8-31-2021

  Good Morning All!          

     Romans 5: 3-5; “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

    Have you ever seen an antique sale of old furniture?  I’ve watched a couple.  I remember the first time I watched an old table sell.  I couldn’t figure out why anyone would pay that much for a beat-up table when they could buy a new one for a lot less.  So, I listened to the people around me talk about the table and how the table had real character.  Now to me it only had some dings and burn marks and a stain on it.  Yet they called this character, a sign that it had survived while serving the purpose for which it was constructed.

    Now I really like a table with character.  Actually, I like to be around the people who know the character of the table.  You can listen as they tell how their older sister put a hot kettle on the table without a pad under it and it burned a ring into the table.  They can point to the spot where they all bumped their heads as they started to take their first steps.  They can point to the place where their little cousin tried to cut through the table with a steak knife.  All that “character” tells the story of the family that grew up around that table.

    We too, develop character as we age.  It comes at different rates and stages, but we all have some.  We all have those little marks or big marks that showed we lived a life.  We have scars on our body from injuries or surgeries.  We may be missing a tooth from a fall on an icy sidewalk.  We may have a shoulder or an arm that doesn’t work quite the way it should.  We may have a limp from some event in the past.  We all have those little signs of living a life that banged us around once in a while.

    Our faith life is the same way.  We have all experienced times in our life when we got a little beat up.  We have experienced events that shook us up a little.  Maybe it was when one of your parents died or maybe it was a spouse.  Perhaps you had a serious health scare.  Maybe there was a time when you thought that your financial situation was such that you would lose your farm or home or business.  Perhaps here was a rough time in your marriage.  We all have had some sort of physical, emotional, or mental suffering.  We have all had some things which tormented us and caused us to ache in one way or another.  But suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character.  All those things which we have endured left a little mark on us, but they never defeated us.

    When we see that God’s love is there to provide for us as we suffer through those events, we see that we are not the strong ones but rather he is.  We know that the scratches and burn marks show us that we have endured our life because of God’s grace and in his grace, we have hope.  We have hope because God has been faithful to us in the past and he is faithful to us today and he will be faithful to us tomorrow.  Being sure of that hope, not because of some wishy-washy feeling inside but because of the testimony and the certainty of Scripture; we have a hope that never fails and is never put to shame.

Dear Father, your mercies are new to us every day.  We give you thanks for the character of our life.  Through it you have molded us into the disciples which you want us to be.  Use our character to reach out to others and to show them the Gospel even if we must speak it.  All this we ask in Jesus’ precious name, amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret     

8-30-2021

 Good Morning All!          

     Isaiah 59:1; “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear;”

    If you watch any type of movie or TV show which is an action show, there is usually a time when someone is hanging precariously, and the hero or heroine must reach down and grab onto them before they fall.  The good guys are always saved; the bad guys are about fifty-fifty.  Indiana Jones dropped Elsa in “The Last Crusade.” James Bond drops a lot of bad guys in his movies.  Arnold Schwarzenegger always saved the girl (ironic).  It might be on a mountain or a tall building, usually burning, out of an airplane; but someone must be snatched from death while holding on by their fingertips.

    The hero reaches down and pulls us to safety.  That is a good way to read this verse.  You and I can find ourselves in a real fine mess and we do it fairly regularly.  It starts when we are very young, usually just starting to talk.  One of the first phrases we utter is,” I do it myself!!” and from then on, our rebellion is verbally expressed along with our actions.  We want to be autonomous.  Now we may think that this is a good thing, where we are self-reliant and stand on our own two feet; but the word autonomous is the combination of two Greek words; “auto” meaning self and “nomos” meaning law.  So, the word autonomous means self- law or self-policing or that we set our own law.  We know how well that works out.  It never does.

    When we set our own law, we soon have no law, and we are a lawless people.  We look out only for ourselves and do not care about others.  We think we have all the answers to life’s troubles and soon we are hanging from the ledge of that tall building and our fingers are slipping.  We can see this often in the struggle of a crumbling relationship.  We create laws but only those which the other guy must obey.  We set standards for other people’s actions.  We call it love but it is really lust.  Lust looks inward to our own personal satisfaction and enjoyment.  It does not care about the other person.  It only looks at, “what is in it for me?”  It doesn’t take long for a relationship to begin to crumble in this circumstance.  Even our relationship with God can succumb to this.

     Fortunately, God is by nature a loving God.  He is always reaching down to us.  He never lets us drop even though that is exactly what we deserve.  He grabs our hand and pulls us to safety.  Even in the din of utter destruction, he hears our cries, our pleas for help.  God rescues us.  No matter how many times we are wounded and beaten up because of our own choices, our autonomous behavior; God chooses to rescue us because He loves us.  He allowed his only Son to die a gruesome death just to show you that this is how much he loves you.  God rescues us so that we can learn from his grace.  That through his grace we may see that living according to God’s will is what keeps us safe and keeps us secure and gives us a life worth living.  When we live according to God’s will, we never end up hanging from a ledge.  We are always safe in his gentle arms.

 

   Dear Father, far too often we head off in our own direction and we soon find ourselves in a very precarious situation.  Forgive and pull us to safety in your loving arms.  Guard us and protect us from all that would tempt us.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret      

8-29-2021

 Good Morning All!          

 Isaiah 40: 3-5; “A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.  Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.  And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”  

      One of life’s ironies; we all want great roads; smooth and well maintained and groomed.  We want them always ready to drive on at a moment’s notice we want to be able to get in our car or pickup or SUV or whatever you drive and go where we want.  This is what we want yet we have no patience for road construction.  There are few portions of our lives which are universally despised, and this is one of them.  Even if we complained about the condition of the road and wondered when they would fix it, we complain about fixing the road.

    We know that road construction is necessary.  Often travelled roads wear out.  The change of population or the introduction of new industry can mean a small country road needs to become a four-lane highway and that four-lane highway might become an eight-lane expressway.  Roads need a lot of work; constant attention or they will fail at a critical time.

    Our Scripture verses talk about road maintenance.  We all understand this passage is about making straight the way of the Lord.  We all understand it as a reference to John the Baptist and the preaching of repentance.  We like to think that this means that God will come and remove all the boulders in our lives, in our path to the Lord.  We like to think that God will make our travel smooth and free sailing. 

     The truth is that it is not our path that needs fixing it is our life.  It is our life, which reflects our faith; that needs to be under constant repair.  There are times when we need to be built up when we are low, experiencing life’s struggles.  There are times when the hills must be shaved down when maybe we feel we are capable of aiding in our salvation, or we have the attitude of the Pharisee who was “thankful he wasn’t a sinner”.  Perhaps there are times when we engage in hidden sins or acts of selfishness, and we have to have the rough places smoothed out or the crooked areas straightened. 

    We often don’t like it.  We rarely like it when it is our sins which need to be corrected.  We rarely enjoy it when God corrects our lives.  Yet it is vital that we be cleansed of our sin.  We need to be prepared for when the time will come when we must not crumble, when our faith will be tested the most.  When we trust ourselves, we will crumble but if we keep our faith in God and his promises of salvation and of the forgiveness of sins, we can stand tall and strong.  The devil will not be able to attack us.  Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight his ways.  It might not always be what we want or enjoy but it is necessary that we be shaped and molded by God into the disciples which he wants us to be.

 Dear Father in heaven, we give you thanks for making your ways straight in our lives.  At those times we feel lost and injured but you are with us giving us comfort when we need and poking our conscience when we need it.  Continue to bless us with your grace and mercy.  In Jesus’ precious name we pay, amen.

God’s Peace,       

Pastor Bret  

8-28-2021

 Good Morning All!          

      Genesis 4:7; “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

    Did you ever see the movie “The Ghost and the Darkness”?  It had Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer in it; it was about 2 lions that killed 130 people and how these guys hunted them down.  You always got the feeling that the lions were spying on the hunters and then attacking away from them and that the lions were outsmarting the humans.  You always had the feeling that these lions were hiding just outside your door waiting to pounce on you.

    There are many examples of this type of story.  Some are comical like “Calvin and Hobbes”; some are along the lines of Tarzan; even some of the westerns have mountain lions which attack.  You always have this wild animal ready to attack at any moment and destroy whatever it lunges at.  There is always a lot of tension as the hero or heroine stalks the lion seeking to kill it.  I think that this type of movie strikes at one of our deepest fears, which is the sudden, violent attack upon us by a force we do not understand or anticipate.  The one thing that I never understand is why they go where the lion is and then are surprised, they get attacked.  In the westerns, the horse always senses the lion and balks at continuing down the trail; why don’t they listen to the horse?

     In our verse, God is speaking to Cain BEFORE he kills Abel.  Cain is jealous of Abel and God knows this and he warns Cain (and us) about placing ourselves in a place of temptation, kind of like walking where the lion is.  Sin (the lion) is always crouching at the door.  God is telling us to be wise and avoid it.  At first, we may think this impossible, but God is telling us that we know our weaknesses and we should avoid placing ourselves where that temptation is.

     This is a simple example.  If you are trying to lose weight, don’t spend a lot of time in an ice cream parlor.  A truer example may be to avoid those who you know engage in gossip if you struggle with gossip.  In other words, don’t play with fire.

    A woman who was very friendly and bubbly was also a little more flirtatious than she probably should have been.  She never meant anything by it.  She liked the attention and the friendly give and take.  Until one time her flirtations went too far, and she found herself emotionally attached to a man other than her husband.  They secretly exchanged emails and text messages.  She felt herself drifting from her husband towards this other man.  Sin was crouching and waiting to strike and when it did; it hurt her, her husband, the other man and his family, her friends and many more.  Sin accomplished it goal-to hurt and harm people.

    God gives us the gift of the forgiveness of sins, and he also gives us what the Bible calls discernment.  This is the ability to think and see the possible outcome and to examine events and look at them with a wary eye.  Be careful about things that can be sin crouching at the door.  It might be pride in our family or in our church.  It may even look like the right path to go but then out of nowhere sin is crouching waiting to strike.  This is why God warns us to be alert and to not rely on our strength or skills but always look to and listen to God and his Word for our strength.  We cannot defeat the devil on our own; it is only through God’s power and grace that we will win.

Dear Father in heaven, too often we think we can deal with the devil and his ways by our own strength only to be devoured by sin crouching at our door.  Forgive and lead us to place our faith only in you and not in ourselves.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret    

8-27-2021

 Good Morning All!          

      Mark 9:24; “Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” 

     Do you ever have days like this?  I believe; but help my unbelief!!  Most people I know have probably had days like this.  The story around this verse is about a man, a father of a boy who suffered from convulsions and would throw himself into the fire and into the sea and almost drown himself in the process.  This is one of those stories that, when you read it, you can almost experience the pain and the desperation of the father.  You wonder how many times he watched his son writhe in the convulsive fit and feel totally helpless. What do you do?

    Many of you who are parents have experienced this at one level or another.  We watch our children suffer and struggle and we don’t know what to do.  It can be more than just parents; we can look at our parents as they struggle with everyday things that never slowed them down before.  We can look to our siblings or friends and watch as they struggle, and we don’t know what to do.  Sometimes that pain we watch can be self-inflicted as we watch them make decisions that look like they will only hurt.  We want to help so much but how.

    In our verse’s story, you wonder how many places the father took the boy to looking for someone who would heal or at least offer some relief to the young boy.  You wonder how he reacted when he first heard of Jesus.  Did he run right to him, or did he reluctantly go forth?  The verses ahead of our passage have the father telling Jesus about the little boy.  You wonder how often he repeated that story.  He ends it with the phrase, “if you can do anything would you please help?”  Oh, how desperate this poor man sounds.  You can almost hear the level of exhaustion in his voice as he weakly asks for help.  Jesus responds with, “IF!!! All things are possible for one who believes.”  The father responds, I believe; help my unbelief!

     There are times and events that shake us literally right to our core.  These events may have even literally knocked you down.  The blood left your face and you felt lost and hurt.  At so many levels, the supports, and the things we thought mattered, crumbled away.  We were left to wonder what happened and why.

    God uses these times, times that shake us to our core, so we can see what our core is.  God knows what is in you, but he wants you to see what is in you.  When you are shaken to your core, is that core your faith in Jesus?  When you experience these events, do you look to God for more support, more comfort or do you look somewhere else?  I believe but help my unbelief!  The father had faith, but he knew his faith wasn’t enough; the father knew he needed God’s grace.  So do we.  Only through God’s grace and mercy can we ever survive the events that shake us to the core.  Whether it is illness or death or relationships breaking down or whatever it is; we need to trust that God is in control but even more than that; God loves you and because he loves you, he will protect you and provide for you as you experience those events that shake us to our core.  He is there to help our unbelief.  He is there to show us that his grace and mercy are made known to us by his love.  God’s grace is there for you; believe it and hold onto it.

Dear Lord Jesus, you told us that if we had the faith the size of a mustard seed, we could move mountains, yet we struggle with our own life.  Help our unbelief!! Teach us to trust, teach us to lean only on you.  In your precious name we pray, amen!!

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret   

8-26-2021

   Good Morning All!          

         Matthew 5:16; “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

     There is a story told about a gathering of some of the most outstanding biblical scholars and theologians.  They were going to decide once and for all which translation of the Bible was the best.  Each came with the translation which he thought was the best.  The debate was long and arduous.  It started out like many debates; at first, there were lighthearted moments and some friendly banter.  Then it began to get serious and personal as they argued over the finer points of the Bible, its text, and its central meaning.  They argued over coherence and adherence.  They argued over textuality and contextuality.  They argued until they were blue in the face.  It was evening so they quit until the next day.

    The next day the debate began again, just as fierce, and just as intense.  During the debate, a young man was seated in the audience.  He was keeping meticulous notes as each theologian and scholar made his arguments and points.  At the end of the second grueling day, most of the scholars were about to collapse.  As they were preparing to leave the auditorium, they called the young man up.  They gathered around him and asked him who he thought was winning.  What is the best translation of the Bible?  They wanted to know his answer.  At first, he tried to beg off and not answer but they persisted, so he answered them.

    “I have always thought the best translation was Miss Smith’s translation.”  At first, the scholars were dumbfounded and then they began to laugh, thinking it was a joke by this young man.  Yet the young man kept an earnest look on his face, so they asked him to explain.  He told them this story. “Miss Smith was a neighbor lady who taught Sunday School for over 50 years.  She never said a mean thing to anyone.  As we grew up, she kept being in our lives.  She gave a quilt to each girl when she got married and her door was always open to anyone who needed to talk.  She was always the first over to help at any time of trouble and as her students grew up, she could always be counted on to babysit or to watch a child after school when no one else would.  No one was ever turned away from her door.  No one ever loved like she did.  In her life, I saw everything that the Bible taught me to be.  She lived what you read, and it never has come any clearer than that.”

    Let your light so shine.  Most of us are not “Miss Smith” but God calls us to be.  We can be a “Miss Smith” to those around us by engaging them with God’s love.  It might take the form of a kind word, a shoulder to cry on or hands to clap in happiness and celebration.  Faith is not just head knowledge; it is life changing.  God empowers us to live out his mercy and grace and to impact the lives of those around us.  By his grace and mercy, we are the lights through which God’s light shines.  We are his agents, his hands and arms, his feet and voice.  Let your light so shine.

Dear Father, too often we try to hide our light and turn our back on those among us who are hurting or lost or damaged.  Forgive us Lord and cause us to reach out to those in need of your care.  Bring us to see as you see and to have compassion as you have compassion.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret           

8-25-2021

Good Morning All!          

    Psalm 42:8; “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.”

     Last night I had one of those nights.  I went to bed and went to sleep, about an hour later I woke up and that was the end of the night.  I got up and got some work done.  I have these nights sometimes; not often enough to cause problems.  Sometimes we have nights like this because of stress or worry; those are the nights that are the most troublesome.

    Those nights can be tough.  We are physically tired, but our mind won’t shut off and be quiet.  We lay there and replay the day’s events.  When we do this, it is rarely positive.  We tend to focus on every pain, every failure, every lost moment, and opportunity.   We lay there and feel each hurt that we experienced, and each hurt we caused.  We replay each hurtful word, each disappointment and each fear experienced.

     We lay there, tossing and turning, not resting while the cares of this day replay themselves over and over.  Our sinful nature has a grand old time punishing us with little if any sleep and with little if any rest.  Eventually, our sinful self convinces us that the struggle we face are insurmountable and that we fight it all alone.  This type of thinking will wear us out in a hurry.

    God’s gift to us is the sweet sound of the soothing lullaby of his grace.  He gives to us his blessed peace and comfort.  When we stay in communication with, when we stay in communion with him, through reading and hearing his Word and speaking to God in prayer.  He comes to us with the soothing sound of his mercy, the forgiveness of sins which he promises to us because of the redemption through Jesus.  He gives us the calming sounds of his grace where we receive the blessings which we do not deserve.  His steadfast love, that never fails love, is there for us, sustaining us with its infinite power. 

     God comes to us with his love to give us rest; the rest and the peace which the world so desperately tries to hide from us.  The world uses deceit and deception to deny us the rest and the peace which God wants us to have.  He comforts us with the soothing voice of the Good Shepherd calling us by name so that we know that we are safe within his loving arms.  God’s grace gives us hope and security better than any blanket even better than our mother’s arms.  God holds you close to him and sings to you the lullaby of peace and rest.

Dear Father, you comfort and soothe us with your Gospel reassuring sound.  Through it we hear your gentle heartbeat as we cling close to you.  Give us peace, give us rest that we may be refreshed to serve you in your kingdom.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.            

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

8-24-2021

 Good Morning All!          

             Isaiah 40:11; “He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young”. 

    This is one of those verses that can bring about a lot of comfort to us.  Yet this is one of the verses with a “rest of the story” quality.  The first 39 chapters speak of Jerusalem’s destruction and the carrying off the Israelites into slavery and captivity.  Think about how hard that would be to experience. 

    Imagine that you were one of those who were forced into captivity.  As you are marching away from your city, you turn back and look at it.  It is in flames; most of the buildings are destroyed.  Many of the inhabitants are dead; either killed in the battle or they died during the siege from starvation or illness.  Every one of those who were forced to relocate and to serve as slaves to the conquerors would have known someone who had died, and a large number may have had family members who were dead.  They were marching away with great sadness, fear, and a deep sense of loss.  They would have been bewildered at the events and they probably asked why.

    We have all had times in our lives when we felt exactly like this.  We have gone through events which just left us numb.  Maybe it was the death of a loved one, maybe it was a sudden change in the way your job works, maybe a relationship changes dramatically.  Perhaps one day you got up and felt fine only to find yourself that evening in the hospital fighting for your life.  We experience these types of events, and we are left lost and confused.       

    Yet when we face these events, we do not have to face them alone; even when it seems like that is what is happening in our life.  We do not face them in a state of hopelessness.  God loves us with the unimaginable compassion that we cannot even begin to comprehend.  When we hurt, God hurts with us; when we mourn God mourns with us.  Yet far more important than this, God comforts us.  He holds us close to his chest, gently in his arms giving us the comfort which we need, which we seek at times when we are numb from fear or pain or loss.  God comes to you offering comfort.  If God offers us comfort, it means there will be times when we need it.  We do not grieve or suffer as those who have no hope.  Through our pain and suffering we must cling to our only hope, the promise of eternal life and the resurrection of the body.  With this promise comes God’s offer of comfort.  He offers us this comfort and then moves his redeemed to reach out and provide the “hands” of that comfort.  He also brings comfort to us through his Word as he speaks to us his desire to love us; his desire to comfort us; his desire to clutch us close to his bosom and comfort us the same way we comfort a crying child.  We must cling to him and to his promise that his nature is to love us and to lead us through the minefields of this life.  God gives us the comfort we so desperately seek, which we need.

Dear Father, you hold us close and comfort us with your love.  Often, we, like small children, cry and squirm and push from our comfort but you continue to hold us for we are your dear children.  We ask for your continued comfort and your undying love which is the only source of our hope.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret  

8-23-2021

           Good Morning All!

            John 8:12; “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”   

    Do you ever find yourself engaged in a little “if I had only known?”  Do you ever watch the stock market or the commodity market or the housing market or the land market and think, if only I had known?  If only you had known, you would have bought stock in Apple computers right away.  You would have bought land 10 years ago.  You would have sold that house before the bubble burst, then bought it back and turned a tidy profit.  If only we had known?

    Sometimes we play this game with a more painful side effect.  We may wonder if our decisions were wrong and could we go back and change them.  The events of our lives are shrouded in darkness.  They are hidden from us.  The writer of Ecclesiastes compares it to living in a fog.  We all know about living or driving in a fog.  Our visibility is limited to a few feet around us and beyond that we don’t know.

    So how do we read this verse?  If Jesus is the light of the world, why isn’t everything crystal clear?  Why can’t we see everything that goes on around us and see it with clarity to understand and make sense of it?  Jesus’ light shines on our path but it is upward toward our final goal which is eternal life in heaven.  That is the light which he shines.  He shows us the way to our salvation.  This light shows us our hope; it doesn’t necessarily show us anything else.

     We go through life in the darkness or in a fog with a light that only shows us what God intends for us to see.  We may tend to think that God should show us everything so we can try to understand it.  We know that God certainly can do this, his power and sovereignty is beyond question.  What we too often overlook is the wonders of God’s grace; maybe it is more loving to us not to know what lies ahead of us.  If, as a parent you knew, before the birth of your child, that your child would die at the age of six, what would we do?  What would the mother of the killer have done had she known the outcome? 

    These may seem easy questions but really point to a deeper truth.  Our lives are lived in a sinful corrupted world in sinful and corrupted bodies.  Through God’s grace, we may be better off not knowing which way to look.  This way we only look toward Jesus and toward our heavenly goal.  We trust God to guide us through the difficulties and the sadness.  We cling to him as our only truth in a world full of lies.  God shines the light to what we need to see, and we need to cling to that promise as being sufficient for us.

God of all the light, you shine your light so we can see our heavenly goal.  Teach us to be content with the knowledge of our salvation.  Teach us to love each other with the same love you show us.  Give us your peace, Lord.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret     

 

8-22-2021

 Good Morning All!

            John 1:12; “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,” 

     Why did Jesus come to earth?  Why did he leave his holy temple in heaven to come down to live with lowly man?  God could have just snapped his fingers, and everything would have been changed, so why did he come to earth?

     The easiest answer is that he came to die for our sins.  This is the correct answer, but it leaves us hanging a little.  Jesus’ coming to earth in human form is part of the great story of the Bible.  Many people see the Bible as a collection of stories, some connected some not; some important some not; some of great value and some not.  The Bible is really one long narrative telling us what God is doing in our lives.

     Whenever the media covers a major news event, I only watch about 15 minutes of the first news coverage.  They present the facts, as they know them, and then just keep repeating them over and over.  They will use different reporters; those reporters will be in a studio or at the scene, but we always get the same few snippets of information.  I like to wait so that they can tell it to me in a longer story so that I can begin to process what they are telling me is going on.  Here the news people will sift through the data and relay a narrative that follows a line of thought to make a coherent story.

     When we read the Bible, we can read it and look for different themes or threads of the story to follow.  One of those themes is the theme of restoration.  We can read from the fall of man into sin in Genesis 3 about how God is going to restore man and his creation.  Adam and Eve must leave the Garden of Eden; they must work hard, suffer pain and loss, live chaotic lives and then die.  This is not how God designed it, but it is how man chose to go.  The introduction of sin causes all our problems. 

      To fix this, God chooses to restore man to his rightful existence.  God sent Jesus to restore us to be children of God.  Think of who Adam and Eve were, who were their parents?  They had no human parents; they were children of God living in the perfect Garden in holy communion and companionship with God.  We were to participate, in an active way, with God in the caring for the created world.  Yet when we sinned, we broke this relationship, we broke away from God.

     Jesus came so that we can experience his life and death and resurrection.  These are real events which give witness to God’s incredible mercy and his unbelievable grace.  Jesus came to bring you back into the family of God.  You are declared a child of God and we are given a promise to cling to and then we are given the faith to cling to it.  This faith doesn’t remove our struggles, but it does give us hope.  A hope that tells us that this struggle we call life isn’t all there is to the story. 

     All that the story is about is our restoration, our becoming children of God to receive the gift of eternal life.  So, we wait for the promise to be perfected or completed at which time our perfection will be restored and we can walk with God and converse with God without pain or sorrow.  Why did Jesus come to earth?  He did so in order that you might have eternal life; the eternal life with him in his holy kingdom. 

Dear Father in heaven, through your mercy you have made us your children.  We rejoice in the certainty of this gift.  Help us to see that your will for us is alive and active and moves us every day to live according to your will and purposes for us.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen

God’s Peace

Pastor Bret

8-21-2021

           Good Morning All!

           Isaiah 41: 9b-10; “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off”; fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you” 

    Pick and choose.  We use that phrase often.  It is a phrase that we use in a frivolous manner.  We go to the fast-food place, and we pick what we want to eat and then choose how to order it “my way”.  It seems that we pick and choose on every whim.  This makes our picking and our choosing very shallow and without much thought or plan.

    When you are choosing pizza toppings, being shallow isn’t that big of a deal.  If you are picking which movie to go to, you can choose on a whim.  Yet we seem to carry this attitude over into our more personal and more important areas of our lives.  We seem to have made making choices something which has no bearing or consequences in or to our lives.

     We choose to be married and then unmarried.  We choose to love someone today but tomorrow we choose to not love someone.  Some days we choose to talk but others we choose to fight.  I think the one thing that amazes me the most is that we choose to not show respect for other people.  We choose to not show simple human decency.  With the incredible tragedy in Connecticut, the debate over guns, mental health and safety will be on the front burner again.  Why can’t we talk without calling each other idiots, morons, thugs, Nazis, communists, and other names I won’t write?  When did we choose to hate? 

    For the most part, we have always elected to hate.  This fact is why so often, when we get to the end of the day, we look in the mirror and ask (or tweet or post) the question; why did I get up this morning?  Why do I go about this day only to be beaten down by the world whether the world took the form of a boss or a coworker, a spouse or a child, a teacher, or a student?  Everyone chose to dump on me and then bale on me.  The devil loves for you to think this.

    God chose you to be his child.  At the end of the day (and the start and the middle) you are God’s redeemed child, and he will never forsake you.  When all the world chooses to walk all over you, God chooses to love you.  When we experience the painful events of our lives, it is when we feel that we can handle it by ourselves that we suffer the most pain.  The weight of the world is on our back and Jesus tells us to come to him and let him carry the load.  We don’t need to fear the worst for God promises his best; eternal life with him.

    As difficult as it is, this world and life is not all there is for us.  This time, our earthly life, is but a minor spot in a life that we will live.  We need to trust God and accept his ways as true.  God has chosen you; he has chosen to give your life hold on to that promise for that is our hope.

Dear Father in heaven, we give you thanks for the gift of life.  Father you chose us and give us faith to choose you.  Show us the path by which we will choose to love one another and to hold onto one another and value one another with the love which you have for us.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen          

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

8-20-2021

 Good Morning All!

         Psalm 23:3; “He restores my soul.  He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

    I thoroughly enjoy a good joke or even a bad joke.  I really like the ones that make you groan when you hear them.  Several years ago, my one of my younger cousins used to tell jokes.  She would drone on and on and when she got done, she would either forget the punch line, use the wrong punch line or she left out huge portions of the joke which made it funny.  A few years ago, I listened to her son tell jokes; he did the exact same thing.  It was fitting and hilarious.  I love humor; it is one of God’s gifts that refresh me.

    Yesterday, while reading the news on the internet, I ran across a joke that made me giggle and laugh.  It was long and drawn out and the sort of hit from the side kind of funny.  As I read it and giggled; I felt a lot better.  I felt refreshed.  I think God used that joke to refresh me and get me going again.  

    God truly does refresh us and our souls.  He does it for all his redeemed children.  Your restoring may not be humor; it may be a visit from an old friend.  On the TV show “MASH” there was an episode when Major Burns goes a little off the edge; Radar calls Major Burns mother and has her talk to him.  His logic was, “Sometimes, you just need to talk to your mother.”  Sometimes it is just a day or so of relaxing and turning stuff off; the TV, the internet, the cell phones; turn them off and just let your mind clear.  Read a little Scripture and hear what God has to say to you.  Maybe you need to spend a quiet evening with your family.  Maybe you go for walk or a leisurely drive; listen to your body, listen to your heart, and let God use his Word and his creation to restore your soul.

    I know that some of you don’t feel the restoring right now.  We go through events which can be very painful and causes us to feel despondent.  An illness that won’t go away, finance troubles that feel like we just keep losing ground, relationships that are strained, a death that was not even thought possible; all can cause us to feel pain and sorrow.  The very sad and very truth is that these events are part of living in a sinful world.  We will experience them, but we do not experience them alone and we do not have to see them as the end only a portion of life.  Through these events God wants to draw you closer to him.  As he does, he restores your soul and refreshes your spirit.

    This is part of what we talk about when we call Holy Communion a restoring or refreshing sacrament.  This is part of what we talk about when we hear the comfort and the consolation of the Gospel.  This is part of what we talk about when we say that God works through his Church and his creation to support this body and life.  God seeks to restore your soul.

    So, if you have experienced this restoration recently; give thanks.  If you are still waiting remember that it is on the way.  God will restore your soul.

Dear Father, we give you thanks for the gift of restoring our souls.  For those who are in need we ask that you send your Spirit of comfort and restore them to the joyful life which the coming of Jesus gives to us.  In the precious name of Jesus, we pray. amen       

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret