10-4-2026

Good Morning!

             Genesis 12:1; “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.”

       I remember many years ago when I was in college talking to my grandfather about his parents and uncles and grandparents who left Germany and immigrated to the United States.  They left everything they knew, most of the people they knew and grew up with.  It was possible that a young man or young woman had fallen in love and was suddenly transported to another country far away to never see that person again.  They left their homes and the life they knew for a promise of land and a better way of life.  It must have taken a lot to go, especially the first one.  It might be a little easier if all of your brothers are going, along with a fair number of cousins and friends but what if you were first, or worse, the only one to go; a new land, new neighbors, new customs, new names; it took courage and faith.

    In our verse we see where God spoke to Abram.  We don’t know if it was a dream or a vision or something like the burning bush of Moses but somehow God directed Abram to leave his country and his family to go to a new land that God has promised to Abram and his descendants.  Yet it had to take a lot of faith, and convincing, for Abram to take his wife and his nephew and head out and go where God was directing them to go.  They left all the familiar things in life to go to a brand-new land.  It certainly took courage and faith.

    God is leading you to a new land as well.  He wants you to leave the old life behind.  He wants you to leave sinful existence behind.  For many of us, this can be difficult.  It can mean leaving behind friends, places that we are comfortable at, even perhaps some family members might get left behind.  Yet God calls us to a new land, a new life.  He calls us there for much the same reason he called Abram to go; to get out of a sin-filled environment that might lead us astray.  God wants us to be safe and sometimes a new place is the only way to safety.

    So, as you feel God introducing changes into your life, these changes may be God’s way of   telling you to come to a new land, a new country or just a different set of people for you to be with.  The old relationships, the old places to go may be the toxic things that are dragging you down and holding you back.  This may be what is keeping you in sin; you are not leaving the temptations behind.  If you are tempted to drink to excess, stay away from the bars.  If you are prone to gossip, stay away from that coffee klatch.  Go to the new land.

    It might be difficult; it might require a few tries to finally leave the old behind.  Yet the new land that God is leading you into is the land that he has promised, a land of milk and honey.  It is the promised land of our salvation.  It is home.

Father of all wonders, you lead in the paths of righteousness for your name’s sake.  Give me the courage and strength to travel the path you have laid out and to follow as you lead me.  Show me the way to walk with you.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret   

10-3-2026

Good Morning!

     James 4:17; “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

      We spend a lot of time thinking about sin as doing something wrong.  In the Old Testament, they are called “transgressions” which can be translated as “crossing the line.”  They are viewed as rebellious acts or acts of defiance.  We know what they are; if you kill someone or speak evil of them; you are actively doing damage, you are actively harming the other person.  Most of us even realize that if we intentional harm nature that we are engaging in a sinful act against God and his creation.

    But what about sin; which can be best defined as “falling short or missing the mark;” what about those failures?  What happens when you know of a need of a neighbor and you just look the other way?  It is one thing to avoid doing what is wrong; most people, even unbelievers, can do this.  But what about not doing the right thing; how well do we do the right thing?  There are times when we really struggle with this; for one thing, it requires some effort.  I can very easily not push you down; I just have to walk away.  But it takes time, effort and willingness to stop and help you stand back up again.  When you do the right thing, you have some skin in the game.

    This is part of the forgiveness of sins which we receive from God because of Jesus.  The first part is to stop doing what is hurtful and harmful.  We are to stop causing pain and doing things that are against God’s will, things like greed, envy, jealousy, theft and the like.  But the next step is to do what is right; to share with those in need, to place our wants below their needs, even to place our needs below their needs, this is true agape love that Jesus showed for us when he surrendered his life for us.

    Yet a huge part of our faith is doing the right thing, doing the thing that benefits our neighbor.  God has restored us to his family; he has restored us to be his children.  We all hold onto this; we all see this as a great mercy that God has promised ad delivered to us.  Yet we are slow to follow through with the balance.

    Since we are restored to God’s family, we are also restored to our original purpose.  We are restored to the purpose to which we were created.  We are to live humbly in God’s presence with thanksgiving and praise, we are to take care of each other and we are to take care of God’s creation.  These are things to do and failing to do them is a sin, we are falling short of God’s will in our life.  God’s will is to “do no harm” but to also “do some good.”  Take care of each other and take care of God’s beautiful creation.   We are to bring healing to God’s creation; we are to go and do good.

Father, too often I fall far short of your will.  Strengthen within me the desire to seek your face and to love your heart.  Give me the will to do your will and to show your great love to all that I meet.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

10-2-2026

Good Morning!

       Hosea 11:4; “I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.”

     About every ten days to two weeks, I need to take an afternoon or a day to tie up loose ends.  I’ll have projects that are a third to a half done but need to be finished pretty soon.  It might be a Bible study I am planning or a service or a wedding sermon; you never know.  Sometimes it is catching up on doing paperwork like getting records filed properly.  A few years ago, I had to add cleaning up the inboxes of my email accounts.  That is beginning to take more and more time.  The only loose end that seems to slip by is cleaning my office and desk; that usually loses its appeal quickly.

     Sometimes those loose ends are a little more personal.  Sometimes it is a shut-in that I haven’t seen in a while.  Sometimes it is taking time to visit my parents or spend time with my family.  It is kind of a shame when our important relationships can be seen as “loose ends.”  Yet relationships need maintenance.  We need to spend time together or the cords of kindness or the bands of love can unravel.  We can end up at frayed ends instead of loose ends.  Sometimes when the frays begin to show, you have to stop and tie them together or better bind them up and heal them.

    This can, and often does, include your relationship with God.  We can push it back, put it off, or try and set it aside.  We can miss some of our devotional time, we can miss some of our prayer time, we can miss some of the corporate worship time and our relationship with God can begin to fray.  We can begin to feel that God is distant or not hearing our infrequent prayer.  The ends begin to unravel and we wonder where we are.  We feel lost and drifting, which is probably what we are doing.

    Fortunately, we have a God that doesn’t give up on us.  We have a God who is continually calling us back into the security of his mercy and the constancy of his grace; giving us the forgiveness that we need, and the encouragement and the desire to bind our wounds.  He calls us to repentance, turning away from our sin but more importantly back towards him.  We see his face shine upon us and we can rest in his loving arms.

    It is by his grace that we can bind up the loose ends in our relationships.  He moves us by his great love to try.  The devil will encourage you to let it slide, to let it wait.  Yet God, through his Word, seeks to have you tie up the loose ends right away so that you can live in the joy of the love of the people whom he has placed into your life.  God binds you up with his bands of love and his desire is for you to have loving relationships here as well.

Loving Father, you gently bind us up with the bands of your love.  Keep us in your loving embrace.  Guard us with your Spirit.  Enrich our faith and strengthen our heart.  Guide us to support the loving relationships that you give us.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

10-1-2026

Good Morning!

               Romans 8:27; “And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

     I was watching an old Jimmy Stewart movie a few years ago titled “Anatomy of a Murder.”   It is based on a true event where a soldier walks into a tavern and kills the owner and then leaves.  The version of events that he and his wife state is that the tavern owner raped the wife one night.  The wife goes home and tells the husband; he loads his pistol, drives down to the tavern, and shoots the tavern owner.  The soldier is acquitted because of something called “irresistible impulse.”  This is similar to an insanity plea in that the person is unable to resist the impulse to do what he does.  Usually, the person experiences some form of intense emotional upheaval.  The soldier is found not guilty.  It is a good tense movie with some big names and has an ironic twist at the end.

    Throughout the trial, the back and forth was “what was on his mind?”  “What was he thinking?”  “Did he know that what he was doing was wrong?”  The defense and the prosecution went back and forth until a not guilty verdict comes back.  The question came down to how we know what another person is thinking.  How do we know?  We can’t look into their mind or heart and see what their desire is; we can only guess.  So how do we know?

    The deep-down basic truth is that we cannot ever know with 100% certainty what another person is thinking or what their motives are.  There is always some level of uncertainty.  For us as humans we can never be sure, did the man in the movie really know what he was doing or did he have a hidden reason?    We may never know what someone thinks or feels but God does.

     This can be one of the great comforts in our life.  There may be times in your life when you only know the pain or the sorrow.  You only know the hurt; you do not see any remedy or relief in sight.  You only seek to have the pain relieved.  You seek after God’s grace to heal you.  You may not know how to find it; you only know that you need his love and grace desperately.  We may not know what to say or how to say it but the Holy Spirit searches our heart and our soul.  He knows our mind and our needs.  He knows how to pray and what to say in these times of pain and sorrow.  With the Spirit’s intercession, God has mercy on us.  With the Spirit’s intercession and cries for mercy for us, God responds with his grace and sends us comfort; he sends us hope.  We are his dear children; he will never fail us.

Father of all grace and mercy, through your great love and mercy we have the comfort of your loving arms surrounding us and lifting us up in times of distress.  You heal us in your great compassion.  Send your knowing and searching Spirit to seek out the hurting, the suffering and the lost.  Heal their pain and bind their wounds.  In the precious name of Jesus our Risen Savior we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret  

98-30-2206

Good Morning!

      2 Timothy 1:5; “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.”

   Who did you hear it from?  Who was the first person you remember who taught you about Jesus?  Most would probably say a grandmother or grandfather or mom or dad or a favorite Sunday School teacher or maybe even an aunt or an uncle; most learned at an early age.  For some it was much later, your spouse or a friend or co-worker might fit the bill but we all have one thing in common; someone told us about Jesus.  It is one thing that makes faith so precious and valuable; your faith has been handed down from one generation to the next.  If you could do it; you could trace your faith back to the original 12 apostles and then to Jesus because that is how we get it.

    “Faith comes by hearing,” Paul tells us and if we hear someone talks and it is usually a family member or very close friend the first time.  This is the way it works; this is the way God designed it.  From the earliest times, God designed that faith would be handed down from one to another.  After the Exodus, God told the people of Israel to be ready when your children ask about the ceremony of the Passover and to tell the children what God did for them and how he saved them.  Early on the directive was to teach the children and teach them at an early age.  At Mount Sinai God directed them to “impress them upon your children’s heart;” that means to pass the faith onto the next generation.  Give it to them like the precious gift that it is.

    Our verse refers to Timothy as Paul was writing to him for the last time.  Paul commented on Timothy’s faith and how that faith had dwelled and been passed down to him from his mother and grandmother.  The one who Paul viewed as his adopted son in Christ came to faith because of his mother and grandmother; just the same as many of us.

     This is how God designed the passing of faith; by the quiet and gentle teaching of one to another.  There are no earth-shattering events just a simple growing in the faith.  We all know that our children watch us like hawks. They observe our choices and decisions and compare them to what we say we believe. Children do as we do, not as we say. When we choose according to life, following God’s precepts, we demonstrate authentic faith to our family. We prove our love for God, our ability to hear His voice, and our desire to cling to Him by choosing to follow His direction. One way that our family chose to do this was by praying for our neighbors. Often, we would go door to door with our small group and ask our neighbors if we could pray with them. This action proved our belief system more to our children than a thousand Sunday school lessons. It was faith in action, in practice; faith made real. 

    So, live a faithful life; let your children see your faith in practice; prayer, Bible reading, worshipping together all make great and proper impressions.

Father, thank you for those loved ones in my life who passed the faith to me.  Give me the wisdom to pass my faith onto the next ones.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

9-29-2026

Good Morning!

     Isaiah 53:7; “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”

      I remember watching an old gangster movie.  There was a turf war between three rival gang families.  During the middle of this gang war, one of the members of one of the families turned over and became a member of a different family gang.  The first family met and decided that they could not allow this to happen so they decided to have the man killed.  If they let one man defect then who knows how many more would try.  They could not allow this so they decided to make an example of the defector.  “It was nothing personal” the head of the gang even kind of liked him but, “this was business.”

    “Nothing personal, just business;” how often have we heard or used that phrase in our conversations?  It is designed to put distance between the people involved.  If we can distance ourselves from the consequences of our actions, it makes it easier to continue on in a guilt free manner.  After all, what we do for the sake of business is just that; it is business, it is never personal even if that business is murdering a former friend.  We may not go to that extreme but we may not think twice about sabotaging a co-worker’s reputation or undermining a neighbor’s chance at expanding his business.

     We like to have things as business and not personal but when it comes to the death of Jesus, it is extremely personal.  He was betrayed with a kiss on the cheek, up close and personal.  He was abandoned by his closest and best friends at the time of his greatest need.  He was beaten with fists and rods and with a whip; his attackers were close enough that his blood splattered on them in an up close and personal manner.  The nails were driven in his hands by someone else’s hands.  It was all personal; driven by anger, jealousy, and hatred.

    It was personal; Jesus’ death was very personal.  It occurred because Jesus personally loves you.  He loves you enough to have taken up the odious task of dying for you.  He loves you enough to have taken the greatest step anyone can take; he died for you.  He died for the sins which you committed that have taken you away from God’s perfect garden.  By his death, he has restored you to the rightful place in his kingdom.  By his death, he personally saved you.  It wasn’t business or an obligation; it was a greater love than we can ever fathom.

Gracious Father, your mercies are new to us every day.  Because of your great love for me, because you personally chose me to be your child, you sent Jesus to die for me and to bring me salvation.  In your grace, you give me hope.  Keep me strong in my faith that I may ever hold fast to you.  Keep me strong in my allegiance to you that I may ever serve you in your kingdom everlasting.  In the precious name of Jesus our risen Savior we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

9-28-2026

Good Morning!

      Ecclesiastes 3:1; “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”

“Some days are diamonds some days are stones    
Sometimes the hard times won't leave me alone
  Sometimes a cold wind blows a chill in my bones
 Some days are diamonds some days are stones.”

This is the chorus to a song by John Denver entitled “Some Days are Diamonds and some Days are Stone.”  It was a song that was more of a lament about the breakup of a relationship between a man and a woman and how the singer suffered from it.  Some days were good but some days weren’t so good.

    For many of us, this doesn’t describe a relationship meltdown; it is our life.  Someone who lives with chronic pain can tell you about this very easily.  Someone who has or deals with someone who has some form of condition like being bipolar or schizophrenic or early forms of dementia can tell you that “he has some good days and some bad days” or “some days are diamonds and some days are stone.”

    This can also occur when we experience some great upheaval in our life as well.  The sudden death of a spouse or a loved one, the loss of a job, a divorce, even a shattered dream can cause us pain.  Some days we can function quite well but some days we just want to stay home, in bed with the lights off and just cry.  Some days are diamonds and some days are stone.  There are god days and bad.  There are wonderful times and horrible times.  The birth of a child or grandchild, a marriage, a job promotion, we often see this as wonderful events “diamond days” you could call them.  Yet we have those other days as well, a health report that ends with “there is nothing more we can do” or a knock on the door and a man in a uniform telling you “I am sorry to tell you that there has been an accident and no one survived…”  or “I’m sorry, I don’t love you anymore.”  These days are definitely “stone days.”

    What we need to remember is that God told us this would happen.  That is what the first part of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes is about.  There is a time for everything under the sun.  There will be times that are very painful for us.  There will be times of brokenness in our lives; so, he encourages us to be ready for them; but how?

   We need to know who is in control and that no matter what; our salvation is secure and God’s comfort is always there for us.  We need to know that while God may allow the pain to run deep; it will never run wide.  Our pain will never darken God’s love for us.  Our struggles will never cause God to turn his back on us.  We can focus on God’s love to help ease the pain.  God places a wall on our suffering; we can give thanks that it exists.

Gracious Father, at times I am at my wit’s end.  At times I am broken and downcast.  On the days of stone let me know your love, let me know your mercy and on my days of diamond remind me to sing your loud praises with joy in my heart.  For you are our God and we are your people.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret