3-17-2014

      Good Morning All,

       Isaiah 26:4; “Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.”

     It happened when one of my sons was in junior high.  He was having trouble with a math problem.  It was one of those story problems and they are usually more problem than story.  The correct answer was in the back of the book; all he had to do was show how to get the answer using the information given.  It was a struggle.

     We worked on it for a couple of hours.  We just couldn’t make all the numbers work.  Since we had the answer; we just started to try different random combinations of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing to try and get the answer.  We were never even close.  We got the rest of them but this one truly had us stumped.  We knew his grade would be fine as we were only wrong on this one problem but it was aggravating that we couldn’t figure it out.  My son was frustrated and I was as well; we should have been able to figure it out.

     When he came home from school the next day, he couldn’t wait to tell what had happened.  It turned out that book had an error in it and a part of the problem was missing.  Part of the equation was missing so we would have never figured it out.  We felt both relieved and even more frustrated because we never had a chance to get it right.  It just goes to show you can’t leave something vital out of the equation or else you will never get the right answer.

      That is the trouble with a lot of people today.  They leave something out of their equation; they often leave God out.  They look at the battles of their lives and they try and figure out how to solve them.  They add drugs and alcohol here, they subtract faith there and they divide from their family over there and all this does is multiply their struggles.  They leave God out of the equation and then wonder why nothing ever comes out to the right answer.

     Part of the problem is that, like the textbook, we leave God completely out often trying to leave Him at church where we can pick Him up next time we go.  There are many who like to keep God bottled in and left in the church so that they are not bothered by Him during the rest of the week.  The problem is that the rest of the week is where our struggles occur.  They occur at work, or at the doctor’s or around the kitchen table.  The rest of the week is where we need God in our calculating the most.

     God desires to be part of your solution.  He gives ti us the hope of everlasting life and the comfort and consolation for today.  He wants us to have peace.  He wants us to have abundant life and to live with the total contentment that gives us the serenity to wait eagerly for our lord’s return.  Place your trust in God and your problems will have solutions.

Wondrous Father, in you we place our trust and confidence.  It is through your grace that the struggles of today seem less harmful and less stressful.  Guide us by your Spirit to place our faith in you.  We ask that you be with those who are struggling at this time and the lives that don’t add up.  Move them by your Spirit, use our hands and our voices to reach out to them and to being them into the certainty of your eternal hope and love.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret