Luther Seminary Entrance Essay!

Jamie Strickler
Law and Gospel Study
Autobiography
December 10, 2007

Since my baptism the Lord has been using the Law, through events in my life, to hammer my flesh into submission and sending preachers to deliver His promises to strengthen my faith and preserve my hope. The most significant events that come to mind are: being bullied as a child, a career as a high school wrestler, a failed relationship, a failed marriage, and a failure to succeed financially.
As a third grader it became evident that I was the fat kid, I was tormented mercilessly. There were a number of bullies and at thirty-three years old I can still remember their names and still feel the humiliation and pain they inflicted. Each crushing blow to the gut or pop to the nose reminded me that I wasn’t good enough and obviously wasn’t living up to the standards or law of the world. These crushing blows inflicted by the agents of evil sent me on a journey to find out how, in this world, I could obtain righteousness. Believing that the world couldn’t accept me for who I am, I believed that a perfect being like God to love me? There must be some way in which I could perform to earn God and the world’s acceptance.
First I tried to build my body. As a freshman in high school I discovered that I was stronger that everyone else and that gained me some notoriety. I spent the next four years of my life working out and seeking out more mature lifters to learn new techniques to become bigger and stronger. As a senior in high school I weighed one hundred ninety-five pounds and had obtained a low six percent body fat. To my delight I was feared and caught the attention of a couple of young girls. At the time I mistook fear as respect and sexual conquest as love.
I also discovered that I had a talent in the sport of wrestling and punished each opponent as if they were one of my childhood bullies. In competition I broke opponent’s ribs, fingers, and did my share of eye gouging. Anything to win! Acquiring the rank of captain of the team I won more and more matches and became more feared. But it seemed with each victory I became angrier, in hind sight I see that my anger wasn’t the real emotion I was experiencing. Anger never presents itself alone, it is always covering up some more vulnerable emotion and for me that emotion was fear of losing. In my subconscious mind I couldn’t lose a match or else everyone would see me for who I really was a weak fat kid in an athlete’s body. But in my conscious mind I no longer needed God because I had become God. But the Law was about to strike again. Just before the State Tournament my senior year I received a crushing blow that I would never be able to overcome. I had justified myself physically in the flesh and my merciful Savior knew that is was causing me pain and one day in practice my right knee got caught in the mat and was super flexed ruining my chances of a State Championship. Wrestling at fifty percent I placed sixth to opponents I had beaten earlier in the year. As I stood and received my reward, a bronze medal, I knew that I would never wrestle again, I had failed, and once more I wasn’t good enough.
Not being in the spot light was more than I could bear and I turned to the only one, at the time, who could make me feel like a man, my high school girlfriend. She was a college student standing five foot one and blonde, every young boy’s dream. She introduced me to the party life and I found that by drinking alcohol I could somehow forget, for a short time, all my failures. She was, I thought at the time, my dream girl until she entered someone else’s dream and became my nightmare. I was attending college now and I couldn’t handle the loss of the one thing that made me somewhat whole. I quit school and entered a deep depression. The Law had struck again.
I then turned to my faith. I had been baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church and I knew of no other place to look for meaning except mass. I attended church regularly and had enrolled in community college, I was back on track. I met a nice high school girl whose mother was a born again Christian. She introduced me to a non-denominational church which lead me to start reading Christian literature. I found, in their church a loving, forgiving God, not the condemning, vengeful God of my past. Marrying that girl and finding success in the auto business I believed I was on my way.
At twenty-two I was making six figures and had found yet another way to gain my own righteousness or so I thought. Torn between the party life, work, family and church on Sunday I failed to notice that my new bride had become lonely. When she turned to drugs and an older man I felt the Law once again knock me on my kester. She filed for divorce and we celebrated our three year anniversary with the dissolution of the marriage. I was crushed and felt more rejected that I ever had in my life. Then my loving and rescuing Savior came to me through a man He had called to the office of Pastor, Kerry Jecht. Kerry was the pastor of my ex-wife’s church and we had met to try to save my marriage. Becoming friends I found my faith strengthening as he delivered the promises of the Gospel, planting the Jesus seed if you will, but I still couldn’t leave the security of an intoxicated weekend to drown my pain. As St. Augustine said, “Lord make me chaste, but not yet!”
A salesman at the dealership in which I was working introduced me to his oldest daughter Zanny. We fell immediately in love and were married, by Kerry, in less that a year. Through out our seven plus years of marriage God has used Zanny to demonstrate to me what unconditional love and forgiveness truly looks like, she is a living breathing example of what God can do in a marriage. After the birth of our son, Joseph Michael, we decided that we better find our place in a church and since we were both raised Catholic, it was time to return there. I went through the process of having my first marriage annulled and then we had our marriage blessed and our son baptized. By the time our daughter, Ally Rae, was born we were good “Sunday” Catholics. But there was something missing, we kept drifting deeper in to debt as we were making over one hundred thousand dollars a year but living like we made two hundred thousand. I had abandoned God again for my new Gods power, things, and money and again the Law had its way with me.
911 was a horrible time for a lot of people and it killed the car business. We left the comfort of our small town so that I could take a job with a larger dealership in hopes that our new income could out run our current lifestyle. It didn’t. We were bankrupt, spiritually and financially. It was on Memorial Day 2003 that the Holy Spirit seed planted inside me became a fruit bearing tree. I had had enough, the Hammer of God had taken its toll on my flesh; I had been yoked to the Law too long.
I didn’t know what to do but I knew I had to leave the car business. It was amazing, I no longer bound to the bondage of guilt for having to manipulate people and that alone set me free from the abuse of alcohol. I spent the next nine months working as a loan officer in a mortgage company helping people, like me, fresh out of bankruptcy save their houses and my spare time searching for Christ. That was it, this was my calling, I was called to help people in trouble.
I ran into an old friend from the car business, Bob Eckhart, who invited me to his non-denominational mega church and I again discovered the forgiving merciful God. I started training with them part-time to become an associate Pastor with their upcoming satellite branch. For nine months I mentored with two pastors, Jason Stark and Tom Clegg. I had a hunger for the Word of God and devoured three to four Christian books a week. On Jason’s recommendation I started mentoring and counseling men from our church, but now matter how hard I tried it was never enough to satisfy my hunger to do the work of God; I was never quit good enough.
Tom asked me what it was I wanted to do with my life and I told him I wanted to return to school and become a Pastor. He referred me to Grandview College. Then the Law struck again, when the new satellite church opened I was passed up for the associate pastor position. My heart was broken, and we left the church.
In the mean time I had registered for school full time and Zanny excitedly reentered the work force managing a retail store. We had lost our house but we were able to secure a small two bedroom town home. We were dirt poor but extremely happy and free. To add to our joy Zanny unexpectedly became pregnant.
At Grand View College I met Doctors Ken Jones and Mark Mattes and they became my new delivers of the Gospel promise. Through my spiritual father, Dr. Ken Jones, I leaned of Luther and his theology of Law and Gospel. Finally it was all clear, all this really wasn’t up to me, my will was bound to God by God. Everything I thought I understood about God was turned upside down and inside out. Hidden in all the trials I had experienced God was drawing me to himself, hammering away at my flesh with Law and building my faith with the promise delivered by his elected preachers. I was finally free from the obligation to gain my own righteousness; Jesus had done it for me. We joined Faith Lutheran Church in Clive Iowa where I serve as a care minister and we had our third child, Gabriella Suzanne, baptized.
Through the tutelage of Dr Jones I have been unyoked of the burden on the Law by embracing the theology of justification by faith alone explained through Luther, St. Augustine, and St. Paul. I once asked Dr. Jones, “Now that I am free from the Law, what do I do now?” He answered, “What do you want to do?”
Well I’m doing it, for the past year and a half I have served as a chaplain with Hope Ministries’ Bethel Rescue Mission not because I have some debt of service to pay God, but because I am completely happy being called to take up the mission of John the Baptist pointing my bony finger to the cross of Christ for the broken to see.
I want to attend Seminary because I feel an internal call to be an ELCA pastor and want to explore it further. The fruit that is associated with Luther Seminary entices me, for instance, Ken Jones, Steve Paulson, Gerhard Forde, David Nerdig, Jack Mithelman, and Mark Mattes.
I am Lutheran through and through. I am convinced that God elects people to eternal salvation and draws them to himself through a bound will. No more searching for righteousness through works. I see Luther’s theology of Law and Gospel lived out each day in lives of the men I encounter at the shelter and using Luther’s theology am able to explain to them the freedom I have been freely given. The Sacraments of baptism and communion have become very dear to me, baptism being the bestowing of Christ’s promise upon God’s elect and in communion experiencing Christ’s presence. I am in complete agreement with the Nicene Creed, and the Apostles Creed. I see that as Christians we are just sinners now justified by and set free to follow Jesus and obey his Laws of loving God and neighbor. Through the gift of Christ crucified I am free from relying on my emotions, feelings, or understanding and in times of trial can cling to God’s Gospel promises. I no longer dread the Law I embrace the Gospel