11-3-2016

Good Morning All,

              Psalm 37:7; “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!”

      Everyone who has ever played sports in some form of organized fashion, whether high school or college or city league or even church league remembers that one player.  That one player who was always on the “cheaper” or “dirty” side of the game.  He would cheat at the game and get away with it.  He was always pulling something that was shady or outside of the rules.  He would push you in the back in a basketball game or punch you in a football game.  He made the game a lot less fun than normal.  He made the game a task or a chore rather than a challenge.

    The one universal truth about this type of player is that he rarely, if ever, gets caught.  He will push the other player and then that second adage about sports comes into play, “the second guy gets caught.”  It is as frustrating thing to experience when the bad guy seems to win and the good guy seems to come up short. 

    There are times when we think this is true in our faith life as well.  Why does it seem that some of the unbelievers have all the success while believers seem to struggle to have anything at all?  It seems somewhat unfair; it should be the other way; at least we think.

    First and foremost, we need to remember that as Christians we measure success differently than the world does.  The world measures by “stuff”, possessions and other tangible things.  We see success as faith, loving relationships, reconciled families, people coming to faith, suffering healed; in other words, we see success in terms of human condition.  We see success in terms of relationships that get healed, both between man and God and man to man.  These are successes.

    So we look at the world and we wait, we wait for God.  We wait for God to do the wonderful thing that he has promised.  We wait for God to put an end to pain, to suffering, to injustice, to death.  This will occur when Christ returns and creation is restored and we are made perfect at his arrival.  We wait, in joyful anticipation of God intervening and ending death.  We wait with the total assurance that God will do as he has promised to do.  God has promised us salvation, hope for life eternal with him in everlasting glory.  We look forward to this coming but until it does we wait for God.

    So as we wait, we take the opportunity to serve God and give him praise and thanks by serving others, by bringing God’s grace to them.  We measure our success, not by gold or silver, but by the love of God shared throughout our midst.

Gracious and loving Father, through you we have salvation and we have hope.  So we wait for you to finish our redemption and bring it to completion.  We wait for your glorious return.  Be with those who are tempted by the world’s measure of success and are missing out on your great love and peace.  Guard and protect them from the devil’s arrows.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret