2-7-2020

Good Morning All, 

          Romans 6:4; “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

      Every so often, I like to mess with the minds of my confirmands; nothing serious just a little something to keep them off guard.  I realize that it might be somewhat cruel, but the goal is to get them to think and to begin to understand what faith is.  This is partly because of trying to teach them to listen to Scriptures and not to the current “pop theology” that makes its way into the media now and again.

     So, I asked them, “When do you receive eternal life?”  They paused for a moment and then began to respond.  The most common answer was, “when you die”.  This was the favorite answer.  When we die, we go to heaven and get eternal life.  One threw in, “when Jesus returns.”  I think he smelled a trap and didn’t want to follow the others too quickly.  So, we danced around it a little more and we started looking at different Bible passages and came upon this one.  So now we started talking about Baptism and what we receive from God’s gift.

    At Baptism, we receive the forgiveness of sins.  This is the start of our eternal life.  It is here when we enter God’s kingdom.  We walk in newness of life, a life that is recreated and restored into God’s loving family forever.  We don’t have to wait until we die; we can savor and enjoy God’s wonderful gift of eternal life from the very start.  After Baptism, we are saved and given the gift of eternal life.  It is ours, we have it in our possession, but we are not fully utilizing it yet.  We sometimes call this the “now but not yet” belief.  We are now saved; we live by grace in God’s kingdom, but we do not yet have its full glory; that is yet to come to us.  But we have eternal life; we have already received this wondrous gift from God it is ours today, right now; we do not have to wait until later we have it now and we can begin to participate in the life right now.  WE have fellowship and communion with God through the Holy Spirit.  We have the ability to communicate directly with our God as he is our dear father.  He is not some vicious and cruel judge; he is a loving and kind God who wants you to be with him forever including right now.

     We don’t have to wait until tomorrow or the next day, we can celebrate right now.  We have his blessing of eternal life right now.  The gift of eternal life is with us right now, so savor the fruits right now!

Father of all wondrous mercy, through your grace we have eternal life.  You give this to us through the washing and regeneration that we receive because of your promised mercy.  Give us the renewed spirit that we may live with you in glory ever after.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret    

2-6-2020

Good Morning All, 

     Matthew 10:30; “But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.”

    In France it was “Les Z’amours.” In Italy it was “Cari genitori.”  We used to watch it as “The Newlywed Game”.  It was a TV game show that pitted three newlywed couples against each other to see who knew more about their respective spouses.  The winner usually got new appliances.  The early versions were far tamer than the later versions were.  Yet it is a novel idea and often some variation of this game is played at parties around the world.  How well do you know your spouse?  How well do you know your children?  How well do you know anyone?

    There are those who claim to know exactly what someone else is thinking or needing.  It is interesting to watch such a claim.  Sometimes it is not too difficult, on a hot summer day, most of us could use a cold drink of water.  In the depths of a cold winter night hot cocoa goes a long way.  Yet at most other times, it is difficult to really know what the other person needs or wants.  Do they want to talk?  Do they want to be left alone?  Do they want coffee or something else to drink?  Are they hungry?  We don’t really know.  If they don’t tell us, we just don’t really know.  This also assumes that they even truly know what they need.  Sometimes we truly don’t know what we need.  We have no idea what we need; we are sometimes so lost that we are completely clueless.

    This is what makes God’s knowledge about us so amazing.  He even knows how many hairs are on your head.  He knows you completely, inside and out.  He knows your needs even before you know.  How can that be?  How can anyone know that; yet we know it is true, even if we can’t comprehend it. 

    The truly wondrous part is not that God just knows; because of his love for you he uses his knowledge and wisdom to provide for you.  He acts toward you with compassion in his heart.  He uses this knowledge to bring you comfort and to give you peace.  Because of his great love, eternal and undying, he seeks to comfort you, to provide for you and to give you eternal life.  This is done through the all availing sacrifice of Jesus.  This is done to reconcile us back to him.  He knows you better than you know yourself.  He knows you better than anyone else ever can.  So, he calls us to have faith; to trust in his ways and in his will to be the best path for us.

    This can be tough because the world and our sinful nature will usually have a different opinion.  Yet in his mercy, he seeks to give us the love which he has for us and to give us peace and comfort that the world cannot give.  His love for us never ends; this we can trust forever.

    Father of all mercy, you give us your wondrous gift of love.  Through your wonderful mercy, we have hope.  Be with those who are struggling today.  Be with those who have needs so great that they cannot begin to understand.  Give them your Spirit of comfort and of hope.  Give them your Spirit of patience and perseverance.  Guide us to be your physical agent in their life.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret   

2-5-2020

Good Morning All, 

     Isaiah 24:21; “On that day the Lord will punish the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, on the earth.”

        We were about 10 years old at the time.  We were all over to a friend’s house for his birthday party.  There was about 8-10 of us.  We were healthy, active boys; hence we weren’t always careful, nor did we always think all the way through to the consequences of our actions.  It started out as some harmless horse play and wrestling around.  Then, a shoe went flying and a window was broken.  It went from noisy to quiet real fast.  My friend’s father opened the door, stuck his head in and said, “Someone’s going to get a spanking.”

    Now, being older and knowing what was really going on is one thing but we were 10 at the time.  So, we immediately began to try and figure out the pressing question, “Who?’  Who was going to get the spanking?  Most of us looked down at our feet; we figured if we had both shoes on then we would be safe.  Then one of those who didn’t have shoes on claimed that someone took his shoe and threw it.  Rats, now we were all suspects again.  The idea of taking someone else’s punishment was not something that, at 10, was an option.  We spent too much time avoiding the punishment we deserved, and we didn’t go looking for more.  That is usually how most people, even as adults, act.

    So many may think that we must sit and wait for our death and then we will stand before God and then we will “get off” because of Jesus.  That really isn’t how it works.  We don’t have to wait for judgment for we are already judged, and we are deemed righteous by God.  Wow!  We are deemed righteous by God right now.  We are righteous before him at this present time.  What a wonderful gift!  What a wonderful blessing!  Because of this promise and gift, we are able to stand before God right now and call upon him in times of trouble or to offer our praise to him because of the great things he does for us.

    The sins which we commit are punished; there is no way around this. But the punishment was taken out on someone else and that someone was Jesus.  That is what Isaiah means when he writes “he was pierced for our transgressions” and “he was crushed for our iniquities”.  He was pierced and crushed to pay for our sins.  This means that the debt has been paid.  We are now before God righteous because of Jesus and what he did for us upon the cross.  The punishment for us is paid for by Christ so we now have righteousness before God, not at some later date but right now.  This is God’s promise to us.  This is what makes us his people, redeemed by the blood of Jesus.  Righteous because of him.

Father of all grace, in you we have all our needs filled.  In you our hope lies.  Through Jesus, we are righteous before you and in your holy family where we have rest and peace. Be with those who are especially lost and hurt at this time.  Guard them with your Spirit.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret    

2-4-2020

      Good Morning All, 

    Romans 10:9; “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

     I had one of the most unique conversations that I have ever had a few days ago.  A lady that I have known my whole life works at a store that I do business in often.  She is there and we talk to each other and have a friendly relationship.  Normally, our conversations go through normal avenues until the other day.  We got talking about our families and she told me that they had to place her father in a nursing home as he was having health issues.  Now the town that we were talking in has 2 hospitals, 4 nursing homes and a half dozen or so different assisted living centers; so, I asked, “which one?” meaning which nursing facility.  She looked at me and with all sincerity said, “I only have one dad.”

    I must have had a really puzzled look for a few seconds because then we both started to laugh but it was interesting how such a simple conversation veered off into an almost “Twilight Zone” level of existence.  It is funny how sometimes when we try to have a conversation it can get so twisted.  Sometimes it is totally by accident, like this conversation.  Sometimes it is done on purpose so trouble will occur, and someone can cause some mayhem.

    That is what makes our faith so interesting.  It is simple.  There is not a lot of do’s and don’ts just a simplistic answer.  If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  There is no test or other requirements.  Faith, trusting in God’s promise, is what it takes.  Believing what God says is the key.  It is not our actions or works.  It is not our struggles or feeble attempts at life.  It is about faith; that wonderful gift from God that he gives us.  God gives us the faith to trust in his promise.  God gives us faith, the desire to trust his Word, and this desire to trust is the key event.  Trust God’s Word that your faith in God’s promise will save you.

    Believe it, with all your heart.  For when you do that very faith changes your heart.  It changes who you are.  It changes how you look at life.  It changes how you live your life.  Faith moves us towards God.  Faith draws us to his love and grace.  We may feel the tug going the other way and straying from God but the desire to trust God is stronger than the desire to trust ourselves.  God’s mercy calls us home.  His grace brings to us new life and new existence; we are a new creation.

   This newness is what proceeds as our statement of faith; that is confessing with your mouth.  It may be with your mouth or it may be with your actions, but your faith will show through.  God’s love will show through your life.   Faith will make it so.

Dearest Father, through the gift of faith you bring us into your grace.  Give us the strength to hold onto that faith that saves us.  Guard us by your Spirit.  Be with those who feel the pull of this sinful world and are struggling with the battles of life.  Strengthen them with your mercy.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret 

2-3-2020

Good Morning All, 

        Matthew 24:43; “But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.”

    Personal security has been in the news a lot lately.  It seems we are all targets of hackers.  While we like to point fingers at large corporations, most experts claim that the greatest weakness in the security wall is still the individual consumer.  We are so careless.  A few weeks ago, a young gal showed her driver’s license on Facebook.  She was proud she was 21 but someone mentioned that she was giving away a lot of personal information that is best kept private.  We get sloppy with passwords for accounts.  The most common passwords are 123456789 and 987654321 and “password”; not too tough to figure them out.  I watched a television special a couple of years ago.  They gave an acknowledged hacker three names of people who worked on the show in less than one day he had hacked all three of the people’s credit card account.  He did it all with public information that he found.

    It is like a story several years ago about a thief who broke into several houses in a community.  No one could figure out how he did it.  They finally got lucky and someone watched him do it.  He simply looked under the welcome mat at the door and if he found a key, he let himself in.  We let ourselves be broken into by being careless with our information and our possessions.

    The same is true in our faith life.  We are careless about keeping the devil out.  We watch television shows, or go to internet sites, or go to businesses, or gossip with neighbors and soon find our lives infiltrated and covered in sin.  We think and say what we shouldn’t and sometimes we don’t even realize it until we are neck deep in despair.  We get careless with our faith.  We don’t guard it like we should and soon it becomes broken and weak.  We leave the key where the devil will find it and then are surprised when he opens the door and walks in and steals from us.

    The devil will steal anything he can from you.  He will rob the trust you have for others; he robs the comfort you have around others; he’ll rob the love you have for others but above all, he’ll rob you of your faith in God.  He will weaken it to the point that when you need it the most, it might crumble.

    We need to be on guard.  We need to avoid those things which weaken us.  We need to be vigilant about what we look at, what we read, where we go and who we talk to.  We know where we are weak and need to avoid them.  We then need to spend time in God’s Word and in prayer asking God to give us the strength to withstand the devil’s assaults and attacks.  We can’t fight the devil alone but with God’s grace we can prevail.

Father help me to guard myself from the devil’s attacks.  Lead me to defend my faith by your mercy.  Guard me with your Spirit.  Be with those who are in battle right now that they may stand strong.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,                   

Pastor Bret

2-2-2020

Good Morning All, 

Genesis 32:24; “And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.”

    This is a passage from one of those stories in Genesis that many people remember.  This is where Jacob wrestled with God.  As daylight began to break, God touched Jacob’s hip and the socket popped out.  Jacob holds on for a blessing and then also receives the name of Israel which means “striven with God and men and prevailed.”  This is always one of those interesting stories, imagine wrestling with God, all night, and then winning.  This goes against what most of us think.  God is this all powerful being that would never lose to a mere man in anything.  But here we have it. 

    So, we have Jacob wrestling with God, all night.  This is kind of amazing, but I would guess that most of us have at one time or another wrestled with God all night.  Have you ever sat up all night while a loved one was in the emergency room or even having emergency surgery?  Have you ever felt that total loss of control in a situation and just sat there helplessly?  Have you ever looked out on the crops that you were growing and watch them wilt to nothing over a few days?  Have you ever had the job that you loved eliminated in a “restructuring” of the company?  Most of us have spent a night wrestling with God.

    What form that wrestling takes is always interesting.  It often has, at some level, our bargaining with God.  Just as we think that there is no way Jacob could actually wrestle with the all-powerful Creator, we do the same thing.  We think we can offer God something that he doesn’t have, but we do, and then he must want it, so we offer it up.  We can do this all night.  We struggle and wrestle with God all night.  If we struggle hard enough, we will be emotionally, physically and spiritually drained.

    The amazing thing is that God allows us to do this.  He does this so we will see that, in the end, we are not really struggling with God, but we are struggling with ourselves.  It is our sinful nature that leads us to think we have a better alternative to offer God.  It is often at these times that we experience what Paul speaks of when we see that God’s strength is revealed in our weakness.  In our time of greatest weakness, we see that we can only rely on God’s mercy to survive.

    That is what Jacob really received; he received God’s mercy.  We do as well.  God shows us his mercy even when we choose to wrestle with him and try to convince him that somehow, we know better.  He lets us wrestle until we see that he is our only hope.  So, as you find yourself wrestling with God know that his mercy will sustain you and will bring to you the comfort that you seek.

Father of all mercy, there are so many times that I struggle with you, but your grace keeps me in your arms.  Continue to protect me from the devil’s arrows.  Be with those who are especially struggling at this time and lead them to know your love.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret       

2-1-2020

Good Morning All, 

         Proverbs 15:1; “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”

     The other day there was a cartoon in one of the local papers.  It had a little boy, snow pants on, big winter coat, stocking hat, wrapped in a scarf.  His arms stuck out to the side and his mom pushed him out the front door.  He made his way down to the bus stop where another little boy was standing.  As they waited for the bus it began to snow and soon, they were covered in snow.  One boy said, “Global warming?” to which the second boy answered, “I wish!”

    There is a lot of talk about global warming or “climate change” as it is called now.  It is all the talk when we get some unusual weather.  So, when the low pressures are lower or the high pressures are higher, or the fronts are stronger or the rain is greater or the drought is greater, it is climate change.  But today I would like to look at a different type of climate change.  I want us to look at our personal climate; the way we respond or act as we go through life.

    When you meet someone, are you a spring warm front, smiles and a friendly greeting or are you a wintry cold front, all anger and icy stares?  The interaction we have with people reflects not only our personality; it also reflects our faith.  It reflects how we receive the many blessings that God gives to us.

    Scripture gives us many different slants on this very verse.  All of them state the same basic truth.  Anger, hatred, rancid temperament, and other such negative attitudes bring about other negative attitudes.  This is what the Bible tells us.  This negative attitude brings us down and gives the devil an in.  If you are angry or upset, you are more likely to look for something that will cause you to judge or envy or despise.  Yet a happier attitude tends to help you look for the positive things in a situation.  This tends to move us away from sin.

    The challenge for us as Christians is to always remember that the world watches us.  The world will judge God by our actions.  How we react to any given situation will lead them to judge God accordingly.  If we are angry all the time, they will wonder if being a Christian has any value at all.  But if they see you calm, relaxed and at ease most of the time; they will wonder what you have that they would like.  “Why are you always so happy?” is a common question asked of a happy, contented Christian. 

    So, for the next few days, do a check on your climate.  Imagine how someone will react to the way that you behave.  If you are surly to the gal behind the register, think how you would react.  If you are grumpy to most, how would you react?  If you greet someone with a smile, how would you react to that?  Test yourself and see if you need a climate change.

    Father, too often I am not showing the love to others that you have shown to me.  Forgive me for this failure and sin.  Give me the courage to be that bright beacon for all to see.  Give me the strength to show your love to one and all.  Use me as your servant.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret