2-4-2017

Good Morning All,

       Job 19:25-26; “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.   And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God”

     Confidence; that is what the “little engine that could” had; it had confidence.  As it climbed the mountain, it confidence grew until it knew that it could climb the mountain.  Confidence; that is what Babe Ruth had.  In Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, Babe Ruth pointed out to centerfield and then hit the next pitch over the centerfield wall.  Confidence; that is what Michael Jordan had as he played professional basketball.  Many times, while shooting a foul shot, he would say to the opponent who fouled him, “watch this”.  He would close his eyes and, usually, make the free throw without looking.  Confidence is an amazing thing.

    When many people think of Job, they describe him as being patient,  perhaps you have heard or even used the phrase “the patience of Job” to describe dealing with a tough or a perplexing problem.  Yet patience does not exist by itself; it needs a stronger counterpart to make patience work.  In order for patience to work you must have faith.  It is only by faith that we can have patience.  Faith gives us the strength and the courage to face the battles that we face.  Even if these battles seem insurmountable, we can be patient because we have faith that, in the end, we will succeed.  We will be and are, right now, victorious.

     It was faith that gave Job the courage to be patient.  It was faith that let him see past the horrific events of his life and to see his Savior.  Job had complete confidence that he would see his Redeemer, standing on the earth and the Job would see him in Job’s only flesh.  Job knew that his Redeemer would live and that he, Job, would live to see it, even after he was long dead.  So no matter what happened, Job had faith that God would give to Job the victory; so Job was patient because Job was confident.

    We can have that same confidence that Job had.  That confidence can give us patience because we know, in time, that our Redeemer (Jesus) will stand on the earth and we will see him in our flesh no matter how long it takes.  This simple fact is what gives us all of our hope, all of our confidence, all of our patience and all of our peace.  We know that Jesus lives.  The grave could not hold him; death could not defeat him.  So now the victory is ours.  No matter the pain, no matter the battle, no matter the sorrow, the victory is ours and we know that Jesus lives and because he lives we will live also.  Confidence; it is what you and I should have when facing this life.  Confidence; that we will overcome whatever obstacles there are and move forward to eternal life with Jesus.

Father in heaven, give us the confidence to rely only on your grace and mercy for the needs of this life.  Help us to hold onto your loving arms that we might be strengthened.  Be with those who are feeling the full weight of life’s many struggles.  Send them your Spirit of comfort and peace that they may say, “I know that my Redeemer lives.”  In the precious name of Jesus, our living redeemer, we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

2-3-2017

 Good Morning All,

             Genesis 25:21; “And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren. And the Lord granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived.” 

    Do you consider yourself to be patient?  How long can you wait for something?  If you go to a restaurant and there is a waiting time; how long will you wait?  10 minutes?  15 minutes?  30 minutes?  If you call a business, how long will you stay on hold before you hang up?  How many times will you press the numbers on your phone when dealing with an automated answering system before you just give up?  I must confess that I am on the low end of all these questions.  The restaurant has to be very good for me to wait even 15 minutes.  The automated phone systems have, for the most part, defeated me.  I confess that I am not very patient.

    Our verse is part of a larger passage that plays into patience.  In our verse, Isaac prayed for his wife because she was unable to have a child.  Remember that children at this time represent your social security, your heritage, your trusted labor force and many other social structure buttresses.  A man with no children has to hope that a nephew somewhere might consider him worthwhile to take care of for the land and the livestock; the less land and fewer livestock you had the less likely this would occur.  This was also the primary task for the wife; to provide children, especially sons, so that the family would continue to thrive and survive.

    So Isaac prayed for his wife because she wasn’t getting pregnant.  So how long did this go on?  If you read the larger passage of Genesis 25: 19-28, we read where Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebekah.  Isaac was 60 when Jacob and Esau were born.  Isaac prayed for 20 years for his barren wife.  For those 20 years he patiently prayed for God to hear him.  He had learned from his father Abraham that it was foolish to try and take things into your own hands and “fix” God’s plan.  God had promised him descendants so he waited for God to keep that promise.

     That is the real lesson for us in this portion of Scripture, trusting in God and his promises leads to our being patient.  We wait for God.  Remember that when Scripture tells us to wait it means to have a joyful expectation that God will keep his promise.  The best example of this is when we wait for the birth of a child; it is with joyful anticipation that we wait. 

     But do we wait so patiently when we pray?  Can you imagine praying for the same thing for 20 years?  Yet Isaac had faith and so he waited patiently for God to hear his prayer and to keep his promise.  Isaac knew that his hope was in the Lord and ours is too.  God hears our prayers and has promised to answer them according to his will; sometimes that will is “not now but later”.  So we continue to pray and we wait in joyful expectation that God, who is faithful, will keep his promise.  So keep praying and be patient and wait for God to keep his promise.

Dear Father in heaven, too often we refuse to wait; we refuse to trust in your will.  Give us patience to continue to call upon you and to trust you to answer our prayers and that we may wait with the joyful expectation of your will.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

2-2-2017

Good Morning All,

            Malachi 3: 16-17; “Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. “They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.” 

     We like to remember often.  The Statler Brothers asked, “Do you remember these?” Mary Hopkins sang “remember how we laughed away the hours” Tom T. Hall “remembered the year that Clayton Delaney died”.  Do you remember any of those? 

    Too often we try and remember items or thoughts or ideas that, at the time seem so important that we will never forget them, only to have foggy memory cloud the truth.  “Does anyone remember where we put…?” gets asked a lot.  As faulty as our “remembering” can be, it is somewhat amazing that God places emphasis on remembering in the Bible.

    God told the Israelites to “remember the covenant”.  Later, we are told to “do this in remembrance of me”.  In our verse we read of a book of remembrance.  We are told to do things in remembrance.  So what does that mean?

   We use the word “remember” as a simple mental exercise.  I remember that real winter of the year before that but some of my “remembering” gets fuzzy.  I remember we cancelled Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and the first Sunday of Christmas services one year not too long ago but not exactly.  A small group of us were looking at a confirmation picture and we couldn’t remember everyone in it.  We may even look at our wedding picture and wonder who the flower girl or ring bearer was.  So why does God tell us to remember.

    Remembrance in the Bible is more than a mental exercise.  It is an emotional, physical, and experiential exercise.  We remember our wedding, the birth of our children or our grandchildren.  We remember the loss of loved ones along the way.  We remember a home that burned down.  We remember and we experience it not only in our head but also in our heart; we feel it all the way down.  The importance of this remembering is that it is personal.  When we remember God and his grace, we should always add the words” for me”.  God did this for me.  Our remembrance is personal and incredibly important. 

    Remember that Jesus died and rose “for you”.  When you celebrate Holy Communion, his blood was shed “for you”.  When we pray, God hears “you”.  So we want to remember what Jesus said, we want to remember God’s promises; not just as a mental exercise; but as a very personal act of love by God for you and we can always remember that “They shall be mine, says the Lord of Hosts”.  Do all that you do in remembrance of God’s great love.

Dear Father in heaven, you remember your people and give to them the blessing which they never deserve.  We give you thanks that we are that people.  Move our remembering from our heads to our hearts and through our hands.  In Jesus precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret     

2-1-2017

Good Morning All,

           Psalm 6:2; “Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.”

     We watched one of my favorite movies last night; we watched “Forrest Gump”.  It has some of the greatest lines ever written.  There was one that struck me this time.  When Forrest’s love interest Jenny came back home and stayed for a while.  They went for a walk and ended up at Jenny’s old home.  It was rundown and abandoned.  She walked up to the house and stared at it for a minute and then started throwing things at it.  First her shoes and then rocks.  She soon collapsed and began to cry.  Jenny grew up with only an abusive father and then a grandmother that, apparently, was not a whole lot better.  As she collapses, Forrest walks up and then kneels down and holds her close.  The narrating Forrest says, “sometimes, there aren’t enough rocks.”

    Jenny was trying to exorcise her painful past.  She threw her shoe and then rock after rock until she could throw no more.  She threw rocks until she couldn’t but she still languished in her pain.  Sometimes, there aren’t enough rocks.  She slumps to the ground still in pain, still with no relief.  She doesn’t find comfort until the one person in the world who loved her without question wrapped her in his arms and held her.  In the short portion of the movie, we see a snapshot of our life in faith.

     Many experience pain that does not go away.  The death of a child or of a spouse causes incredible pain.  I’ve known people who experienced both at the same time and they were knocked down and even when they tried to throw the rocks; there weren’t enough rocks.  Sometimes, a relationship, like a marriage or a sibling, is supposed to last forever but it can break.  We can experience the ups and downs of fears, stresses, losses and anxieties.  We experience them and we fight them but we use the wrong weapons.  Some use drugs or alcohol, some use anger, some build a wall around their heart to avoid pain.  Some simply surrender to the pain and languish in their hurt, silently fading away.  Some try to use their own power and might and throw rocks but that always ends up with us falling down, exhausted and still languishing in our pain.

    It is only when we receive the comforting and loving embrace of our heavenly Father that we find comfort.  It is only by clinging to him by faith that we know of his grace.  Through faith, we look to God to revive us, to enliven us to give us hope.  Through faith, we look to God to heal us.  There are not enough rocks but there is enough grace to lift us from our languishing.  There is enough love to heal.  Cling to God’s love and let go of the rocks.

Father, we suffer the battles of this world.  We struggle with the cares of this life and can be crushed.  Send us your strength, send us your mercy.  Heal us so that we may be restored.  Be with those who suffer and have run out of rocks.  Send them the comfort and hope that they so desperately need.  Comfort them with your mercy.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret