9-8-2016

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 has to 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 has to 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 think we have all the answers to life’s troubles and pretty 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 has to obey.  We call it love but it is really lust.  Lust looks inward to our own personal satisfaction and enjoyment.  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 autonomous behavior; God chooses to rescue us because He loves us.  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

9-7-2016

Good Morning All!! 

        Joshua 24:15; “And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”  

    “Choose this day”; not a very Lutheran concept.  But the Bible often gives us this stark concept.  In one of the Church’s earliest catechism, the Didache begins with this sentence: “There are two ways, one life and one death, and there is a great difference between the two ways.”  It doesn’t get much plainer than that.  We walk down a road and there are two paths; one to the left and one to the right.  We get to choose.  Throughout the whole Bible, this concept is restated.

    Moses told the people this at Sinai.  He told them to remember God or face the loss of the land that God had promised them.  Joshua told them the same thing.  Samuel told them the same thing.  Isaiah and Jeremiah did; you get the picture.  The people chose and they chose wrong.

    Jesus tells us basically the same thing when he says that man cannot serve two masters.  He speaks of money and God.  We can see that as our selfish worldly wants and lusts.  We may not think we are serving money but when we always want more and more and are never happy with what we have; we are serving money.  We are serving that selfish, lustful, sinful desire to be our own God.  The Apostle John tells us the same thing when he speaks of the way of the light and the way of darkness.  We have a choice and we all make it.  Joshua said,” Choose you today.” We must choose between receiving Jesus as our Savior and God as the ultimate source of security and identity or we choose ourselves to fill that role.

    We can choose to be God.  We can figure out how to live eternally in happiness and certainty but we really aren’t that smart are we?  We can take the responsibility for making those around us care for us or desire to be with us but we aren’t that talented are we?  We spend a lot of time convincing ourselves that we are completely in control of every situation that arises; we are smart enough, rich enough or powerful enough to deal with anything.  The truth is we are carrying warm Jell-O in our open hands and it is running all over the place.

    Or we can simply choose to let God be God.  We can simply trust in his promise to provide, as he always has.  We simply trust his love to continue as it always has.  We simply trust the path that God has placed us on instead of always trying to run away to the other path.  We can live in faith or we can live in fear and loathing.  We can live in the arms of God’s grace or we can continually fight and oppose him.  We do get to choose; so choose.

Dearest Father, you continually come to us choosing us as your children.  Give us the strength of faith to choose you.  Keep us strong in faith to you that we may exist in your kingdom forever.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

9-6-2016

 Good Morning All!! 

        2 Kings 5: 2-3; “Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman's wife.   She said to her mistress, “Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”

    She was just a little girl.  She had been captured in a raid launched by the Syrians into Israel.  She was taken away as a captive, a slave, far away from her home, her family and from her native land.  She should have been frightened.  She should have been cowering in the corner in total fear.  Yet she calmly spoke to her owner, the wife of the second most powerful man in Syria, and witnessed her faith.  There was a prophet in Samaria who could cure Naaman.  She had no doubt she had total faith.

    It is amazing the number of times I hear people say that they are “just a”.  I am “just a housewife” “I am just a farmer” “I am just s student” “I am just a retired person”.  “I don’t know what to say, I don’t know how to talk.”  We have all sorts of excuses.  “There are professional missionaries to do that; I just pay them and then stay out of their way.”  Yet the bottom line is that we are all missionaries.  In our own way we are missionaries.

   You may feel that you have no contact.  You do not meet strangers from a foreign land.  You see the same people every day.  You think they go to church, somewhere.  You are pretty sure anyway.  After all you are “just a.”  We don’t know what to say or how so we say nothing.  We think we have to be like Peter, who preached before thousands and thousands of people.  We don’t have to be like Peter or Paul; we can be like Andrew who introduced Peter to Jesus or we can be like the little slave girl; simply tell them what we know.

    Maybe all you can do is to listen to them.  Maybe all you can do is to direct them to your local pastor.  Maybe all you can do is pray with them.  All of these are valid and valued witnesses.  These are the types of things that a “just a” can do.  You might be surprised how many people you meet in a day need to have these types of witnesses occur for them.  To listen, to pray, to care enough to offer direction can mean far more than you will ever know.  Many people go through the day knowing nothing but pain and sadness; they need a word of encouragement, again, something a “just a” can do. 

    Just a slave girl spoke of the true God of Israel with simple confidence.  She didn’t launch into a long theological dissertation; she simply said, with all confidence; that she knew the God who could help.  You know the God who can help.  There are no minor missionaries; there are no minor opportunities to witness.  Trust God to help you.

Gracious Father, give to us the courage to speak your words of hope and comfort to a lost world.  Help us to be the light of mercy in a dark and cold place.  Build us up and give us the right words at the right time to be your voice.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,                                 

Pastor Bret

9-5-2016

Good Morning All!! 

             Hebrews 11:8; “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going”.

    We all love heroes.  We love to watch the parades and the homecoming and the celebrations.  We love to cheer for our heroes.  So who are your heroes?  Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt,  maybe Sally Ride or Christa McAuliffe, maybe Babe Ruth or Harmon Killebrew, maybe Audie Murphy or Sergeant York, maybe your parents or grandparents, who are your heroes?  One problem we have with heroes is that when the truth about them comes out, they aren’t always so heroic.  Franklin Roosevelt was a womanizer; Babe Ruth was a drunken lout. 

    Our verse for today is from Hebrews 11.  It is often referred to as the “Hall of Faith.”  It lists many of the Old Testament characters who lived their life by faith.  It is really a shame that we look at this chapter and think “Oh, if I were only like them; then all would be fine and dandy.”  We often think that because when we talk of these people of faith, we only speak of their greatness.  Abraham was going to offer Isaac, his son his only son, as a sacrifice to God.  Noah built the ark in spite of all of the taunting that he received.  Abraham lied about his wife because he didn’t trust God.  He also used a handmaiden to give him the son that God hadn’t delivered yet.  As soon as Noah got off the ark, he got drunk and lay naked in his tent.  Some heroes.

    Yet that is the exact point.  These “great” people of the Bible weren’t that great.  They were people on whom God looked with grace.  One of the best verses in Genesis is 6:8 “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord”.  That is what this verse and the entire bible is about.  You and I are not perfect; far from it.  We all have skeletons in our closet that would make any type of hero worship of us flounder in a hurry.  God looks upon you with his love with his grace and gives you that faith to get you through the day’s events.

    Grace finds us in God’s eye.  It seeks us out and searches the depths of our depraved world to bring us hope, to bring us peace and to give us God’s undeserved love.  That is what put Abraham in the “Hall of Faith” and that is what puts you there as well.  None of us are perfect; we are all sinners.  We all have the remnants of sin in our past that causes us to never feel worthy of God’s grace.  Fortunately, we don’t have to be worthy.  We are made worthy by Jesus; we are made worthy because of God’s grace poured out upon us.  We, just as those listed in the “Hall of Faith,” live by faith.  Yes, we are sinful beings but through God’s grace, we live in his wondrous mercy; trusting that he will take care of us and protect us until we reach our heavenly home.

Father of all mercies, through Jesus we find grace in your eyes.  We are brought into your marvelous family and given the peace and strength to battle this world’s woes.  Guard us by your mighty arm and give to those who struggle the most your Spirit of comfort.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret