recite John 1:12, I ask them to listen for the active verbs: ‘Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.’

“Those verbs make up the equation: believe + receive = become.

“To believe is intellectually to agree that Christ sacrificed Himself to pay for the wrongs we’ve committed. That’s important, I tell them, but don’t stop there. Some people sit in churches for years, stuck at this point, and they wonder why their spiritual life is stagnant. The next verb in the equation is critically important, too. We need to receive God’s free offer of forgiveness and eternal life. We have to claim it for our own, because until we do that, it’s not ours; it’s just something we know about in our head. So it’s necessary for us to admit our wrongdoing, turn away from it, and humbly accept Christ’s payment on our behalf.

“That makes sense, doesn’t it? Jesus said, ‘I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’”
—Lee Strobel

Faith is work.
It is a struggle.
You must struggle
With all your heart.
And on the way God
Will ambush you.
—Walter Wangerin, novelist

Blessings, 

—John