12-7-2024

Good Morning All,

           John 10:10b, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” 

    What are some things that are abundant in your life?  What do we have that is lavished on us?  Those can be tough questions.  Most of us would be slow to answer these questions.  What do we have abundantly?  Maybe it is the beauty of nature around us.  Maybe we would say it is in the peace and quiet that we live in.  But would we say that we live life abundantly?  We tend to think in small terms.  We tend to see things in small increments.  We tend to think that God gives us what we need and only what we need.  But Scriptures tell us something entirely different.  We are told that we receive the gifts lavishly and abundantly.

     In this verse Jesus is telling his disciples that we may have life and have it abundantly.  That is quite a statement but what does it mean?  What does it mean to have it abundantly?  It is interesting how throughout Scriptures we read different phrases that describe the life that God wants for us.  It is called abundant; we are lavished by God’s gift; it is poured out on us; we receive it generously; among others but we can see what we have.  But what does that mean to us?

    We are God’s redeemed children, and we will always have abundant life.  Yet it always seems as though we live as though we don’t.  Too often, we live as a morose group of people.  No one should ever be happier than we are.  We have the certainty of salvation given to us.  We don’t have to go work for it; it is given to us.  We have been given life and we have it abundantly.

    God blesses us as his children at every turn.  Even when we think we are missing it; it is all around us.  God gives to us the love of family, of Christian brothers and sisters, the love of the church, the comfort of the Gospel in all its forms, the written, the spoken and the Gospel which we take in through the sacraments.  We have abundant life, so let’s live like it.

    God gives us life and he gives us the gifts of this life abundantly.  We have more than we can ever measure.  The devil will always try to convince you that you don’t have that much, and you don’t have as much as your neighbor.  Then the devil will try to convict you with the fear that God doesn’t love you.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  God shows his love for us through the cross and the empty tomb.  God continues to show us that love through the Holy Spirit building the church and keeping it safe.  We live in the lap of God the Father.  We have the gift of abundant life so go out and enjoy it.  Live a life of happiness and contentment in God’s lap.  Receive his gifts and enjoy.

Dear Father in heaven, you lavishly pour out your Spirit on us.  You give us life and give it abundantly.  Help us to see it, to live it and to enjoy it as a gift from you.  We ask you to continue to shower us with your gifts and guide us to share those gifts with those around us.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

12-6-2024

Good Morning All,

    1 Peter 5:8; “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” 

    I remember watching a show on one of those nature channels about lions hunting.  They are kind of lazy and “cheap shot” hunters.  A group of three or four would hunt down a wounded, sickly, little wildebeest and have it for dinner.  The lions chased this poor critter until it stopped.  It was all played out.  When the camera zoomed in on the little wildebeest, you could see it panting with the saliva dripping off its mouth.  You could see it pant so hard that you watched the chest as it breathed as it pumped in and out. The thing about this that I found intriguing was that the lions did not go in for the kill right away.  They slowly circled the wildebeest.  Each pass around the wildebeest was closer than the last.  They did this until one of the lions attacked and killed the wildebeest. 

    The devil is that way to us.  The devil looks for our weaknesses and then tries to attack and exploit them.  It will run us until we are about to drop and then he slowly moves in for the kill.  The devil seeks someone to devour.  For many people, even many Christians, there is very little fear of the devil.  Many people back away from the idea of a devil.  This is in part doing to our unwillingness to call “sin” a “sin.”  If we don’t call it “sin” but we call them “errors” or “lapses” then it is just a “character flaw” and not the devil at work. 

    The devil is defeated but he is still out there.  It is like the football team that is behind by 40 points with 2 minutes in the game.  The game is lost by the devil, but he keeps playing the game.  The devil keeps coming after us.  His weapons are limited but his ability to seduce, to beguile, to deceive, and to turn us from God’s grace at every opportunity is still great.     

      Always remember that the devil is very real. Unfortunately, you dear Christian, are the ones in his sights.  The lost and the unbeliever, the devil already has.  The glorified saints in heaven are beyond his reach.  That leaves us.  The devil favorite tools are doubt, worry and guilt.  Any of these tools is effective, but together they are almost unbearable.  At least for us.

      This is where you have to rely on Jesus as the answer to your problems, as the Redeemer that we need.  Just like those lions didn’t attack stronger wildebeest or ones that were part of the herd so to the devil won’t attack when we are close to Jesus.  God, in his mercy, guards us from the devil.  Especially when we are tempted to our limit.  God defends us from the attacks of the devil.  He loves us with a father’s heart and will clutch you safely in his arms.  Stay close to the Lord for he will protect you.

Dearest Father, your mercies continue to flood over us and overwhelm us, we pray for the families of those in the vehicle accident and for the survivor who is in the hospital that you comfort the families and bring peace to their hearts.  We also pray for our elected and re-elected officials that they may seek to govern through you looking to you for their wisdom.  Move among us with your Spirit that we too, may be safe from the devil.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray.  Amen          

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

12-5-2024

Good Morning All,

    2 Chronicles 20:15; “Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s”. 

    Don’t you just dread some of those days?  You know “those days.”  You get up and the alarm goes off at the wrong time, you go outside and there is a flat tire on the car, or you go out the door and a cow is staring back at you (and not supposed to).  Your kids tell you that the car they drive makes a funny sound and you see there is no oil in the engine.  You know “those types of days.”  Sometimes it just can get almost comical; you almost wonder what can go wrong next.

     Sometimes those days are not funny; they are downright painful.  We look out and see a great horde of pain coming our way.  Think of the folks where the lake effect snowstorm struck this past week, they get snow and wind; no electricity or water or a warm place to stay.  I would call that a horde of trouble.  Sometimes the troubles build but strike all at once.  Maybe you are caught between two feuding relatives, and you are expected to pick sides.

    Maybe your spouse is less attentive, maybe your job is less secure, maybe your health is not as good as it used to be.  One at a time, we could deal with them but when they come as a great horde, all at once, it is overwhelming.  We can be swept away easily when the great horde strikes.

    The devil loves to use great hordes.  He loves it when we feel weak and deflated.  Our resistance is down, and we are very susceptible to doubt.  We are very susceptible to hearing the question, “did God really say?”  That question that the devil asked Eve to create doubt instead of faith to create questioning instead of trusting God.  The devil always wants you to look out and see that great horde on the horizon.  The devil will always tell you look at all the things that could go wrong, look at all the trouble that could happen to you.

    But God quietly tells us to relax.  Don’t let the worries about tomorrow get you down.  I’ll take care of tomorrow just as I’ll take care of today.  The fight with the devil and his horde belongs to God and not to you.  You can look out and worry but you don’t need to.  God’s grace will keep us safe.  The ill winds of this world will still blow but we need not fear or worry.  God has promised to be with us and to lead us through it.  We will face the great horde, but we don’t face it alone and we don’t face it on its terms.  We face it in God’s care and in his comfort and support.  The battle is his and he won it on Calvary.  He declared it with the open tomb, and he delivers it to you and me through Baptisms. 

     We receive God’s blessing for this life according to his mercy.  The battle he fought for us is won.  We need not fear the great horde; God has destroyed it.  We live by his grace.

Gracious Lord, you have defeated the horde which comes to destroy us.  Yet we still look on it with fear.  Give us the strength to face our fears and realize that they are not the victors but are the vanquished.  They exist so that our faith may grow, and your light may shine.  In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.      

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

12-4-2024

Good Morning All,

     Lamentations 3:24; “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.”   

    We have become a society that wants everything in a “one stop has it all” lifestyle.  We want to get our car serviced while we get our teeth checked and our kids get their eyes tested.  When we get done, we’ll get groceries and take supper home; all under one roof.  We have come to demand this type of service.  We expect our every want to be satisfied and quickly.

     We do the same with God.  Oh, we may pray to God, we may bring our petitions to him but is it prayer or a shopping list.  You know the prayer.  “Dear God, Fix my kids, straighten out my spouse, do something about my boss and that co-worker, give me a pay raise, give me patience and give it to me now.”  Too often, we think this is a prayer.  We view God as our celestial Wal-Mart ready to deliver all our wants and now. 

    The thing we miss is that this type of prayer; actually, this type of life; misses God’s promised blessings in our life.  This type of “demand prayer” leaves us empty, wallowing in a muddy shallow of selfishness and hollow discontentment.  When we take this attitude; we rob our lives of some of God’s greatest blessings.  We blur the line between God’s plan for our life and our desire for our life.  We tell God want we demand and how we demand it and then expect Him to intervene on our behalf on our timeline.  All the while we are stressed and distressed because things aren’t going to our plan.

    We fail to see that it is not God’s presents that matter it is his presence.  God lives actively in our lives offering to us a true hope.  Too often we get caught up in our consumer society and miss God’s love. 

    Our verse tells us that the Lord is my portion.  It doesn’t say part of my portion but the whole portion.  We are distracted cravers when we expect our people, places, and things to fill our hearts as only God can. God loves us so much. Why do we forget this all the time? His plan is perfect, and we can trust Him. He knows our needs and desires. When we seek Him as the answer instead of for the answer, God enables us to rest in confidence that He's working on our behalf and in our best interest, to bring glory to Himself through our lives.

     So, as we go forth into this season of Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Let us remember that God is our portion.  He is the only one who can fill our heart with true hope, true comfort and true peace.  So, let’s set our lists, our demands aside and seek God, seek his love, seek his peace.  Only when we finally let go of our goals and cling to his promise by faith will we have true happiness.  Remember his mercies.  Relish in his love and receive his portion as your fullness.

Dearest Father, your mercy is new to us every day.  Too often we seek our own goals and desires and place our wants ahead of your grace.  Forgive us when we do so.  Give us strength to live our lives with you as our portion, with you as our wholeness.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray.  Amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret    

12-3-2024

  Good Morning All,

     Mark 6:34; “When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.”

   This verse occurs shortly before the feeding of the 5000.  Jesus and his disciples were taking a break from their ministry work.  The people around saw Jesus and began to gather together on shore where his boat was going to land.  There were thousands and thousands of people.  The feeding of the 5000 only counted men who were fed.  It doesn’t count women, children, those who went home early; it doesn’t count the people who “don’t count.”  Jesus looked out on the people as if they were sheep without a shepherd.  Sheep without a shepherd don’t know where to go and not to go.  A flock with no shepherd would have been battered, bruised, bleeding, hungry, thirsty, and completely lost.  The sheep would have been cut up from the attacks of wild animals, emaciated from a lack of food and water.  These people weren’t just gathering for a picnic; they weren’t a beaten down and beaten-up group of souls.

    One of the reasons that I like this verse is the part where it says “and he had compassion on them;” I think that line sums up Jesus both in his earthly ministry and his eternal ministry.  The word for compassion in Greek is “splagchnizomai” and it means to literally have your innards turn and twist and come out.  When you say the word properly, it feels like that is what is happening.  It means more than pity or sympathy.  It is that “kicked in the stomach” feeling you get when you see or hear or experience something painful.  It is that feeling that makes your knees weak and your eyes blurry.  It is, for a moment, living it out in our own life.

   Jesus looked out on all those people and that is what he felt, a pain that not only hurt but a pain that leads to action.  In Matthew’s version of this passage, Jesus heals many of their illnesses.  Jesus not only saw the pain, experienced the pain but then did something to alleviate the pain.  This is where, too often, Christians in the US, miss what faith is.  In our antiseptic PC world, Christianity is a messy, dirty business.  You have to get your hands dirty.  You have to see things that aren’t always pleasant.  You have to experience things that are messy.  Sometimes life is just plain ugly.  The death of someone way too early, sicknesses, diseases, broken and destroyed relationships; Jesus calls us to get in there and get dirty.

    The truly wondrous part of this is that Jesus wants you and me to do it because he did it and does it and will do it forever.  Jesus came to this earth and got right down in the messiest parts to reach and to save.  He does the same in our lives, usually with family and friends, and he wants us to do the same.  So go out and get dirty and sweaty; have compassion, have “splagchnizomai,” for those in need of God’s mercy the most.

Father of mercy, you shower us with your grace beyond our comprehension and you have compassion on us.  Break our hearts when we see, hear or experience others in pain.  Lead us to be your arms of comfort, of healing, and of consolation.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret         

12-2-2024

Good Morning All,

     Mark 16:15; “And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” 

     This is Mark’s version of the “Great Commission.”  It is part of the direction and encouragement that Jesus gave to his disciples.  But did you ever think about what this means?  What does it mean to proclaim the Gospel?

     To many of us it is when the preacher stands up in front of the church and delivers the sermon.  This is, hopefully, an accurate event.  We certainly hope that the gospel is preached in the sermon.  But this is just a small portion of the Gospel.  We also include the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion as ways that the Gospel is preached.  We also see the Gospel preached when we receive the forgiveness of sins in the absolution. 

     These are accurate examples of the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus, the good news about the promise of God to forgive our sins.  We receive the comfort and everything that provides comfort- everything that offers the favor and grace of God to those who have transgressed the law- is the Gospel.  Yet there is one thing about this that is missing.  For most of us, we see this “mission of the church” as the other guy’s job.  We usually hire a pastor to do this work.  We give money to missions so that someone else can go “do missions.”  We like to think that we are being supportive and doing our part by being the people behind the people preaching the Gospel.  We like to think that we do everything we can to support those on the front lines as it were.  The problem with this is there are only front lines!!

     We are all on the front lines of preaching the Gospel.  There is still another way which we preach the Gospel and that is through the mutual conversations and consolations that we share with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ and with those others we come into contact with.  Jesus tells us that wherever two or three of you are gathered together there he is in the midst of them, not on the edges or the periphery but in the middle.  We all preach the Gospel every time we offer comfort to our friends and neighbors, near and far, and share with them the hope- the hope that the promise of God gives to us.  When we offer the comfort of God’s grace and mercy to others; we are preaching the Gospel.  This is part of the “as you are going about your day, make disciples” approach to witnessing your faith. 

    We don’t need to set aside time to share the Gospel with those we meet; we do it every time we talk to them, listen to them, offer them a shoulder, offer them a cold glass of water or something to eat when they are hungry.  We proclaim the Gospel in ways that we often don’t even realize showing love and kindness to all around.  So go and live your life proclaiming God’s love and mercy to all you meet.

Dear Father in heaven, your mercies are new to us every day and continue to overwhelm us with the depth of your love.  Give us the courage to preach the Gospel to the whole world that it too may know your love and mercy.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret     

12-1-2024

 Good Morning All,

     “Matthew 11:28; “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” 

    One of the more frequent themes of music is the plight of the working man.  Tennessee Ernie Ford, John Fogerty, Merle Haggard, even Oliver Anthony sang about the plight of the working man.  They sang to tell of working hard, barely hanging on, other people living off of our work; about a system that is stacked against us so that we can’t get ahead.  The plight of the man who carries a heavy burden in life, who is boned tired every night and often wakes up exhausted the next day still stiff and sore from the day before.  We often see the image of a man carrying a heavy pack on his back, all hunched over, stumbling, from the weight he bears.

    That is the image that Jesus wants us to have when we read this verse.  All those who labor and are heavy laden; all you who work hard every day, all of you who are totally exhausted from the demands of the day; come to me and I will give you rest.  The thing we want to remember is that this isn’t about physical labor; it is about spiritual labor.  It is about confessing our sins.

     When Jesus first spoke these words to his disciples, they were living under the law as interpreted by the Scribes and the Pharisees.  This led to a very work-oriented path for forgiveness. Under the Pharisees, if you were a sinner, you had to make financial restitution, at the temple, and then you had to keep the law or repeat this procedure.  Well, as you can envision, the cost of a “proper” sacrifice was high and available only from the Pharisees.  This made them rich and feared for the cost was very arbitrary.  Often, the hardworking man barely made enough to live on, the burden of paying for this sacrifice was too much.  So, to the man who tried to be faithful to the teaching of his church, he was left with little hope. When it was time to do a sacrifice to atone (or pay) for those sins, he had to buy the “proper” sacrificial animal from the Pharisees.  You can see how this is a losing proposition. 

     The devil tries to convince you of this same tactic.  The guilt that we feel after we sin is the devil trying to goad us into carrying that sin with us all the time.  He is weighing us down with the burden of paying for it. He wants you to carry it so he can use that sin to try and separate you from God.  He wants you to struggle and battle all day long, get no rest at night and then tomorrow he will add some more guilt, some more weight to that pack on your back.

    To this Jesus tells us come; come if you are heavy with burden, heavy with the weight of the guilt of sin, and Jesus will give you rest.  That is what confession of sins is about.  We are not telling God anything he doesn’t know when we confess our sins.  The confession of sins is about freeing yourself from the guilt of sin.  We take these sins and say, “Father, these are burdening me down please take them from me.” This is about having the burden taken from us, by Jesus, so that we may have true rest.

Dear Father in heaven, you call us through your Son to unload our burden and to receive from you your holy rest.  We are often too slow to hear these words of comfort, and we carry the burdens of guilt that rob us of your grace.  Give us strength to come to you and receive rest.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor