9-14-2020

 Good Morning All, 

          Matthew 1:21; “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

     I was watching a video news clip on the internet the other day.  It was a clip from an outside security camera system at a bank.  I could not tell if it was even in the United States, but it showed a man, walking down the street looking intently at his phone.  As he walked along, he headed out into the street.  Suddenly, a man, running from the opposite direction leaps and tackles the man.  Just as they hit the ground, a car goes speeding by; narrowly missing both men.  Had the second man not saved the first one; he would have been a bloody spot on the highway.

   This man was saved, by a total stranger who risked his own life in order to save the life of another.  Perhaps you remember the story of a few years ago when a plane crashed into an icy river and one man, who was driving along and saw it happened, jumped in the river and started pulling people to safety until he himself died in the icy river.  Those people whom he saved, what do you do, what do you say?  What do you say to the family of that man?  “Gee thanks” sounds a little weak.

    Maybe you feel that way when you think about Jesus.  Many Christians in the world deal with faith from a guilt driven motive.  They feel guilty about Jesus having to die so that they could live.  They respond to feeling the need to punish or deprive themselves.  Within church history, a group called the “flagellants” would whip themselves as punishment for their sins in order to alleviate their guilt.  This misses the whole point.

    Jesus came to save us from our sins.  He dove into the icy waters to save us even as he himself died.  Yet it goes beyond this event.  Jesus died but he did not stay dead; this was all part of the plan.  He died to save us and lives to change us.  His resurrection changes everything.  Millions of people have died for you in one way, shape, or form.  Think of the servicemen who died fighting in war to protect your freedom.  Think of police officers or firemen or other rescue personal who died keeping someone else alive; only one person rose from the dead for you and that is Jesus.  Yes, he died to save you; but he lives that our life is different; it is new.  Our life is different in that we now can live a life more closely to the way it was designed to be lived.  We were designed to live in God’s presence, love one another and take care of creation.  Now, we are made new again to go back to this existence.  Luther wrote that we are to “thank and praise, serve and obey him”  That is the way we say thank you; by loving one another, caring for what God has given us and singing His praises daily.

Father, we give you great thanks and praise for our salvation.  Strengthen me so that I may live my life in service to you.  Lead me to show love to those who you place in my life.  Lead me to show mercy in all that I do.  In the precious name of Jesus, our risen Lord and King we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret      

9-13-2020

 Good Morning All, 

          1 Corinthians 15: 57-58; “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

    I have heard the cry and the lament many times.  “They just don’t listen to me.”  “They don’t seem to care.”  “It is hard when there are only a couple of them there.”  These particular laments came from a Sunday School teacher a few years ago.  I understood her frustrations; she would spend time doing her lesson and then trying to bring in outside material to add to it.  She made unleavened bread one time.  She had a Roman soldier sword and shield.  She was trying but her students did not seem to care and probably, more to the point, the parents did not seem to care.  There were always plenty of reasons to miss Sunday School and you could tell that the students took their cue from the parents.

    I have listened to fellow pastors share pretty much the same thoughts.  There are times when you feel like what you do has little impact.  I talked to one man who had prepared for Sunday morning services and only had two people show up.  The weather was bad, so he did not really expect a whole lot.  “There would have only been 5 if the weather was good” was his dejected remark.  I have listened to counselors who have talked until they were blue in the face only to have those whom they counselled do the exact same thing with the same disastrous results.  How do we cope with these seemingly daunting struggles?

    Paul tells us in these verses.  First and foremost, and the absolute number one thing to always remember is that we have the victory through Jesus.  There is not one more thing that we can or have to add to that.  If nothing else occurs, that basic fact remains.  Jesus died and we won.  So, our labor for Him is saying thanks to Him.  Our actions are for his glory and for thanks to him.  We do not do them for our own benefit or even necessarily for the person for whom they are aimed.  We do them for God and then let him use the work for whatever he desires.  It is always possible, even probable, that the good you are doing with the intent of aiding the first person actually impacts a third or fourth person that you are unaware of.  For example, the ministry work done to a person in a nursing home may impact the nurses and the nurse’s aides.  You do not see it, but God uses it.

   So, when you feel that your witnessing is falling by the way; remember you already have the victory and that what we do is for God’s glory.  It is you saying thank you to God for his great favor.  Whatever you do for God, whatever you do in service to him is never in vain.  God blesses you and your work, often in ways that we do not always see.  Yet Go blesses the ones he loves, and he loves you.

Father, many times we struggle with our efforts and the results that we cannot see.  We are often discouraged by things we do not understand.  Help us to see that we are giving thanks to you for your victory that is now ours.  Thank you for our salvation and the joy that we experience.  In the precious name of Jesus our risen King we pray, amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

9-12-2020

 Good Morning All, 

       Proverbs 1:33; “but whoever listens to me will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.”

       “Will you listen to me?”  Any exasperated parent has spoken these words at least once or twice in their lifetime.  This is usually followed by, “Next time, maybe you will listen to me” as everyone gets down to clean up some mess that resulted from not listening.  I think that, for most people, starting at a very young age, we learn how to turn on and off our ears.  Just think how often someone hears something you do not want them to hear and how often they do not hear something you want them to hear.  We learn that real early and use it real often oftentimes it leads to less than desirable results.

     Listening is probably our greatest weakness.  We tend to think we know how the conversation will go so we quit listening.  Sometimes we get easily distracted and lose our focus on the one who is speaking.  Sometimes we do not like what is being said so we ignore the speaker.  We do this with our boss or co-workers; we do this with our parents or teachers, we do this with our spouse or children but, above all, we do this with God.

    It would almost seem that sin affects our ears as much as any other part of our life.  Too often, we simply fail to listen.  When we listen to God speak to us through his Word, we often quit listening.  We have heard it all before; we have heard it often enough that we can recite what we will hear.  We hear it so often that we can mumble the sounds without caring about the meaning.

    Sometimes we listen but get distracted.  The false pleasures of this world, the sinful and destructive siren call can cause us to lose our focus.  We look around at the world and think that maybe it is ok to follow it once in a while.  Everyone around us is going that way; why shouldn’t we?

    Sometimes we stop listening because we do not want to hear what God tells us.  Maybe we are not ready to forgive just yet.  Maybe we do not want to worry about our neighbor or see that what we have is truly a gift from God, a gift to share.  Maybe we do not want to hear that we are to care for one another; we prefer to be selfish.  Sometimes we simply do not want to listen.  This always leads to trouble.  It leads to pain; it leads to sorrow and hardship and it ruins relationships.

    So, our only recourse is to listen to God and to do his will.  When we fail to do so, we suffer greatly from our sinful existence.  When we listen to his Word and follow it faithfully, we are secure in our faith and secure in our world able to rest at ease because of his great grace.

Father, in your great mercy you pour out your Spirit upon us.  Lead us to listen to your Word.  Guide us to hear you as you speak.  Defend us from all harm and danger.  Lead us to live in your kingdom in service to you.  In the precious name of Jesus our risen King we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret         

9-11-2020

      Good Morning All, 

       1 Corinthians 12:31; “But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.”

    One of the things I genuinely enjoyed was coaching little kid baseball.  There is nothing purer than the excitement of a child who comes to master certain tasks.  When they start, they have a hard time hitting or throwing or catching but soon they can do it with a certain amount of skill and proficiency.  Of course, every so often, you run into a parent who sees things a little differently than you do.  The problem that I had with those parents was that they saw short term success as the only measure.  I had a long discussion with a parent who wanted her son to swing up at the baseball when he played Tee ball baseball.  “If he hits it in the air; it can be a homerun!! Don’t you want them to hit homeruns??” When I told her “no”, she was completely deflated.  Then I explained to her that swinging at the baseball like she wanted him to would only work if the ball was always stationary and sitting on a “Tee”.  When a pitched ball is swung at; you want a slightly downward motion not an upper cut.  I was trying to teach them to be real baseball players and to have skills that would serve them throughout their playing days.  I thought learning the game properly was a higher goal; something that was of greater merit than winning a Tee ball game.

    This is sort of what Paul is trying to tell the Corinthians in our verse.  The Corinthians were arguing and engaging in divisive practices because of different spiritual gifts.  Some thought highly of speaking in tongues and some spoke highly of healing and so on and so on.  Of course, the gifts that I had were better than the gifts you had and the whole debate went downhill from there.  So, Paul told them that there were higher things; far greater than the spiritual gifts they sought.  So, he told them about these higher gifts.

   Paul ends up telling of three greatest gifts, faith, hope, and love.  These are what we should desire over everything else.  Faith, because this is what gets us through today.  God gives us faith, the desire to trust in his promise of salvation, so that we can know for certainty that, whatever befalls us today, will never derail us from God’s love and his mercy.  We have hope because this is what leads us to a better tomorrow.  Hope is that anchor that we can toss out to secure us in God’s salvation.  We have hope because God’s act of salvation does not depend on you or me, it does not depend on whether you believe it or not; it always depends on God.

   Paul called love the greatest, probably because that is the one thing that will always remain.  Some day we will not need faith or hope; we will be standing side by side with Jesus in victory.  At that time, the only thing we will need or want is to love and to be loved.  These are the higher things and they are more excellent than any earthly or other spiritual gift.

Father, lead me to seek after higher things.  Lead me to seek after faith, hope, and love that I may be drawn even closer to you.  Lead me to see the excellence of your gifts which give me life and hope.  In the precious name of Jesus our risen King we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret     

9-10-2020

 Good Morning All, 

          John 20:1; “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.”

      It must have been tough that Sabbath day especially for the women.  They had stayed and watched Jesus die.  They went with Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus to bury Jesus but it was late and the Sabbath was rapidly approaching so they did a quick preparation of the body and then would return after the Sabbath to finish the task.  The wait on that Sabbath must have been hard.  Of course, according to Jewish customs, you would so no work on the Sabbath so what would you do to occupy your time and your thoughts?  Many today will wash clothes, or wash the table and do the dishes or they will sit down and write out lists of things that need to be done but if you are not to work, and all of this would constitute work, what would you do?  Then there would have been the night; probably a long and restless night and she was up early to get to the task at hand.  She was ready so early; it was still dark but off she went.

    Do you ever have times like that?  Do you ever experience times of stress and times of pressure?  How do you handle it?  Do you try and keep yourself busy and occupied and try to keep your mind off things or do you just sit and mull over what is happening?  Do you keep replaying the events or wonder what tomorrow will mean?  Have you had nights when sleep was slow in coming and then there comes that tipping point, when you have to decide that it is too late to sleep now so you might as well get up?  Do you have times like Mary Magdalene had?  Then do what Mary Magdalene did; go to Jesus.

    Mary went expecting to prepare Jesus’ body for a proper burial; what she received was a total change in her life.  You and I may come to Jesus for all the wrong reasons bur he can and will heal you and give you hope and, especially on those sleepless nights, he can give you peace if you listen to him.  When you are troubled, fearful, or lost do what Mary did; go to Jesus.  Open your heart to him, speak to him and let him hear your fear and your pain.  Do not wander the house looking for things to take your mind off your hurt; go to Jesus and let him heal the hurt that you have.

    Jesus invites all who labor or are heavy burdened to come to him.  Jesus told us that not a sparrow falls without God knowing it, so he knows your pain and fear.  He invites you to come to him and to unload this fear to him.  You do not have to stay up all night and worry; you do not have to keep on stressing about the many “what ifs?”  God has your answer; so, do not just wait up and worry and fear.  Go to Jesus so that you can be healed.

Gracious Lord, lead us to come to you.  Lead us to bring the burdens and the struggles of our life to you.  Send your Spirit of comfort and peace that we mat know the joy of the contentment that you offer us freely.  Keep us in your loving arms.  In the precious name of Jesus our risen Savior and King we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret     

9-9-2020

Good Morning All, 

         Ezekiel 33:7; “So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me.”

     As we look at the resurrection accounts in the gospels, many look for places where the accounts differ.  I find it interesting the things that are similar and even more intriguing to me is when the similarities exist even today.  One of the common elements in the resurrection accounts is one of fear.  The disciples hide for fear of the Jews.  Now before we get to irate at the disciples let’s remember that they had just watched or heard that Jesus was killed in a most horrific manner.  Their beloved teacher, their rabbi, was murdered and, for all the disciples knew, they were next on the target list.  You can almost imagine Peter and the other Galileans, recognizable by their accent and maybe dress and skin coloring, feared recognition and being executed in the same way.  They feared for their lives.  When or if you feared for your life, would you be any better?  I doubt that I would.

    Yet even today, fear seems to be a common factor for us.  We look around us and it causes us to fear.  We watch the news and see Christians around the world killed, in horrific fashions, for their faith.  We see a media and a culture that is more and more hostile toward our faith.  I read an article a few weeks ago where the author listed several jobs/occupations that Christians should not be allowed to have because “their simpleton beliefs render them unable to properly perform them.”  So, what do we do?  Many of us cower behind locked doors for fear of (you can fill in the blank).  What should we do?  Trust Jesus.

    One of the issues that I think many of us have is that we do not fully understand what God wants us to do.  We think that we have to go out and explain everything that God does, and we have to be able to clearly and concisely debate, discuss, convert and save every single man, woman and child that we meet.  That is not what God tells us.  God wants us to simply tell the world who Jesus is and why he matters to me.  If the other person denies, rejects, refuses or attacks Jesus; let them.  In our verse, our job is to warn them.  If they do not heed the warning, it is their loss.  In the next few verses, God tells us, “if you fail to warn them, it is your sin but if you warn them and they fail to hear; it is their sin.”  We have no need to fear.

    We have no need to fear our inadequacies; it is not about you or me rather it is about Jesus.  It is not about what I think you should do or live but rather it is about the relationship between man and God.  How do you stack up to God?  I am a sinner and need God’s forgiveness every single day and I trust his promise that I have that.  If the other person does not think he needs the same, well; that is his choice.  It is the wrong choice, but it is his choice.  We are only the messenger so do not fear; it is already our victory through Christ.  We have won; believe it.

Father, give me courage to speak you word.  Give me courage to give your message of hope and salvation to this broken world.  Guide me and guard me by your Holy Spirit.  In the precious name of Jesus, we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret  

9-8-2020

 Good Morning All, 

          Matthew 6:6; “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

    I remember a story about a little boy who had a hard time in school.  He was not that popular; he was not that smart, and he was not that athletic.  He did not have the newest clothes or toys and he never had any money to buy anything at the store.  Most days he would just kind of mope through the day except on Thursdays.  On Thursdays, he seemed a little more alive, a little happier with life.  He would hurry home from school because it was Thursday.  He loved Thursdays because on Thursday his mother would take the eggs she had collected into town and sold them.  After she did this, she would buy him a piece of hard candy.  When he got home, his mother would give him some lemonade and the piece of candy.  Then they would sit and talk about the day and what was happening.  Thursdays were alright; it made up for the rest of the week.

    The little boy had something to look forward to and he saw it as a time of leaving the boring and sometimes painful day behind.  He loved the quiet time with his mother.  He liked the candy and the lemonade.  He liked telling his mother about the day and how she listened and would make him laugh.  We all need times like that.  We need times when we can get away from the weight of the day.  We need some time to refresh our batteries.  For us as Christians, we have a thing that we call prayer that can serve the purpose well.

   When Jesus told his disciples to go into the room and close the door, it was not out of embarrassment or fear.  Rather it is meant to bring about our focus.  We do not need or want any distractions at this time.  This includes praying in a manner that is more designed to impress the world rather than open our heart to God.  It can be a time of great healing for us as we speak of our fears and our sorrows and though we know that Jesus isn’t a genie who grants us wishes and solves all our problems and he is not an ATM machine that simply spits out rewards for prayer. God’s plan is too big for that, and somehow it includes the hard times as well as the good times. But Jesus does promise never to leave us or forsake us, and sensing that kind of closeness in prayer can be a powerful thing for us when we to feel accepted, loved, and cared for.

    We may face struggles and pain, but we do not face them alone.  With prayer, especially if we take time to truly pray, more than a quick thank you for lunch or a short “I need” petition but rather a time of prayer that is regularly scheduled; we can feel a closeness to God that may be absent otherwise.  Regular daily prayer can train our mind to seek God and his peace and hope first and by seeking him first; we will find the contentment that we desire.

Father, we look to you for all our needs and you fill them.  Lead us by your Spirit to seek a closer time with you and a deeper sense of hope in your Word.  Lead us to know that you hear us and that you answer all our prayers.  You know the plans that you have for us and they are plans to prosper us.  Lead us to trust this promise.  In the precious name of Jesus, we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret