3-12-2016

Good Morning All!!                 

          Isaiah 43:2; “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you”

     And they all lived happily ever after.  That is the way that most fairy tales end.  In the end, after a lot of work, life goes just as the starring protagonist wants.  Snow White, Cinderella, Belle, Ariel, among others had their world go the way they dreamed.  It all went their way and they lived happily ever after.  I don’t think I have ever met anyone who truly experiences “happily ever after”.  We all have struggles, some great some small, but there are always struggles.

    There are some who will tell you that God owes you a great life.  They will tell you that God owes you the life you want.   They tell you if you are “right with God” everything will go just the way you want; happily ever after.  Of course, they don’t tell you what to think if you get sick or a loved one gets cancer or you get fired.  If something goes wrong, well then you just aren’t “right with God.”  Nothing is further from the truth.  This is not what Scriptures tell us.

     Scriptures tells us that this life will be filled with trouble.  That is part of being human in this broken creation.  There will be sickness, disappointment, sorrow, failures and the like.  This is the result of sin in the world.  Sin brings with it all the junk it can.  Sin is chaos in the world.  Sin infects and afflicts us.  All people, all of creation, suffers from sin; that is what it means to be human in the fallen world.

    However, we are blessed.  God, in his mercy, sent Jesus to pay the price of our sin.  With this payment, we are restored to his family.  We are his redeemed children.  To face the battles of life is to be human, to face them with our Lord and Savior at our side is to be redeemed.  We will face battles but we do not face them alone.  We may face the steepest battles imaginable; it might be illness, financial or relational failures, even death but we face them knowing that our Savior stands with us, holding us close, embracing us with loving arms that will refuse to let us fall. 

   We will struggle, we will pass through the waters, but we will not be destroyed or defeated.  We have the victory won for us by Jesus.  He has defeated and overcome all the evil of the world.  We have his assurance of victory, given to us, that we too have overcome all things.  We can go through the rivers, even pass through the fires and not be consumed by them.  Our victory is guaranteed, our hope rests on this.

Father, the world’s demons scowl fierce and cause me to fear but I know I have peace in you.  Keep me in your arms; keep the demons from deceiving me. Give me the peace that only you can. Let me see past the struggle and to focus on you, your love, your grace and the eternal glory that we will share with you. In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret