Thank you for helping to support Peace Devotions through your prayers, likes, and shares.
If you’d like to support our ministry financially, you can donate here.
Autographing Books
Pastor Petersen reflects on the importance of humility and the dangers of pride, drawing on his life experiences and biblical verses from Psalms, Ephesians, and 1 Corinthians. He emphasizes that Christians are not the achievers but rather recipients of God's blessings, hence any boasting should be in God's work, love, and salvation, not personal accomplishments.
Psalm 44:6-8, Ephesians 2:8-9, 1 Corinthians 1:31
Reading from Psalm 44, verses six and seven and eight.
I will not trust in my bow, nor shall my sword save me. But you have saved us from our enemies, and have put to shame those who hated us. In God we boast all day long. And praise your name forever. (Psalm 44:6-8)
At Mount Olive Lutheran Church and School, when children enter the fourth grade, we give them their own Bible and the pastors and the principal of our school, we all autograph the copies of that study Bible for the children. And I was going through the big pile of Bibles to sign, and I told a secretary, I wish I could be doing this at a bookstore somewhere with people lined up to get my autograph for some interesting novel I’ve written. It sort of appealed to my sense of human pride.
And then I get to thinking about a time years ago when I actually did sign books. My wife and children and I went to France, and we were visiting a monument at the location where my dad’s B-24 bomber crashed in the French Alps after being shot down over Munich. Thankfully, all of the crew members were able to jump out and parachute to safety.
So I wanted my wife and children to see the monument that had been installed there in France. And one of the Frenchmen had written an interesting book about that, and I was the only American and the only descendant of any of the Americans there. So they handed me a stack of books, and I stood there and gave my autograph to them. And I felt, on the one hand, proud that I could do that. But also I felt like an imposter because I hadn’t done anything that is described in that interesting book. Nothing heroic. And yet I got that feeling of being someone who was admired and my autograph was desired.
And so I’m just thinking about that pride that we feel we live in a prideful world. If you watch the NFL especially, you will see that after scoring a touchdown, the one who’s done it doesn’t hand the ball to the referee. Or rather, he celebrates himself and his own accomplishments. Spiritually speaking, that’s a very dangerous thing to do. And the psalmist here speaks of that when he said, I’m not going to trust my own prowess on the battlefield. I’m not going to boast about myself. I’m helpless. But God is the one who saves me. And in God I boast. All day long.
He hands us the victory of his holy life lived for us and his own suffering and death for us on the cross. So we reap the benefits and the joy of what he has accomplished, so that our boasting is not in us. Rather, it’s in only in our Lord Jesus. So the Apostle wrote in Ephesians 2 that our salvation is the gift of God, that our faith is even a gift, that he works. Not a result of works, he says, that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
And so that’s a good reminder for us Christians. We’re the recipients, and we get the blessings of what our Lord has done for us. We boast in him and in his love. And in doing so, then we’re recommending him to those who hear us so confident of our final deliverance from this sinful world and eternal life in heaven. And so again with the apostle who said to the Corinthians, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:31) Amen.
