7-24-2019

     Good Morning All,

       James 4:10; “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you”

    “I’m kind of a big deal you know!”  It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud.  A couple of years ago I was listening to my great nieces and nephews play at Christmas time.  They are mostly quite young.  One of them wanted to play the way he wanted and a different one wanted to do something else.  The first one wondered why the second one got to decide what they were going to do.  The response, “Well, I’m kind of a big deal you know!” 

    When you are “kind of a big deal”, you tend to think that the world revolves around you.  When the one who says this is two or so, it is funny.  When the one that says this is twenty-two, it is more troublesome.  Yet as we look at the events of our lives or the people of our lives there are times when it was “kind of a big deal” to us.  When I finally convinced the girl of my dreams that I would try and be a good spouse and she agreed, it was kind of a big deal.  When each of our boys was born, it was kind of a big deal.  Marriages, births, and deaths are kind of big deals in our lives.  So are health issues, job changes, graduations, empty nests, retirement, and the like are kind of big deals. 

     Pride leads us to many failures.  We think that everything revolves around us.  We see others simply as agents of our convenience, happiness or desires.  We fail to see the great thing; we fail to see God.  We fail to see our God who created everything with his spoken word and sustains creation by his love.  We see a world that we think is to bend to our liking.  Yet even in our sin, Jesus comes to us with his love and forgiveness and shows us what really is a big deal.

    Christ took on mankind’s sin and paid for it all.  More importantly, Jesus took on your sins and mine.  We are part of this great blessing, this wonderful gift from God; it is kind of a big deal.  We have the promise of the Creator-Redeemer God that we will have eternal life with him.  That is kind of a big deal.  It is the big deal that makes our comfort and our hope possible.  There is nothing we can do or pay that can extract us from the price of our failures, of our sins.  On our own, we are weak and lost; we are no big deal at all.  But God changes that with Jesus.

    In Jesus, God reconciles man, and all creation, back to Himself.  We, now because of Jesus, are a big deal.  It is given to us to celebrate, to hold onto and to share with those around.  We hold the good news of the gift of salvation; the true gift from God.  A gift, a wonderful and mighty gift that we are given.  We don’t earn it or deserve it; we receive it and should receive it in humble fashion, as one who knows that this great gift is not purchased by himself but purchased and earned by another.  Our gift of salvation is purchased by Jesus.  So, we thank God, humbly knowing that Hid greatness is now our greatness and hid blessings are poured out upon us.  This is our humble hope.

Dear Father, your mercies are new to us every day.  We give you thanks for the blessings of this life especially for giving us the hope of salvation in Jesus.  Be with those who are in most need of your grace.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret