The Scars That Have Shaped Me Order Printed Copy

Author: Vaneetha Rendall Risner
Size: 10.14MB | 200 pages
|

Download Read Online

Continue with

Google Twitter

Email Register

Others like the scars that have shaped me Features >>

The Great Exchange (My Sin For His Righteousness)

The Price Of God's Miracle Working Power

About the Book

"The Scars That Have Shaped Me" by Vaneetha Rendall Risner is a memoir detailing the author's struggles and triumphs in the face of relentless pain and hardship. Through her personal experiences of loss, illness, and disability, Risner shares her journey of finding hope, purpose, and ultimately, healing in the midst of suffering. This inspiring book explores themes of resilience, faith, and the transformative power of perseverance in overcoming life's challenges.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession. … Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate." "The time is fulfilled for the German people of Hitler. It is because of Hitler that Christ, God the helper and redeemer, has become effective among us. … Hitler is the way of the Spirit and the will of God for the German people to enter the Church of Christ." So spoke German pastor Hermann Gruner. Another pastor put it more succinctly: "Christ has come to us through Adolph Hitler." So despondent had been the German people after the defeat of World War I and the subsequent economic depression that the charismatic Hitler appeared to be the nation's answer to prayer—at least to most Germans. One exception was theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was determined not only to refute this idea but also to topple Hitler, even if it meant killing him. From pacifist to co-conspirator Bonhoeffer was not raised in a particularly radical environment. He was born into an aristocratic family. His mother was daughter of the preacher at the court of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and his father was a prominent neurologist and professor of psychiatry at the University of Berlin. All eight children were raised in a liberal, nominally religious environment and were encouraged to dabble in great literature and the fine arts. Bonhoeffer's skill at the piano, in fact, led some in his family to believe he was headed for a career in music. When at age 14, Dietrich announced he intended to become a minister and theologian, the family was not pleased. Bonhoeffer graduated from the University of Berlin in 1927, at age 21, and then spent some months in Spain as an assistant pastor to a German congregation. Then it was back to Germany to write a dissertation, which would grant him the right to a university appointment. He then spent a year in America, at New York's Union Theological Seminary, before returning to the post of lecturer at the University of Berlin. During these years, Hitler rose in power, becoming chancellor of Germany in January 1933, and president a year and a half later. Hitler's anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions intensified—as did his opposition, which included the likes of theologian Karl Barth, pastor Martin Niemoller, and the young Bonhoeffer. Together with other pastors and theologians, they organized the Confessing Church, which announced publicly in its Barmen Declaration (1934) its allegiance first to Jesus Christ: "We repudiate the false teaching that the church can and must recognize yet other happenings and powers, personalities and truths as divine revelation alongside this one Word of God. … " In the meantime, Bonhoeffer had written The Cost of Discipleship (1937), a call to more faithful and radical obedience to Christ and a severe rebuke of comfortable Christianity: "Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession. … Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate." During this time, Bonhoeffer was teaching pastors in an underground seminary, Finkenwalde (the government had banned him from teaching openly). But after the seminary was discovered and closed, the Confessing Church became increasingly reluctant to speak out against Hitler, and moral opposition proved increasingly ineffective, so Bonhoeffer began to change his strategy. To this point he had been a pacifist, and he had tried to oppose the Nazis through religious action and moral persuasion. Now he signed up with the German secret service (to serve as a double agent—while traveling to church conferences over Europe, he was supposed to be collecting information about the places he visited, but he was, instead, trying to help Jews escape Nazi oppression). Bonhoeffer also became a part of a plot to overthrow, and later to assassinate, Hitler. As his tactics were changing, he had gone to America to become a guest lecturer. But he couldn't shake a feeling of responsibility for his country. Within months of his arrival, he wrote theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, "I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people." Bonhoeffer, though privy to various plots on Hitler's life, was never at the center of the plans. Eventually his resistance efforts (mainly his role in rescuing Jews) was discovered. On an April afternoon in 1943, two men arrived in a black Mercedes, put Bonhoeffer in the car, and drove him to Tegel prison. Radical reflections Bonhoeffer spent two years in prison, corresponding with family and friends, pastoring fellow prisoners, and reflecting on the meaning of "Jesus Christ for today." As the months progressed, be began outlining a new theology, penning enigmatic lines that had been inspired by his reflections on the nature of Christian action in history. "God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross," he wrote. "He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. [The Bible] … makes quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering. … The Bible directs man to God's powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help." In another passage, he said, "To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to make something of oneself (a sinner, a penitent, or a saint) on the basis of some method or other, but to be a man—not a type of man, but the man that Christ creates in us. It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life." Eventually, Bonhoeffer was transferred from Tegel to Buchenwald and then to the extermination camp at Flossenbürg. On April 9, 1945, one month before Germany surrendered, he was hanged with six other resisters. A decade later, a camp doctor who witnessed Bonhoeffer's hanging described the scene: "The prisoners … were taken from their cells, and the verdicts of court martial read out to them. Through the half-open door in one room of the huts, I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued in a few seconds. In the almost 50 years that I have worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God." Bonhoeffer's prison correspondence was eventually edited and published as Letters and Papers from Prison, which inspired much controversy and the "death of God" movement of the 1960s (though Bonhoeffer's close friend and chief biographer, Eberhard Bethge, said Bonhoeffer implied no such thing). His Cost of Discipleship, as well as Life Together (about Christian community, based on his teaching at the underground seminary), have remained devotional classics.

date differently this year - four resolutions for better relationships

It takes extraordinary courage to change how you date. It’s not easy to reset boundaries, communicate better, flee sexual immorality, confess failures, and end the relationship that needs to end. But you will never regret making the right changes. There were moments through high school and college when I knew with crystal clarity that things needed to change, but the costs kept me from changing sooner. What will others think about me when I confess how I’ve failed? What if I fail again, and things never get better? What if the change I need means I’m single and alone again? Like a merciless lawyer, Satan piled up every conceivable reason not to do what I knew I had to do — to make excuses, to put off decisions, to be almost honest with friends and family, to stay in unhealthy relationships, to avoid Christ and indulge in sin. I have prayed that the four resolutions that follow might give some the courage to do what you’ve been afraid to do for weeks, for months, maybe even for years. To lay down your excuses. To take up your cross. To welcome what it will cost you today to pursue love in light of eternity. To date differently this year, in a way that says something stunning about your God. 1. Above all else, I will look for Jesus. “Welcome what it will cost you today to pursue love in light of eternity.” If you resolve to change nothing else about your patterns in relationships, resolve to make Jesus the most important thing in your dating. Raise Philippians 1:21 over your next relationship: “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” If to live is Christ, then to date is Christ. To marry is Christ. To remain single is Christ. He is our reason for living and working, growing and learning, dating and marrying. Above every other priority in dating, look for Jesus. It may sound simple and easy, but Satan wages an all-out war on our hearts and minds to keep us from single-minded devotion. Nothing could be harder. It is emotionally impossible to put Christ before our desires for intimacy and marriage — unless we have the Spirit of Christ. Unless it is no longer we who live and date, but Christ who lives in and through us (Galatians 2:20). Before you entrust your heart to someone else, resolve to love Jesus with all your heart. Before you let yourself daydream about potential futures with him or her, resolve to love Jesus with all your mind. Before you think about knitting your soul with another, resolve to love Jesus with all of your soul first. Before you risk, sacrifice, and work for love, resolve to love Jesus with all your strength. Resolve to love him more than love. And as you give your heart first and foremost to Christ, make sure your boyfriend (or girlfriend) has too — in the deepest places of who he is and what he wants. His faith is not a box to check along with lots of others; it should be the ink that shapes every other box. Whether you are currently in a relationship or might begin one this year, decide right now to date from a deeper, wider, higher love for the Lord. 2. I will grow where I have failed before. One reason we fail in the same ways year after year is that we fail to admit and address our failures. If you have a sexual past or a trail of mistakes behind you, you need to know there is nowhere safer to deal with your failures than in Christ. Someone may have led you to suspect that how you’ve dated has disqualified you from his love, but Christ came and died precisely for the things you’re most ashamed of. The apostle Paul says, The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:15–16) “If you resolve to change nothing else, resolve to make Jesus the most important thing in your dating.” Guilt and shame qualify us for his love. He wants to put his patience and mercy on display for the world by showering you with mercy and being patient with you . He wants you to step forward, like Paul, to experience what he died to give you. The process begins by boldly bringing our failures before his feet (1 John 1:9), knowing he loves to forgive our wrongs, heal our wounds, and restore our brokenness. If we draw our darkness into his light, he will not only cover our darkness, but dispel it. He will make us someone new, someone different from the stains of our dating history (2 Corinthians 5:17). The process begins at the feet of Jesus, but it does not end there. Those who truly want to change where we have fallen before resolve to seek flesh-and-blood accountability in the specific areas where we have failed (Hebrews 3:12–13). A resolve to grow is a resolve to share with others — to consistently confess our failures, seek out counsel, embrace hard questions, and fold others into our dating relationships. Everyone expects this to happen naturally, and in a few rare instances, it might. In the vast majority of cases, though, this will require extraordinary effort and sacrifice. You will have to care about what other believers think about your relationships more than even they care about what they think. Resolve to grow where you have failed in relationships — to bring your specific failures to your perfectly patient Savior, to confess your specific failures to another believer, and to pursue specific steps, with God’s help, to overcome temptation and cultivate godliness. 3. I will pursue clarity, and postpone intimacy. Likely you have asked yourself (over and over again) what you’re looking for in a significant other. Most people, no matter who they are or what they believe, ask that question. The more important question that fewer of us ask is this: What am I looking for from dating? “Christ came and died precisely for the things you’re most ashamed of. Guilt and shame qualify you for his love.” For many, the answer is simply intimacy. In the fantasies of our imagination, intimacy may look like a thousand different experiences and sensations, but intimacy is often the grail of great price. Unfortunately, when intimacy becomes the great prize, it also becomes the great price we pay. When intimacy fails to materialize, or fails to satisfy us, or fails to last for long, we have only bartered precious pieces of our hearts for painful regret and deeper longings. Beware of letting your dating be driven by the pursuit of intimacy this year. Date to find precious clarity from God about whether to marry. The great prize in marriage is Christ-centered intimacy. The great prize in dating is Christ-centered clarity. This does not mean marry the next person you date, or only date someone you’re certain you would marry; it means make Christ-centered clarity toward marriage the measure of your romance. Am I increasingly confident over time that this is someone I can marry in the Lord? A new resolve to pursue clarity in dating cuts against our impulses toward flirtation, ambiguity, and enticement, and flows into clear and loving communication. Any relationship that cuts against flirtation, ambiguity, and enticement, that intentionally postpones physical intimacy for the covenant of marriage, swims against the current, at least in America today. It will seem strange and awkward to others your age — and beautiful to God. Date for something far more satisfying than physical and emotional intimacy. Date for a deeper purpose. Not because everyone else is doing it. Not because it’s fun. Not because he’s cute. Date because of God. Date for God. Let your love life stem from seeing and enjoying and sharing more of him. 4. I will ask God for help. The most important change in your love life may not be between you and your significant other, but between you and God. Before we try to establish healthy boundaries in our relationship, we need direction from God. Before we go looking for love, we need to seek the Lord. Before we address our communication in dating, we need to address our communication with our Father. Better relationships will begin with God in prayer. “Date for a deeper purpose. Not because everyone else is doing it. Not because it’s fun. Date because of God.” Unless the Lord builds (or rebuilds) our relationships, we date in vain (Psalm 127:1). Unless the Lord watches over you and your girlfriend (or boyfriend), you risk, worry, and date in vain. He knows exactly what you need (Matthew 6:32), where you are weak, and how you will glorify him. Refuse to date anyone unless, like Moses, God goes up with you (Exodus 33:15). And then talk to him about your relationships as much as you talk with anyone else. When passion rises within you, or anxiety creeps in, or confusion clouds your mind and heart, run first to God. No one will help you, keep you, or hear you like him. The best way to discern what God is doing, and how he is directing you, in a relationship this year is to stay close to him. The greater the intimacy you have with him, the greater clarity you will have about who to pursue, what to change, and when to marry.