1-7-2020

Good Morning All, 

              Job 19:2; “How long will you torment me and break me in pieces with words?”

    There is not much in this world that is more painful than to be tormented by someone.  We may call it bullying or we may call it harassment but it all hurts.  It hurts on the playground; it hurts in the classroom and the workplace.  It hurts in the home where families attack and shred each other.  It hurts our heart and our soul just as much, perhaps even more, than physical slaps and punches.  External wounds are seen by others and some compassion may arise.  Yet words of torment cause hidden wounds which are not easily seen by any so linger unhealed for a longtime.

      The devil loves to torment us.  It is his favorite pastime.  He hides nearby and with whispers so soft but stinging in tone he whispers to us, “GUILTY!!! GUILTY!!!” “UNWORTHY!!”  “YOU HAVE NO VALUE!!”  He loves to come late at night when sleep eludes us, but exhaustion is at hand.  He hits us with words and accusations which torment us without mercy.  We feel alone, helpless and lost.  We are right where the devil wants us; we are tormented and tormented and the pain continues to grow.

     So, when God saw how the devil tormented us; he launched a plan that would bring about our healing.  He began a plan that would take all the bite out of the devil’s attacks and assaults.  God sent his son to take all the power in the devil’s assaults and carry them on his back to his grave and then leave them there.  He left all the devil’s power in the tomb and when Jesus walked out of that tomb; the power of the devil stayed.  It stayed buried in that tomb.  Now Jesus comes to us speaking to us in a loving voice telling us that we are, “FORGIVEN! FORGIVEN!  FORGIVEN!”  He speaks to us with words of love that we may be healed.  Our painful past can be left there as we look forward to a new start each day; comforted by his love and consoled by his mercy.

    The devil still scowls and hurls his insults, but they do not have to stick.  When he calls us “guilty” we can answer “forgiven”.  When he calls us “unworthy” we can answer “redeemed by the Son”.  When he calls us “unloved” we can answer “we are children of God”.  We cling to God’s mercy like a child clings to his loving parent.  The devil’s torments can only hurt when we let them.  They can only hurt when we let loose from God and stop listening to Jesus as he tells us “forgiven” and we listen to the devil call us “guilty”.  Trust in God’s most wonderful mercy.  Trust in his words of hope and receive his healing. 

Father of all mercies, too many nights I cannot find peace.  The devil torments me and I listen.  Give me the strength of faith to turn away from his lies and hear your sweet words of forgiveness.  Guide me by your Spirit to cling only to you.  Father, as many are attacked by the devil help them with his torment.  Help them, comfort them and relieve their suffering.  Bring them your peace and holy rest.  Through Jesus our risen Savior we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret        

1-6-2020

       Good Morning All, 

          Genesis 15:16; “And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

    Every so often, we come across a verse that makes us stop and wonder what we are reading.  To me, this is one of those verses.  This verse comes from the covenant that God made with Abraham.  God was explaining the future to Abraham.  God told him that he would have many descendants but that for a period of 400 years they would be slaves but that God would free them and return them to this land where Abraham lived and that God had promised to Abraham and his descendants.  But they would not return until the iniquity of the Amorites is complete.

    This is one of those verses that can cause us to really scratch our head.  We fully understand this verse to mean that God is patient and he is waiting until the end before he will pronounce judgment.  He is giving the sinner, in this example the Amorite people, every opportunity to repent but there is a limit.  We can see that God is patient and long suffering.  He is willing to give the sinner every opportunity to repent.  We may know it but knowing it doesn’t always make it easier.

    During the time of the Amorites, they practiced all sorts of horrible stuff including human sacrifice.  They practiced sexual depravity as well.  There was a lot of pain and suffering by a lot of people, but God allowed it to go to its completion.  The reason I think of this verse every so often is that I watch the news and wonder.  I watch the news about how we slaughter millions of unborn children every year just because they are inconvenient.  I watch the news and see how we seem to be looking for ways to be increasing in our level of cruelty to one another.  Whether it is halfway around the world or just down the street, callousness toward human life seems to be on the rise and I wonder if the iniquity is almost complete.

    This is another example of why it is so useless for us to question God.  Isaiah describes God as looking down on the inhabitants of earth like grasshoppers.  God’s way is so far beyond us that we really need to live in trust of hid benevolence and mercy.  God has promised to love and redeem those whom he loves.  We may not always see the sense or the logic in the events in our life, but we must trust God’s good grace and favor.  We will never understand everything in this world.  Our vision is clouded by sin and the limitations of being human.  So, we look to the only true source we have; we look to God for his mercy, trusting in his promise to pour it out upon us.

Gracious Father, there are so many times when I wonder about things I cannot change.  Help me to see the things that I can change and give me the courage to change them.  Help me to see that I may not fix the problems of the world but that I can change one person’s life.  Use me in your service.  In the precious name of Jesus, we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret           

1-5-2020

Good Morning All, 

         Psalm 119:50; “This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.”

    A few years ago, my wife and I watched our (then) two grandchildren while their mom and dad went to a party.  It started out fine; everything pretty normal.  We play tag team and swap grandchildren; there is no better game.  Grandma was holding our granddaughter when she started to scream and cry.  We tried all our tricks but to no avail.  Eventually she calmed down; we are not sure of what caused her distress.  Hopefully, it was just a tummy ache.   

    When she finally calmed down; she had her smile and her giggles working again.  At four months, she likes it.  But when she was hurting, when she was crying, she refused to be comforted.  She couldn’t tell us what was wrong.  She could only cry.  I held her close; I whispered to her, but nothing would console her.  She wouldn’t listen, she couldn’t tell us so being comforted was difficult for her.

    There are many times when we are just like her.  We cry and cry.  We are full of pain.  We feel the pain of broken promises from our loved ones and neighbors.  We feel the pain of broken relationships.  Often times, we suffer most when we look to our past and hold onto the failures and the past.  We never see past the sadness. 

    All the time, God is holding us.  We are never alone.  His Spirit is there to offer us comfort.  He speaks the words of forgiveness; he speaks the words of comfort and hope.  He comes to us in the depths of our crying at the height of our despair to offer us his quiet peace.  We may cry and cry refusing to be comforted but God never stops bringing us comfort.  He never stops speaking the word of his love and mercy.  He never stops holding us.  We are his children and God desires to bring us peace and to make us whole.

    As my granddaughter cried, I wanted nothing more for her than to be comforted, that she would know peace and that she would have rest but I didn’t know what she needed, I didn’t know what or where her pain was.  Fortunately for us, God knows the source of our pain and he has the cure.  He has what we need to find our peace.  He gives us his sacred promise that nothing will ever separate us from his love and blessings.  He will never abandon us no matter how loud we cry or how long we wail.  Even when we refuse his comfort, God continues to give us hope. 

    So, God says to us, “be still and know that I am God.”  Be still and rest in his loving arms. Be still and trust the promises that God gives us.  Find your comfort in his mercy.

Father, in my cries of pain I often miss the knowledge of your loving embrace. In your mercy, you never abandon me.  In you I have peace.  Comfort those in most need of your care.  Send your Spirit that they may know your holy rest.  In the precious name of Jesus our Risen Savior we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

1-4-2020

Good Morning All, 

             Romans 3:28; “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”

    For Christmas, Grandma decided that her 2½ year old grandson needed to get a “Mr. Potatohead.”  (“Mr. Potatohead” has a plastic body shaped like a potato.  You then attach eyes, ears, nose and mouth.)  Since he is in the “twos” he insists on “doing it myself”.  So, as he was working to get an ear inserted to the hole, he was intensely focused on the task.  He held the ear just so and held the potatohead just so and then began to slowly twist each trying to line the pin and the hole up.  He even had his tongue out as he got closer to success.  Eventually, he got the ear in and there were cheers all around.

     As parents and grandparents, we try to impress upon the next generation the need to work hard, to stick to a task, to persevere, to overcome adversity, to succeed on their own.  We, especially we Americans, pride ourselves on the self-made successful person.  We like the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” stories and we often relay these to our children and grandchildren as heroic events and ones that we would emulate.  I think that sometimes this is why we have trouble understanding that our salvation is completely God’s work.

    God looks at you and then declares you holy because of the sacrifice of Jesus.  Jesus’ death completely paid the debt of our sins; so, we are debt free.  We are free indeed.  We no longer have the burden of keeping the Law.  We no longer have to feel the pangs of guilt when we think of our sin.  We are no longer slaves to the devil; we are free because God has declared us innocent.  We don’t earn it or deserve it.  There is nothing we did to cause this to happen.  This is entirely a gift from a loving God; at no time did we have to stick our tongue out to achieve it.  At no point in time did we have to twist or manipulate things to make it work.  It is ours free and we never had to or ever will have to do anything to receive it.  We only have to use the faith, another of God’s gifts, to trust it.  We only have to cling to God’s promise of free salvation.

    This often brings the question, “so we don’t have to do any good works?”  The answer is no we don’t have to but when you think of this wonderful gift which is given to you; don’t you want to say thank you?  God has told us how to say thank you to him.  It is not offering a bunch of sacrifices to him or giving a lot of money to him; God has no need for this.  Rather God desires that we show our thanks by showing the love that God gives us to others we meet.  It is not a requirement but rather a response.  It is not a law but a reaction.  God freely gives you salvation; celebrate God’s gift to you this and every day.

Father of all mercies, you richly and daily forgive our sins.  You graciously declare us innocent of all the debt we owe.  We give you thanks and praise.  Lead us to express this love in ways that are beneficial to others.  Help us to love as you love us.  Bring about your true peace into this world.  In the precious name of Jesus, we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret       

1-3-2020

 Good Morning All, 

          Isaiah 9:2; “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.” 

    Have you ever experienced total darkness?  Not many of us have.  Even in the dark that we experience, there is usually some light.  Maybe you have a night light in the hall or in the bathroom or in a child’s room.  Maybe you always have a flashlight handy.  The darkest place I ‘ve ever been was a cave.  It was an old prospecting cave in the Black Hills.  It was so narrow and small in places we weren’t sure that we would fit.  After we got in about 50 feet, we turned our flashlights off.  That lasted about 20 seconds before we couldn’t take it.  It felt like the mountain was going to swallow us.  Even though nothing had changed in that 20 second period; it was hard to breathe, and you felt like you were spinning.  I was with three others and they felt the same thing.  We had another 150 feet of cave to explore but we agreed that we had seen enough.

     The worst part was all those “things” which come out in the dark.  There are things; things that run across your shoes, things that crawl up your arm, things that hang in your face or buzz in your ear, things that we cannot see but we feel and experience them anyway.  Then there are the sounds, sounds that seem to amplify in the dark, things that sound like moans and groans or hideous laughter.  

    That is sort of how the people in the text would have felt.  When sin entered the world, man no longer “saw” God.  Adam and Eve walked with God, but sin veiled their eyes and plugged their ears.  Soon man’s relationship with God just kept deteriorating.  In our blindness, we just kept spinning out of control.  We wandered in the dark and were more lost all the time.  We walked away from God and His light and kept going further and further into the darkness, suffering the whole way.

   “But God beheld our wretched state.”  Out of His unfathomable love God sent Jesus into the world to be that “Light”.  This verse is part of a longer section that is a Messianic prophecy.  In this verse, God is promising to send the Light, but we live in that Light.

    Jesus came to live and die and rise again so that we could return to the Light.  God used Jesus’ sacrifice to serve as ours so now we get to have His Light, the Spirit, live within us.  The devil will try to block the light or even use the light to blind us but God, in his grace and mercy, is always there to correct the problem and keep us moving.  Sometimes we wish that the light we have would light up more of our path ahead, but we can trust God to lead us on that path that will lead us to our eternal home.  Then along the way, we are to “let our light shine” for others to see the wondrous blessing of the light and then listen to the call of the Spirit into their hearts as well.

   Father of all Light, thank you for the gift of the Light which illumines our way.  Keep our light, our faith, burning bright in this dark world that knows only pain.  Cause our light to shine brightly so that others may come to know You.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

1-2-2020

 Good Morning All, 

1 John 3:1: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”

    Many people take vacations in the summer.  They usually go to “see” something.  Perhaps they go see a professional baseball game or go to a national park or perhaps we just go to an area of the country where they have not been to; just to see what it is like.  While what we are planning on seeing is important, for most of the way; what we see is out the window of our car.  That is why when I travel; I prefer to take the lesser roads and not the interstate.  Part of this was watching Charles Kuralt and his “On the Road” series as a kid and the desire to see what else is going on in the world.  We see the world go by and we see it as it is, warts and all.  We see the broken houses next to the new “Mcmansions” or the abandoned farm site with the leaning barn next to the multi-bin multi-shop immaculately kept farmsteads across the road.  It is how we see things, mostly through a window usually driving down the road somewhere.

    Our passage for this morning speaks of seeing.  We see what kind of love God has for us.  It is a love that the world does not understand, nor can it reproduce it.  The world’s love is conditional.  It will love you as long as you behave and reciprocate.  It will love you as long as you have something to share or allow a gain for the other.  We see God’s love through a window; it is the window of the cross.  When we look into the window of the cross, we see what kind of love the Father has given us.  We see God incarnate, Jesus, suffering and bearing the weight and the cost of our sins even as we were enemies with God.  Yet in His unfathomable grace, God made you his child.  He looked at you and claimed you just the way you were.  He washed you and fed you and clothed you with new clothes.  That is our God.  We see that by looking through the cross of Christ to see it. 

    As we travel through life we will pass by and through many events which we may or may not comprehend.  Those events may never add up.  Death, at times, makes no sense.  Life, at other times, makes no sense.  Suffering never makes sense.  We need to see the love of God, through the window of the cross, and then move to share that window seat with others who need it as well.  You and I cannot touch the whole world, but we can touch one person and we need to do so.  Share the Gospel of Jesus with one person.  We are part of God’s solution; we are partners in the ministry of reconciliation.  Look through the window and see how much the Father loves us and then go and share that love with someone else.

Gracious Lord, your grace rolls over us like a river and carries us into your loving arms and presence.  Use us to bring others into your river of life and mercy that they too will be able to look through the window of the cross and see how much the Father loves us.  In our Savior’s precious name, we pray, Amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

1-1-2020

Good Morning All, 

      Isaiah 63:7; “I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord, the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord has granted us, and the great goodness to the house of Israel that he has granted them according to his compassion, according to the abundance of his steadfast love.”

    Did you watch the ball drop at Times Square?  Did you sing “Auld Lang Syne”?  Good for you if you did; welcome to the club if you didn’t.  New Year’s Eve has come and gone, and New Year’s Day is upon us.  And yet not just new years day but new decade day; what will the next decade hold?  Will it be better, the same or worse?  What does the decade hold in store?  Unless God has a different plan, in the coming decade, I will retire and have a grandson who is a senior in high school.  I expect there will be births and baptisms; weddings and celebration, funerals and mourning; really, more of the same the only difference is which one impacts you most directly.

    As we look back, many will probably say “good riddance” to this year and this decade.  There was plenty of turmoil, struggles and pain; yet, we continue forward one day at a time.  Some may wonder why or how.  “How do I move forward; I have lost the one I love?”  This will always be a struggle and a battle.  So, we do what Isaiah tells us, “recount the steadfast love of the Lord.”  Isaiah is telling us that in the midst of pain and sorrow, recount the steadfast love of the Lord.

    I once had a person tell me that the life of a Christian is really one of two prayers.  When all seems good and happy, we pray “Thanks be to God.”  When things seem dark and gloomy, we pray, “Lord have mercy.” I think, in actuality, we pray both at the same time, all the time.  This world is broken and in need of fixing.  Yet this fixing will only occur when Jesus returns so there is always suffering and pain somewhere; so, we pray, “Lord have mercy.”

     Yet God has shown us great love, he sent his Son to die for us that we might be a people who have hope.  We have eternal life in Jesus and the knowledge that, when the fixing is done, we will stand with Him in the newly perfected creation with all believers ready to celebrate the perfect future; but until that time, we wait.

    If waiting is difficult, I would encourage you to recount the steadfast love of the Lord.  Starting today, make a journal of God’s steadfast love for you.  Start with the truth that you are a redeemed, baptized child of God, then list the beauties and glories of this day and then do it again tomorrow always recounting the steadfast love of the Lord.  Always look to the blessings that God has given you; even in the depths of your pain, sorrow, suffering and anguish; God has declared you to be his redeemed child, one who has eternal life and an heir in His kingdom.  Recount the steadfast love of the Lord; it will sustain you.

Father, in our pain help us to always see your grace.  In our sorrow, lead us by your Spirit to cling to You.  Guide us this new year to be ever watchful for your mercies, new to us each day.  In the precious name of Jesus, we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret