 Here's a verse nobody puts on a coffee mug: God sends a lying spirit to deceive a king, and a false prophecy leads him straight to the battle where he dies (1 Kings 22). Read that enough times and it starts to feel like it contradicts everything else Scripture says about God's character — his truthfulness, his goodness, his justice. So what do you do with a text like that? Ignore it? Explain it away? Or is there an actual biblical framework underneath it that holds together?
There is. It's called judicial hardening, and once you see the pattern, it changes how you read the whole Bible. Short answer: God does not lie (Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18) and does not author sin. But Scripture repeatedly shows him permitting and governing deceptive agents as an act of judgment against people who have already rejected the truth. I count at least five major texts where this pattern shows up. What Is Judicial Hardening? Judicial hardening is the biblical pattern in which God does not implant deception into a neutral heart, but confirms and accelerates the trajectory of a heart that has already resisted the truth. It reflects the distinction theologians draw between God's active will — what he directly causes — and his permissive will — what he allows as judgment. Think of it like a current in a river. A person sincerely seeking God is swimming against the current of their own sin. Judicial hardening is what happens when God stops swimming against them and lets the current of their own rebellion carry them exactly where they've chosen to go. He doesn't push anyone into the rapids. He simply removes his restraining hand and lets the natural consequences of a rejection already made run their course. The clearest picture of this comes from the Divine Council — the biblical worldview in which God is shown enthroned among a host of spiritual beings to whom he delegates real, though subordinate, authority (see 1 Kings 22, Job 1–2, Psalm 82). Five Biblical Examples of Judicial Hardening 1. The Heavenly Council Meeting (1 Kings 22:19–23) — the volunteer deceiver. The prophet Micaiah describes a heavenly council scene: Yahweh asks who will entice King Ahab to his death, and a spirit volunteers to be a lying spirit in the mouths of Ahab's four hundred court prophets. The Lord permits it. Ahab — who has rejected true prophetic counsel for years — goes to battle and is killed. 2. Pharaoh's Hardened Heart (Exodus 4–14) — the man who hardened himself first. Pharaoh hardens his own heart in the early chapters before God is ever said to harden it. The later hardening confirms a trajectory Pharaoh already chose. 3. The Compromised Prophet (Ezekiel 14:9–11) — judgment on the corrupt clergy. God states that if a prophet is deceived into speaking a word, "I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet" — judgment on a prophet already willing to be bought, speaking to a people who had already turned to idols. 4. "God Gave Them Over" (Romans 1:18–32) — God's most terrifying action: stepping back. Paul describes a threefold divine judgment — God "gave them over" to their own desires, dishonorable passions, and a debased mind — the passive, allowing form of divine wrath against those who suppressed the truth. 5. The Strong Delusion (2 Thessalonians 2:9–12) — the end-times trap. Paul writes that God sends "a strong delusion" so that those who refused to love the truth would believe what is false — judicial blindness given to people who had already rejected the truth when it was offered. Also relevant: Saul and the harmful spirit (1 Samuel 16:14) and the divine hardening language in Romans 9, both of which follow the same pattern — confirmation of an existing trajectory, not the creation of a new one. Why This Feels Unfamiliar: The Sunday Lectionary Gap If this theme runs through both Testaments, why do so few of us ever hear it preached? Part of the answer is structural. Congregations that follow the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) never hear these five texts read on a Sunday morning: Passage Status in the 3-Year Sunday Lectionary
That's roughly thirty verses, across five passages, with zero exposure in a three-year cycle designed to expose congregations to the full range of Scripture. Here's the uncomfortable reality: if your only exposure to the Bible is Sunday morning, you wouldn't even know these passages exist. The Revised Common Lectionary — the reading schedule used by millions of churches — silently bypasses every one of them. That means the average Christian hears about God's love every Sunday, but never hears about God's judicial severity. This isn't a conspiracy. It's an oversight. But it's an oversight that leaves us spiritually unprepared to understand the weight of rejecting the truth. This is one reason the daily office lectionary is worth adding to your own devotional life alongside Sunday worship — its two-year cycle is built to move you through nearly the entire canon, including texts the Sunday lectionary sets aside. [See my guide to praying the daily office] for how to get started. How to Apply This Without Misusing It Two cautions matter here. First, this is not a threat to sincere believers. Jesus says, "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God" (John 7:17). Judicial hardening describes people who have already refused the truth — not people honestly seeking it but not yet certain. God's ordinary way of guiding a sincere heart is through Word, sacrament, and the counsel of the faithful, not through withholding truth as a trap. Second, this pattern is diagnostic, not just historical — and the diagnostic case is already sitting inside the text itself, without needing to borrow one from outside it. Pharaoh hardens his own heart for chapter after chapter before God is ever said to harden it (Exodus 4–9). That's the pattern in miniature: refuse the truth long enough, on your own initiative, and what eventually looks like God's action is really God confirming the direction you'd already chosen and stepping back. The question worth asking isn't whether you're as stubborn as Pharaoh. It's simpler than that: am I searching Scripture for wisdom, or for a permission slip? A Final Word of Hope Does God use deception? No. But he does respect our choices — even the terrible ones. The sobering truth of judicial hardening is that a conscience can be permanently seared. The hopeful truth is that Jesus is the one who broke the trajectory before it could break us. On the cross, He experienced the ultimate "giving over" — abandoned so that we wouldn't have to be. If you're reading this and feeling something closer to conviction than curiosity, that itself is evidence you haven't been handed over yet. That's not nothing. Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz Ordained Lutheran Pastor · Intentional Interim Minister · Certified Spiritual Director La Porte, Texas · Houston Area [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack]
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 My grandson has a custom-painted parking spot at La Porte High School. Student parking is a massive deal there — the seniors get to paint their own spaces before the year begins, and the spot isn’t handed out for nothing. Getting that parking spot ready was no small project.
Before he could paint his own design, he had to cover last year's artwork with fresh primer, measure and tape out his layout, and then carefully paint each section. There were multiple trips to Home Depot for primer, brushes, rollers, tape, and just the right shade of paint. There were conversations with the paint department about what would hold up on sun-baked asphalt. There were sections that had to be repainted because the lines weren't straight enough or the color coverage wasn't right. And there were long hours under the relentless Texas sun, kneeling on hot pavement while sweat dripped into his eyes. By the time he was finished, he had invested real money, real effort, and a good deal of perseverance into a parking space that, for the moment, sits empty. But he finally got it done. The spot looks terrific. That reserved, paid-for space is teaching me something about grace I didn’t expect — and it starts with the very word painted across it: “NOT FREE” in plain letters, secured and paid for. Watching him sit on a spot he can’t even use yet got me thinking about a phrase theologians love: costly grace. Grace is free to us. It was never free, period. And that distinction is at the heart of two things Scripture keeps separate: the gift, and the growth. Justification: The Gift of the License Imagine a teenager walking into the DMV, nervous about the written test and the road exam. You’ve studied hard and practiced driving, hoping you’re good enough to pass. But when you step up to the counter, the worker smiles, hands you a brand-new license with your picture on it, and says, “Congratulations. You’re a licensed driver in the state of Texas.” You’re confused: “Wait, I haven’t taken the tests yet. I haven’t proven anything. How can I be a driver?” The worker replies, “You don’t have to. This license is yours — not because you earned it, but because it’s been given to you. You are a driver, right now.” That moment at the counter is justification. God declares you righteous, not because of anything you’ve done, but because of what Jesus has done for you. Like my grandson’s spot, marked NOT FREE and yet already his, the cost is real — it’s just not paid by you. The spot is secured before you even bring a car to the lot. It is a gift, freely given, and it was expensive. Sanctification: Learning to Drive the Car The DMV worker doesn’t stop there, though. They hand you a driver’s manual and say: “This will guide you for the rest of your life. Study it. Take care of your car — it’s how you’ll make the journey.” That’s sanctification. You’ve already been given the status of a driver, but now you’re called to grow into what that means. You don’t study the manual to keep your license — it’s already legally yours. These practices help you live out the freedom and responsibility that come with the gift. The first time you merge onto the highway, you white-knuckle the wheel, miss your exit, and nearly sideswipe a minivan. The manual says “signal before you turn,” but in the moment you forget. That white-knuckle terror is sanctification — learning to live into a reality you already possess, badly at first, but persistently. You don’t lose your license over a bad merge; you just get better with practice. This is the classic Lutheran distinction between Law and Gospel. The Gospel is the license — pure gift, no conditions. The Law is the manual and, later, the rearview mirror: not a threat to your status, but a guide that shows you where you’ve been and orients you forward. Confusing the two is where most of our theological trouble starts, whether we collapse grace into a reward for good driving or treat the manual as optional once we’ve got the card in our wallet. The Mirror and the Cop Once you’re on the highway, reality sets in. Sometimes you follow the rules perfectly. Other times you speed, run a light, or forget your turn signal. The Law meets you on that highway in more than one way. Most days, it’s the rearview mirror — showing you exactly where you went wrong, what’s coming up behind you, helping you correct your course. The glance isn’t always comfortable; a mirror doesn’t flatter you, it just tells you the truth of what happened back there. But some days the Law is the cop in your rearview, lights on, pulling you over. The ticket stings on purpose. It names the violation plainly and won’t let you talk your way around it. And the Law is also the posted speed limit and the lane markings — the guide that was there all along, telling you how the road is meant to be driven even when you’re doing everything right. Mirror, cop, and guide are the same Law doing three different jobs: showing you, checking you, and directing you. Here’s the vital distinction: none of it — not the mirror, not the ticket — touches your license itself. The DMV worker doesn’t come back to take it away. You remain a licensed driver because your status never depended on your daily performance. Even so, the Law does real work in all three forms — it curbs, it convicts, and it points you back toward the road you’re actually meant to be driving on. (Sure, you CAN lose your driver's license for cause, but that's another blog for another day.) Roadside Assistance The road isn’t a solo track. As licensed drivers, we’re not just cruising past the stranded. That’s roadside assistance — not waiting for the broken-down to find a tow truck, but pulling over to hand them a full tank. The DMV worker puts it this way: “Don’t forget about others out there. Some are stuck, out of gas, or lost without a map. When you see them, don’t just drive by.” That’s the calling of evangelism and mission. We go meet people where they are rather than waiting for them to find their way to us. The Ultimate Not-Free Parking Like a custom-painted space marked NOT FREE and waiting anyway, God’s grace secures our spot long before we have the wheels to drive into it. The price was paid — just not by us. We are justified by a gift we didn’t earn, and we spend the rest of the journey learning to drive in a way that honors the One who gave us the keys. So here’s the question for this week: where are you still trying to earn your parking spot? You already have the license. Now all my grandson needs is the car to park in it. That’s a heavier lift. I don’t think he’ll have it before school starts. Maybe not even by graduation day. But the space — not free, paid for, and entirely his — is waiting anyway. Sometimes God prepares the place long before we're ready to occupy it. Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz Ordained Lutheran Pastor · Intentional Interim Minister · Certified Spiritual Director La Porte, Texas · Houston Area [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack]  Image via freepik.com A woman once apologized before asking me to pray for her.
“I know God has bigger things to worry about,” she said. “This probably isn’t important enough.” I suspect many Christians have felt the same way. We hesitate to pray because we wonder whether it really matters. If God already knows the future, why bring Him our worries, our sick friends, our financial concerns, or our daily bread? Is prayer simply a spiritual journaling exercise—helpful for our mental health but ultimately ineffective in the “real” world? The Lutheran tradition answers with a confident and hope-filled no. Prayer is far more than religious therapy. It is God’s gracious invitation for His children to speak with Him, trusting that He hears, responds, and works according to His perfect wisdom. Why Pray If God Already Knows Everything? This is the question that often lurks beneath the surface. If God is sovereign, are we trying to change His mind? If He already knows what will happen, does prayer accomplish anything? Lutherans have long distinguished between God’s hidden will—those mysteries known only to Him—and His revealed will, which He has made known in Scripture. We are not invited to speculate about the former. We are called to trust and obey the latter. Jesus’ command is wonderfully straightforward: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). Notice that Jesus never tells us to figure out how prayer fits into God’s eternal counsel before we pray. He simply tells us to ask. That is enough. God certainly does not need our prayers in order to accomplish His purposes. Yet throughout Scripture He graciously chooses to involve His people in His work through prayer. Just as He ordinarily feeds us through farmers and bakers, or heals us through physicians, He often accomplishes His purposes through the prayers of His children. Prayer is not a Means of Grace in the Lutheran sense—that title belongs to the proclaimed Word and the Sacraments alone. Rather, prayer is the faithful response of those who have already received God’s promises through those means. We pray because God has first spoken to us. What About the “No” and the “Wait”? This is often where faith is tested. Sometimes God answers exactly as we hope. Sometimes He doesn’t. The apostle Paul pleaded three times that his “thorn in the flesh” be removed. Instead, God answered, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Christians have often summarized God’s answers as Yes, No, or Wait. That isn’t a biblical formula, but it captures an important truth: God always hears, and He answers according to His wisdom rather than our timetable. Martin Luther reminds us: “We should not dictate to Him the time, place, manner, and measure, but leave all that to His wisdom and good pleasure.” (LW 54:50–51) A “No” is not evidence that God has stopped listening. It may be protection, redirection, or preparation for something we cannot yet see—for us or for someone else. Faith does not insist on understanding every answer. Faith continues to trust the One who gives it. God Has Promised to Hear One of the greatest encouragements to prayer comes from Luther’s Large Catechism: “We must know that God does not want our prayer to be in vain, but He will assuredly answer and grant whatever we ask, even though it may not happen at the very moment or in the exact way we desire.” (LC III:19–21) Notice the confidence. Luther doesn’t say perhaps or maybe. He says assuredly—not because we deserve to be heard, but because God has promised to hear us. Prayer is never twisting God’s arm or persuading Him to become gracious. In Jesus, He already is gracious. Prayer simply lays hold of the promises He has already given. Prayer Changes Us One of the first things prayer changes is not our circumstances but ourselves. As we pour out our hearts before God, the Holy Spirit gradually reshapes our desires. We begin to love what He loves. We begin to seek His kingdom before our own agendas. That doesn’t make prayer a coping mechanism for unanswered requests. Rather, it reminds us that our deepest need is not simply changed circumstances but growing conformity to Christ. Prayer forms disciples: it teaches dependence, and it cultivates trust. Does Prayer Actually Change the World? Scripture says so plainly. James writes: “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (James 5:16). This does not mean we manipulate God or force His hand. Nor does Lutheran theology embrace fatalism, as though every detail of history unfolds mechanically regardless of prayer. Instead, Scripture repeatedly shows God responding to the prayers of His people. Elijah prayed. Hannah prayed. The early Church prayed. Throughout both the Bible and the history of the Church, God has acted in remarkable ways through the prayers of His children. Exactly how God’s sovereign providence and our prayers fit together remains a mystery. That does not diminish the promise. It magnifies it. Pray with Bold Confidence The greatest reason Christians pray is not because we have mastered the mechanics of prayer. It is because we belong to Jesus. Through His death and resurrection, we have been reconciled to the Father. Through Baptism and faith we have become His beloved children. Because Christ Himself intercedes for us, we approach God’s throne “with confidence” (Hebrews 4:16), not as strangers hoping to be admitted but as sons and daughters welcomed home. Luther beautifully summarizes God’s invitation: “If He had not meant to answer you, He would not have commanded you to pray, nor would He have added so many promises to it.” (LC III:23) You are not interrupting God, and you are not competing with larger concerns. You are doing exactly what your heavenly Father has invited you to do. The Breath of the Christian Life Prayer remains a mystery. We cannot fully explain how the infinite God weaves our petitions into His providential care of the world. But we do not pray because we have solved the mystery. We pray because Christ has opened the way to the Father, because God has commanded us to pray, and because He has promised to hear us. Every prayer you have whispered this week—the frightened ones, the distracted ones, the exhausted ones—has been heard by your Father. None of them disappeared into empty space. They entered the ears of the One who has promised to hear and who is already at work in ways you cannot yet see. Pray boldly, specifically, and persistently—not to earn God’s favor, but because you already have it through Jesus Christ. Your prayers are not in vain. They never are. Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz Ordained Lutheran Pastor · Intentional Interim Minister · Certified Spiritual Director La Porte, Texas · Houston Area [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack]  Our culture preaches a gospel of radical autonomy wearing the mask of freedom: “My life, my business. If no one gets hurt, what’s the harm?” We like to imagine our sins are private — personal, contained, no one else’s concern. As long as a sin stays hidden or feels small, we feel no urgency to name it.
But Scripture tells a different story. Sin is never only your problem. What we keep in the dark doesn’t stay hidden — it festers, and it does not stay contained to the one carrying it. This is Law-work, and I want to be honest about that before going any further: this piece isn’t going to tell you how to fix it. That’s not what the Law is for. The Law’s job is to tell the truth about what’s actually happening when we sin — and the truth is harder, and stranger, than “I made a mistake.” The Illusion of Radical Autonomy Someone will object: “You’re telling me that some stranger’s sin halfway across the world lands on me? That if I lash out at my spouse, I’ve somehow wounded people I’ve never met?” Yes! That objection is exactly the autonomy the Law is here to expose. You are not your own. You were bought with a price. You were baptized into a Body — not a symbol, not a metaphor, but the actual crucified and risen Body of Christ. And in that Body, Paul writes, “if one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Corinthians 12:26). That is not poetic exaggeration. It is the most literal thing Paul says about the Church. When you sin, the wound is not contained to your own conscience. It is a tear in the communion of saints. Our connection in Jesus is not sentimental — it is, as St. Cyril of Alexandria put it, that we are “blended together with one another and with God.” (In Jo. ev., 11,11:PG 74,561.) Picture a family gathered for a meal, and one member is down with the flu — coughing, sharing the serving spoon. Only one person is sick, but everyone at that table is affected. The mood shifts. Others may catch it. The celebration is marred, whether or not anyone names why. That’s a rough picture of what unrepented sin does inside a congregation: it doesn’t announce itself, but it changes the air everyone is breathing. The Weakest Link and the Air We Breathe Paul makes the same point to the Ephesians from the other direction, urging them to “preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3) — as though unity were something that has to be actively guarded because it is just as actively threatened. A chain holds only as well as its weakest link. Ninety-nine sound links don’t save the chain when the hundredth gives way. In a congregation, the sins we think of as small or private are those fraying links. They erode trust slowly, but just as surely:
The High Cost of Hidden Sin Jesus prayed that his followers “may be one... so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21). That means our disunity isn’t a private failing either — it’s evangelically costly. The world is watching whether the people who claim to be one Body actually act like it. And the sin of one member doesn’t stay isolated even when it stays hidden, because, as St. Paul warns the Galatians, “a little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough” (Galatians 5:9):
This is what St. Augustine meant when he called the Church the Corpus Christi mysticum — the mystical Body of Christ — and preached to his congregation, “You are the body of Christ and his members... Be what you see; receive what you are” (Sermon 272). That sermon was preached at the altar, about the bread they were about to receive. It was not a pep talk about trying harder. It was a description of what they already were, true whether they felt it that morning or not. So here, for now, is where this has to sit: you do not get to sin privately, because there is no private compartment in the Body of Christ for it to stay in. That is simply true, whether or not it feels fixable. Next time, the other half of this: what the Body does with a wound it cannot heal by trying harder — which is not nothing, and is not what you’d expect. How have you seen seemingly “private” actions shift the spiritual air in your own communities? Let’s discuss in the comments below. Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz Ordained Lutheran Pastor · Intentional Interim Minister · Certified Spiritual Director La Porte, Texas · Houston Area [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack]  There is a kind of faith the church doesn't know how to talk about.
Not the faith of the triumphant testimony — the dramatic conversion, the answered prayer, the healing that arrived on cue. Not the faith of the theologically confident, who can articulate what they believe and why. The Gospels not only make room for this kind of faith; they name it and celebrate it. But there is another type as well. The faith that has been worn down by twelve years of bleeding, silence, and shame until it's barely recognizable as faith anymore. The faith that cannot make it to the front of the room. The faith that reaches sideways, invisibly, for the hem. That faith is all over our congregations. We mostly do not see it because we are not looking for it in the right places. The Woman and the Number Twelve Matthew 9 places two healing stories in deliberate parallel. A woman who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years reaches for the hem of Jesus's robe in a crowd. A twelve-year-old girl — the daughter of a synagogue leader named Jairus — is dying. One has lived her whole adult life in suffering. The other has barely had a chance to begin. The number is not accidental. Twelve is the number of the tribes of Israel. Twelve is the whole people of God. Matthew is making a structural argument: these two individuals represent everyone. The ones who have been sick longer than they can remember, and the ones cut off before they could begin. The exhausted and the barely-started. Both belong to the Twelve. Jesus goes to both of them. The woman's situation is specific and worth unpacking. Under the purity codes of her day, her condition made her ritually unclean. Anyone she touched became contaminated. She could not enter the Temple. She could not sit in community worship. She could not be held. For twelve years, the way the purity system was functionally applied in her context marked her as a problem to be managed from a distance. So she does not approach Jesus directly. She cannot. What she does is push through the crowd — invisibly, without permission — and reach for the kraspedon: the ritual fringe, the tzitzit (the blue-tasseled fringes commanded in Numbers 15 as a daily physical reminder of God's commandments). It is a theologically suggestive act of faith. A woman told for twelve years she was outside the covenant reaches out and grabs hold of a visible sign of that covenant. She is not reaching randomly. She is reaching for a sign that she still, somehow, belongs. What Jesus Does with What the World Calls Inadequate Faith Under the Law, contact with an unclean person should have made Jesus unclean. Instead, the logic of the Kingdom takes over: his cleanness spreads to her rather than her uncleanness spreading to him. This is the atonement in miniature. In Matthew 9, Jesus repeatedly crosses lines he was not supposed to cross — eating with tax collectors and sinners, allowing an unclean woman to touch him, taking the hand of a dead girl. Each time, the same thing happens: uncleanness does not transfer to him. His life transfers to them. Jesus stops. He turns. He does not ask how she ended up here. He does not make her explain the twelve years. He does not tell her to come back when she is cleaned up. He looks at whatever scraped-together, desperate, last-scrap faith she dragged to him — the faith that could not even make it to his face, the faith that reached sideways and invisible — and he calls it enough. Then he names her publicly. "Daughter." In front of everyone. He is not just healing her body. He is ending her exile. He is restoring her to the community that had classified her as a contaminant for twelve years. The word he uses — tharsei, "take heart," "take courage" — is a word of commissioning. She is not just healed. She is sent back in. Hesed Against the System This radical re-integration is the flesh-and-blood fulfillment of Israel's prophetic hope. What Hosea names, Jesus enacts in real time on a body the system had excluded. Seven hundred years before this moment, Hosea named the same tension. God's people had run through the cycle of faithlessness and consequence until the silence of God felt like abandonment. And into that silence Hosea speaks: "Come, let us return to the Lord. For it is he who has torn, and he will heal us. He has struck down, and he will bind us up." The God who tears also heals. The God who strikes also binds up. This is the shape of hesed — not a passing feeling, but a stubborn covenant loyalty that does not break. It is the love that holds fast regardless of the other party's condition. It is loyal love that goes all the way to the cross. Jesus brings this hesed into direct conflict with the religious metrics of his day. When the Pharisees object to his eating with sinners, he quotes Hosea: "I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings." The system, as she experienced it, treated her as a contamination risk. God's hesed says otherwise. What This Means for Pastoral Care The people who approach God sideways are not doing it wrong. They are doing exactly what the hemorrhaging woman did. They cannot come boldly. Years of suffering, or shame, or silence have made boldness unavailable to them. What they can do is push through the crowd and reach — invisibly, without permission — for whatever part of the Word they can get their hands on. The pastor who knows this will build communities differently. Consider these practices:
The question is whether you can see it. If your ministry is calibrated to recognize visible, articulate, participatory faith, you will likely miss it. It often looks like a brief prayer at a food pantry table. A quiet presence in the back pew. A hospital room where someone can only whisper the name of Jesus. That is last-scrap faith — and it is met, again and again, by hesed with skin on. What Is Your Twelve Years? So, what is the thing that wakes up with you? The thing that drains you quietly, day after day. The thing you have stopped telling people about because nothing has changed and you are tired of looking disappointed. Twelve years of trying to stay sober. Twelve years of leading a congregation that will not turn. Twelve years of praying the same prayer against the same silent ceiling. He stopped for her. He went to that house. If all you can do is reach sideways, reach. If all you can reach is the hem, reach for the hem. He has already stopped. What is your twelve years? I'd love to hear where you're reaching for the hem these days — leave a comment below. Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz is an ELCA-rostered intentional interim minister and congregational consultant based in the greater Houston area, with fifteen years on the faculty of the FIND School for Spiritual Direction in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. He writes on congregational transition, spiritual formation, and the theology of the unseen at The Marginal Note on Substack. [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack]  Image: freepik.com Every Pentecost I return to the same question that has shaped my ministry for more than twenty years: does the Holy Spirit still distribute extraordinary gifts to the Church — healing, prophecy, words of knowledge — or did those things end with the New Testament era?
Most Lutherans don't formally deny it. They just don't expect it. I've spent a long time with that assumption. What does Scripture teach? There is no kill switch in the New Testament. No moment where the promises are marked temporary. No sunset clause on the gifts of the Spirit. Cessationism is not derived from careful exegesis followed by a reluctant conclusion. It is constructed after the fact, to explain an absence already present in the church's experience — and then the inference passages are recruited to provide the biblical rationale. It is not primarily an exegetical position. It is an apologetic one. Which raises the uncomfortable prior question: what kind of church life produces that absence in the first place? A congregation whose calendar is organized around activities requiring no particular intervention from the Holy Spirit is unlikely to encounter such intervention. You don't need a word of knowledge for a bake sale or discernment of spirits for a car wash. The absence of the gifts and the absence of expectation are not independent phenomena. They produce each other. Here's the Lutheran angle that I find most compelling: we confess that Jesus is genuinely, bodily present in the bread and wine of communion — not symbolically, not in memory, but actually. If Jesus is genuinely present in the bread, we should be slow to argue that He is absent from the suffering body brought in prayer before that same altar. Real Presence, properly understood, is not a fence. It is a door. I've had almost thirty years of parish experience pressing on this question — three Alpha courses a year at Good Shepherd Lutheran in Pasadena back in the mid- 2000’s, a traveling team that went from Houston to Canada, a trip to Uganda in 2007 where deliverance ministry looked exactly like Mark 1:21-28 on an ordinary day in an ordinary place, and a recent healing evening at Light of Christ Lutheran a person's impaired vision was restored to 20/20 and has remained so. I'm not building doctrine on experience. I'm arguing that cessationism provides the least adequate theological account of what the Church continues to witness — and that what Lutherans already believe about Real Presence points somewhere more interesting than we usually follow it. None of this is an argument for religious enthusiasm. The gifts are for the neighbor, not for spiritual self-promotion. Not everyone is healed — suffering is a real participation in Jesus, not a failure of faith. Word and Sacrament remain the Church's sure and certain means of grace, and nothing supersedes them. A direct word to preachers: on Pentecost Sunday you will read 1 Corinthians 12:3-13 from the lectern. Someone in your congregation will hear that passage and feel something move — a recognition, a hope they've been carrying quietly for years. They will look at you to find out whether it means anything. You don't have to have all the answers. You do have to have thought it through. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor… to set at liberty those who are oppressed." (Luke 4:18) Come, Holy Spirit. The full version of this argument — with exegesis, Lutheran theological framework, global witness, and parish testimony — is available at The Marginal Note on Substack. Look for “There is No ‘Kill Switch.’” Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz is an ordained ELCA minister, spiritual director, and intentional interim specialist based in the greater Houston area. [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack]  Image: freepik.com Most people who contact me about this topic start the same way. They apologize first. They say something like, “I know this probably sounds crazy,” or “I don’t know if this is even a real thing,” before they get to what they actually called to say. And what they actually called to say is usually some version of this: something is wrong in my house, and I don’t know what to do about it.
I want to say clearly: it doesn’t sound crazy. And yes, it is a real thing. The Christian tradition has always understood that places are not neutral to us. Because of the Incarnation—the fact that God became flesh in Jesus—we know that the physical world matters deeply to Him. What has happened in these spaces continues to affect those who dwell there: through memory, through relationships, and sometimes in ways we do not fully understand. This is not because places themselves hold some independent power, but because God’s creation, though good, is not untouched by sin, suffering, and history. For that reason, blessing and consecration matter—not as magic, not as superstition, but as the church’s practiced response to the reality that the physical and spiritual are not as neatly separated as modern Western culture assumes. When the church blesses a space, we are speaking God’s Word into it, naming it as belonging to Jesus and placing it under His promise. A blessing properly done does truly set a place apart. It becomes more than a mere building; it is consecrated—rightfully reclaimed and marked as holy ground for the life of the family and the glory of God. The ancient church blessed homes, fields, ships, tools, and thresholds. The medieval church developed rites for the reconciliation of spaces marked by violence or desecration. Martin Luther retained the practice of blessing and the liturgical tradition has never entirely lost it. In practice, this often looks like a pastor moving through the rooms of a home, speaking Scripture aloud, praying specifically over each space, and anointing doorposts and thresholds with oil—a physical, unhurried act of reclaiming territory for the Lord who already owns it. What the church has mostly lost is the pastoral fluency to talk about it plainly. So let me offer a framework. These are not steps to diagnose a phenomenon, but ways of listening carefully so that what is needed can be brought to bear. The Weight of History First, I want to understand the history involved. What do you know about what happened in this space before you arrived? Not because every difficult history produces spiritual disturbance, but because history matters. Sin and trauma leave what we might call a “social debt” in a space—a residue of what has taken place that continues to shape the life of those who dwell there, both visibly and in ways harder to name. We look at the past to see where the peace of Christ needs to be specifically applied. Discerning the Experience Second, I want to understand what is actually being experienced. There is a significant difference between a vague sense of unease, a pattern of relational conflict tied to a space, recurring nightmares, a sense of presence, and phenomena that are more difficult to categorize. I am not interested in sensationalism. Many presenting problems are explainable in the physical or psychological realm—structural issues, environmental factors, or even the heavy lingering fog of personal trauma and grief. (I recently saw a meme that showed a guy with a flashlight exploring his attic with the words, “Homeowner relieved to discover disturbing sounds in attic to be ghosts and not structural issues he can’t afford to repair.”) But I am going to take your report seriously, helping you discern whether what you are feeling is a matter for a home handyman/contractor, a counselor, or a pastor. The Spiritual Landscape of the Heart Third, I want to understand the spiritual condition of the people in the space. This is not a judgment—it is a pastoral question. A Christian is not defenseless; you belong to Jesus. But where we turn away from Him—toward things that promise control, knowledge, or power apart from God—we can place ourselves in a state of confusion and vulnerability. We must be honest about the fact that such vulnerability is rarely left a vacuum. Jesus himself describes malicious spirits as creatures who, finding themselves wandering through arid places, are perpetually looking for a place to rest (Matthew 12:43–45)—and they are more than happy to take up residence where the door has been left unlatched. When we seek spiritual agency outside of Jesus, we inadvertently offer a standing invitation to forces that exploit our desire for control. This is not to say that suffering is always the fruit of one’s own choices, but that the doors we open matter. Our interior lives shape both what we perceive and how we bear it; therefore, the remedy is not just “clearing” a room, but a return to the protection and presence of the Lord. The Church’s Provision Fourth, and most importantly, I want to point toward what the tradition actually offers. There is no space in which Jesus is not already Lord. The question is not whether He is present, but whether His presence is being trusted, spoken, and received. Theologically, we live in the “between time.” Because of Good Friday and Easter, the decisive victory has been won; the cosmos is redeemed. In military terms, D-Day has passed and the outcome is certain, yet we have not yet reached VE Day. In this tension, there is still resistance, suffering, and “groaning” as we await the final fulfillment of that victory. While the greater strategic battle is over, skirmishes remain in the shadows. The church has specific resources for this reality: prayer, the formal rite of blessing, the speaking of the Word into the space, anointing, and the presence of the community. These are not folk remedies or spiritual placebos. They are the church’s concrete, practiced response to the reality that Jesus Christ is Lord of every space, every history, and every power that operates within creation. We are simply applying the victory of the King to the territory He has already claimed. Now what? This is not paranormal investigation. I am not interested in evidence of the supernatural for its own sake. I am a pastor. My concern is for the people who are suffering and for bringing to bear the gifts Jesus has given His church. This is not something you are meant to carry alone or solve privately. If you are carrying something like this and don’t know where to bring it—and I understand that making that first contact can feel as awkward as the apology you rehearsed before calling—the contact page is the place to start. Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz Ordained Lutheran Pastor · Intentional Interim Minister · Certified Spiritual Director La Porte, Texas · Houston Area [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack]  I came home from a retreat at Mustang Island Conference Center with a bag of blessed St. Benedict medals—and a theological problem I had not expected. The problem was simple: what, exactly, is a Lutheran pastor supposed to do with them? Let me tell you how I got into this strange position. The Anglican Order of Preachers—the Dominican community to which I belong as a life-professed friar—is, as the name suggests, a preaching order. Like many mainline religious communities, we are strongest in prophetic witness and social justice. What we are less practiced at is the simple, one-on-one conversation with people who have never heard the Gospel and have no particular reason to listen. So we decided to address that gap. We invited a deacon from the Archdiocese of Galveston–Houston who practices street evangelism—not the aggressive, confrontational variety, but the kind that begins with genuine human contact and grows from there. He spent a day training us: classroom instruction, some role-playing, and then an hour on the streets of Port Aransas speaking with strangers about things that matter. Afterward we gathered for dinner and a long conversation about what we had experienced. During the training, the deacon explained how his team uses sacramentals—rosaries, medals, prayer cards—as conversation starters and simple gifts. Not as magic. Not as luck. Rather, as physical anchors for a spiritual reality the Church has always insisted upon. He brought samples, and we took them with us onto the street. At the end of the evening there were leftovers. The deacon did not want to haul them home, but since the group was mostly Episcopalians, he correctly assumed we were unlikely to make much use of them. I, however, grabbed a bag of blessed St. Benedict medals and brought them back to La Porte, TX where I live and serve the TX LA Gulf Coast Synod (ELCA) as an intentional interim pastor. My first thought was to give them to my Thursday night Bible study group at Light of Christ—a scrappy, lean, no-frills, refreshingly honest crew made up mostly of recovery alumni and people who know the margins of life firsthand. They are exactly the kind of people for whom a physical object that says you are not alone in this fight might matter. In a moment of craving or despair—when faith feels abstract and distant—the cold weight of a medal in the palm can provide a kind of sensory grounding. Then it occurred to me that they would have no framework for what they were holding. The medal bears Latin inscriptions on both sides, including the potent Vade Retro Satana (“Begone, Satan”). It carries a theological tradition stretching back fifteen centuries. At its core, the medal is a scriptural invocation in metal—the Name of Jesus set against the dark. So I wrote a teaching document—but before I could teach it, I had to work something out for myself: what does a Lutheran do with this? Lutherans are not sacramental in quite the same way Roman Catholics are. We have a more narrowly defined set of Sacraments and a less developed theology of sacramentals. We reject any notion that an object works “by the mere performance of the ritual” (ex opere operato) as a mechanism of automatic grace apart from faith and the Word. We are often suspicious—sometimes rightly—of anything that appears to locate spiritual power in a thing rather than in the Word and the Name. Martin Luther himself was emphatic: it is the Word that makes the Sacrament. Without the Word, the element is simply matter. Yet Luther also blessed things. He retained the renunciations, the exorcism, and the exsufflation in the baptismal rite—a reminder that the early church never imagined the Christian life as spiritually neutral terrain. He wrote and sang about spiritual warfare as a present and serious reality. More to the point, Luther understood that God uses material means—water, bread, wine, spoken words—to deliver real promises. The Lutheran tradition has always insisted that the boundary between the physical and spiritual worlds is far more porous than Western modernity is willing to admit. Given that background, there is a precedent, if not a full theological system, for the careful, non-superstitious use of physical signs, properly understood. The St. Benedict medal is not a lucky charm. It promises nothing automatically. It is best understood as a material confession of Jesus’s victory. Its power is entirely His—invoked through faith and prayer, and grounded in the scriptural commands inscribed on its surface. The medal is not a battery of power; it is a sign that points the Christian back to their Baptismal identity. What the medal does is give the person holding it something to hold: a physical anchor in a moment of spiritual pressure. A reminder, pressed into the palm, that the Name of Jesus has already won the ground being contested—not by residing in the object, but by being confessed and trusted in faith. For someone in recovery—someone who knows in their bones what it means to be pulled toward destruction by something that sounds almost reasonable—that is no small thing. People who have lived close to darkness do not need to be convinced that darkness is real. What they need is a theological framework for what they have already experienced—and clarity about what to do when the pressure returns. The full teaching document--The Warfare of Things: A Guide to the Sacred and the Profane—is available as a free download here. It explores the theology of blessed and cursed objects through a Lutheran lens, explains how the St. Benedict medal may be used as a prayer aid, discusses how to identify and remove spiritual footholds in a living space, and argues—concretely and pastorally—that the Church’s tradition of blessing and consecration is not superstition, but pastoral common sense. If you are working with people in recovery—or serving a congregation that has never been given a framework for this territory—the guide was written for precisely that situation. Because sometimes the most pastoral thing the Church can offer is not a new theory, but an old tool placed back into the hands of people who need it. Image: https://www.freepik.com/ Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz Ordained Lutheran Pastor · Intentional Interim Minister · Certified Spiritual Director La Porte, Texas · Houston Area [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack] |
