1-7-2025

Good Morning All,

        Psalm 42:8; “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.”

    Last night I had one of those nights.  I went to bed and went to sleep, about an hour later I woke up and that was the end of the night.  I got up and got some work done.  I have these nights sometimes; not often enough to cause problems.  I remember talking to a gentleman who told me he woke up at 3:30am almost every night. He asked if I ever did that. I told him some of my better sermons were written at that time of the day. Sometimes we have nights like this because of stress or worry; those are the nights that are the most troublesome.

    Those nights can be tough.  We are physically tired, but our mind won’t shut off and be quiet.  We lay there and replay the day’s events.  When we do this, it is rarely positive.  We tend to focus on every pain, every failure, every lost moment, and opportunity.   We lay there and feel each hurt that we experienced, and each hurt we caused.  We replay each hurtful word, each disappointment and each fear experienced.

     We lay there, tossing and turning, not resting while the cares of this day replay themselves over and over.  Our sinful nature has a grand old time punishing us with little if any sleep and with little if any rest.  Eventually, our sinful self convinces us that the struggle we face are insurmountable and that we fight it all alone.  This type of thinking will wear us out in a hurry.

    God’s gift to us is the sweet sound of the soothing lullaby of his grace.  He gives to us his blessed peace and comfort.  When we stay in communication with, when we stay in communion with him, through reading and hearing his Word and speaking to God in prayer.  He comes to us with the soothing sound of his mercy, the forgiveness of sins which he promises to us because of the redemption through Jesus.  He gives us the calming sounds of his grace where we receive the blessings which we do not deserve.  His steadfast love, that never fails love, is there for us, sustaining us with its infinite power. 

     God comes to us with his love to give us rest; the rest and the peace which the world so desperately tries to hide from us.  The world uses deceit and deception to deny us the rest and the peace which God wants us to have.  He comforts us with the soothing voice of the Good Shepherd calling us by name so that we know that we are safe within his loving arms.  God’s grace gives us hope and security better than any blanket even better than our mother’s arms.  God holds you close to him and sings to you the lullaby of peace and rest.

Dear Father, you comfort and soothe us with your Gospel reassuring sound.  Through it we hear your gentle heartbeat as we cling close to you.  Give us peace, give us rest that we may be refreshed to serve you in your kingdom.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.       

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

1-6-2025

Good Morning All,

    Isaiah 40:11; “He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.” 

    This is one of those verses that can bring about a lot of comfort to us.  Yet this is one of the verses with a “rest of the story” quality.  The first 39 chapters speak of Jerusalem’s destruction and the carrying off of the Israelites into slavery and captivity.  Think about how hard that would be to experience. 

    Imagine that you were one of those who were forced into captivity.  As you are marching away from your city it is in flames; most of the buildings are destroyed.  Many of the inhabitants are dead; either killed in the battle or they died during the siege from starvation or illness.  Every one of those who were forced to relocate and to serve as slaves to the conquerors would have known someone who had died, and a large number may have had family members who were dead.  They were marching away with great sadness, fear, and a deep sense of loss.  They would have been bewildered at the events and they probably asked why.

    We have all had times in our lives when we felt exactly like this.  We have gone through events which just left us numb.  Maybe it was the death of a loved one, maybe it was a sudden change in the way your job works, maybe a relationship changes dramatically.  Perhaps one day you got up and felt fine only to find yourself that evening in the hospital fighting for your life.  We experience these types of events, and we are left lost and confused.       

    Yet when we face these events, we do not have to face them alone; even when it seems like that is what is happening in our life.  We do not face them in a state of hopelessness.  God loves us with the unimaginable compassion that we cannot even begin to comprehend.  When we hurt, God hurts with us; when we mourn God mourns with us.  Yet far more important than this, God comforts us.  He holds us close to his chest, gently in his arms giving us the comfort which we need, which we seek at times when we are numb from fear or pain or loss.  God comes to you offering comfort.  If God offers us comfort, it means there will be times when we need it.  We do not grieve or suffer as those who have no hope.  Through our pain and suffering we must cling to our only hope, the promise of eternal life and the resurrection of the body.  With this promise comes God’s offer of comfort.  He offers us this comfort and then moves his redeemed to reach out and provide the “hands” of that comfort.  He also brings comfort to us through his Word as he speaks to us his desire to love us; his desire to comfort us; his desire to clutch us close to his bosom and comfort us the same way we comfort a crying child.  We must cling to him and to his promise that his nature is to love us and to lead us through the minefields of this life.  God gives us the comfort we so desperately seek, which we need.

Dear Father, you hold us close and comfort us with your love.  Often, we, like small children, cry and squirm and push from our comfort but you continue to hold us for we are your dear children.  We ask for your continued comfort and your undying love which is the only source of our hope.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret  

1-5-2025

Good Morning All,

      John 8:12; “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”   

    Do you ever find yourself engaged in a little “if I had only known?”  Do you ever watch the stock market or the commodity market or the housing market or the land market and think, if only I had known?  If only you had known, you would have bought stock in Apple computers right away.  You would have bought land 10 years ago.  You would have sold that house before the bubble burst, then bought it back and turned a tidy profit.  If only we had known?

    Sometimes we play this game with a more painful side effect.  Imagine those New Orleans officials who decided not to have the crash barriers up on New Year’s Eve? We all think that, but we don’t get to know.  The events of our lives are shrouded in darkness.  They are hidden from us.  The writer of Ecclesiastes compares it to living in a fog.  We all know about living or driving in a fog.  Our visibility is limited to a few feet around us and beyond that we don’t know.

    So how do we read this verse?  If Jesus is the light of the world, why isn’t everything crystal clear?  Why can’t we see everything that goes on around us and see it with clarity to understand and make sense of it?  Jesus’ light shines on our path but it is upward toward our final goal which is eternal life in heaven.  That is the light which he shines.  He shows us the way to our salvation.  This light shows us our hope; it doesn’t necessarily show us anything else.

     We go through life in the darkness or in a fog with a light that only shows us what God intends for us to see.  We may tend to think that God should show us everything so we can try to understand it.  We know that God certainly can do this, his power and sovereignty is beyond question.  What we too often overlook is the wonders of God’s grace; maybe it is more loving to us not to know what lies ahead of us.  If, as a parent, you knew, before the birth of your child, that your child would die at the age of six, what would we do?  What would the mother of the killer have done had she known the outcome? 

    These may seem easy questions but really point to a deeper truth.  Our lives are lived in a sinful corrupted world in sinful and corrupted bodies.  Through God’s grace, we may be better off not knowing which way to look.  This way we only look toward Jesus and toward our heavenly goal.  We trust God to guide us through the difficulties and the sadness.  We cling to him as our only truth in a world full of lies.  God shines the light to what we need to see, and we need to cling to that promise as being sufficient for us.

God of all the light, you shine your light so we can see our heavenly goal.  Teach us to be content with the knowledge of our salvation.  Teach us to love each other with the same love you show us.  Give us your peace, Lord.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret     

1-4-2025

Good Morning All,

      John 1:12; “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,” 

     Why did Jesus come to earth?  Why did he leave his holy temple in heaven to come down to live with lowly man?  God could have just snapped his fingers, and everything would have been changed, so why did he come to earth?

     The easiest answer is that he came to die for our sins.  This is the correct answer, but it leaves us hanging a little.  Jesus’ coming to earth in human form is part of the great story of the Bible.  Many people see the Bible as a collection of stories, some connected some not; some important some not; some of great value and some not.  The Bible is really one long narrative telling us what God is doing in our lives.

     When we read the Bible, we can read it and look for different themes or threads of the story to follow.  One of those themes is the theme of restoration.  We can read from the fall of man into sin in Genesis 3 about how God is going to restore man and his creation.  Adam and Eve have to leave the Garden of Eden; they have to work hard, suffer pain and loss, live chaotic lives, and then die.  This is not how God designed it, but it is how man chose to go.  The introduction of sin causes all our problems. 

      In order to fix this, God chooses to restore man to his rightful existence.  God sent Jesus in order to restore us to be children of God.  Think of who Adam and Eve were, who were their parents?  They had no human parents; they were children of God living in the perfect Garden in holy communion and companionship with God.  We were to participate, in an active way, with God in the caring for the created world.  Yet when we sinned, we broke this relationship, we broke away from God.

     Jesus came so that we can experience his life and death and resurrection.  These are real events which give witness to God’s incredible mercy and his unbelievable grace.  Jesus came to bring you back into the family of God.  You are declared a child of God, and we are given a promise to cling to and then we are given the faith to cling to it.  This faith doesn’t remove our struggles, but it does give us hope.  A hope that tells us that this struggle we call life isn’t all there is to the story. 

     All that the story is about is our restoration, our becoming children of God in order to receive the gift of eternal life.  So, we wait for the promise to be perfected or completed at which time our perfection will be restored, and we can walk with God and converse with God without pain or sorrow.  Why did Jesus come to earth?  He did so in order that you might have eternal life; the eternal life with him in his holy kingdom.

Dear Father in heaven, through your mercy you have made us your children.  We rejoice in the certainty of this gift.  Help us to see that your will for us is alive and active and moves us every day to live according to your will and purposes for us.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

1-3-2025

Good Morning All,

     Isaiah 41: 9b-10; “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off”; fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you.” 

    Pick and choose.  We use that phrase often.  It is a phrase that we use in a frivolous manner.  We go to the fast-food place, and we pick what we want to eat and then choose how to order it “my way.”  It seems that we pick and choose on every whim.  This makes our picking and our choosing very shallow and without much thought or plan.

    When you are choosing pizza toppings or movies to watch, being shallow isn’t that big of a deal. Yet we seem to carry this attitude over into our more personal and important areas of our lives.  We seem to have opted for choices with no concern for the consequences.

     We choose to be married and then unmarried.  We choose to love someone today but tomorrow we choose to not love someone.  Some days we choose to talk but others we choose to fight.  I think the one thing that amazes me the most is that we choose to not show respect for other people. Why can’t we talk without calling each other idiots, morons, thugs, Nazis, communists, and other names I won’t write?  When did we choose to hate? 

    For the most part, we have always elected to hate.  This fact is why so often, when we get to the end of the day, we look in the mirror and ask (or tweet or post) the question; why did I get up this morning?  Why do I go about this day only to be beaten down by the world whether the world took the form of a boss or a coworker, a spouse or a child, a teacher, or a student?  Everyone chose to dump on me and then bale on me.  The devil loves for you to think this.

    At a New Year’s Eve celebration in New Orleans, a man chose to hate. Did the devil cause that man to do what he did?  I honestly don’t know but I do know that the devil loves that it happened.  So, the question that we ask, perhaps quietly or loudly, why did God choose to just sit there?  We will never really know the answer to this.  For many, that answer is not good enough.  But God doesn’t tell us everything; He doesn’t let us know every single reason to the events of this world.  But he does tell us one thing and that one thing is what we cling to.

    God chose you to be his child.  At the end of the day (and the start and the middle) you are God’s redeemed child, and he will never forsake you.  When all the world chooses to walk all over you, God chooses to love you. The weight of the world is on our back and Jesus tells us to come to him and let him carry the load.  We don’t need to fear the worst for God promises his best; eternal life with him.

    As difficult as it is, this world and life is not all there is for us.  This time, our earthly life is but a minor spot in a life that we will live.  We need to trust God and accept his ways as true.  God has chosen you; he has chosen to give you life, hold on to that promise for that is our hope.

Dear Father in heaven, we give you thanks for the gift of life.  Father, you chose us and give us faith to choose you.  Show us the path by which we will choose to love, honor, and value one another with the love which you have for us.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.          

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

1-2-2025

Good Morning All,

     Acts 1:8; “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” 

    My evening television has included a lot of “Perry Mason” lately. He always wins the cases, and poor Mr. Burger always loses.  The courtroom scenes always hinge on a witness or two who either change their story, remember something new or show up as a last-minute surprise.  Then we get the last dramatic witness who is usually the real killer.

    Throughout the court room scene Perry Mason keeps asking for the facts, not opinions but for facts.  What are the facts that you know?  This seems to always be the salient question.  Yet that is what it means to be a witness; you state the facts that you know. You don’t guess what they mean, you simply say what you know; what you saw or heard.

      This verse represents the last words which Jesus spoke to his disciples while he was here on earth.  In it, He makes them a promise that they will receive the Holy Spirit. This is truly God’s gift to the church.  The Holy Spirit works through the church calling, gathering the believers, making them holy as they live.  The Spirit gives us the power to be the kind of witness that Jesus wants us to be.  Think of Peter; he was impetuous, hot-headed, arrogant, and yet very fearful.  Yet after Pentecost, after the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to the church, Peter boldly proclaimed his witness of Jesus.  The gift of the Spirit meant everything to him.

     The gift of the Spirit means everything to us as well.  The Spirit continually calls us back to the Gospel, gathers us together as the redeemed children of God, enlightens us with the gifts of the Spirit and builds us into the disciples which Jesus wants us to be.  God has created stuff for you to do.  He has stuff for you to do where you are right now.  He has given you the talents, skills and gifts which are necessary for you to be that witness.

     Just as the disciples were witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.  Ours is similar.  We start in our neighborhood and in our family.  We start with those closest to us.  We usually do this witnessing by ourselves or with one or two others.  It is evident in the way we live our life, the way we treat each other, the way we love one another.  As our circle expands to our state and region, we continue to witness with the power of the Spirit leading us.  Here we usually join together with many Christians to give a strong witness.  Yet sometimes, the opportunity will arise where you can impact one person whom you have never met before and may never see again.  God has stuff for you to do places for you to be a witness to his Gospel. We continue to be led by the Sprit as we try and witness to the ends of the earth usually aiding those whom God has called to go there.  We are his witnesses, given the power of the Holy Spirit to change the world.

Dearest Father in heaven, you have called us to be witnesses to the saving grace of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Lead us to be powerful witnesses and to touch the lives of those around us, especially those most in need.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

1-1-2025

Good Morning All,

    Romans 3:20; “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

    So, it is a new year. It is 2025 and we are supposed to make our resolutions. We are to be nicer, more fit, eating better, getting more meaning rest, spending quality time with our family, strive for a better financial outcome, and spend more time reading our Bible and going to church. Good luck with all, or any of, that.

    There is a reason that the second Friday of January is called “Quitter’s Day” or “Quitter’s Friday.” That is how long most people who make resolutions actually keep them. We have great desire, we have motivation, we desire the outcome; why do we fail when it comes to keeping our resolutions? There are many varied psychological, and sociological reasons. But there is also a theological lesson in our resolution making debacles. We cannot keep the Law. Once we set the resolution, we become law based and law oriented and we are by nature, abhorrent of the law. We bristle at it. Even people who are sticklers for keeping the law are usually more concerned that someone else is not keeping the law while they are keeping the law.

    When we make our resolutions, we are admitting (confessing) that we are sinners. We fall short. I am not nice, I am not fit, I am not loving toward my family, I fall short in my faith. The Law reveals that to us, it does not fix it. Once we fall off of our resolution wagon, we fail, miserably. So, what are we to do?

    We will probably have far more success if we take a grace-based approach. Since Jesus has taken on our sin, we are justified by His atoning salvation. Should we be nicer? Absolutely, but when we fail, it is not the end of the world. God calls upon us to repent, that is to confess our sinfulness, and to turn away from this sinfulness. So, we should apologize to the person we were not nice to and move forward. When I try to eat healthier, but I succumb to the triple cheeseburger, fries and chocolate malt, it simply means to get up and start over. A resolution-based life (law-oriented) will always end in failure because we will always fall short. A grace-based life is one where we strive to be better, but when we fail, we are forgiven and encouraged to try again.

    God knows we are sinful and are incapable of keeping any law perfectly. This is why it was necessary for Jesus to come in the first place. If we were capable of keeping the Law, Jesus’ death would have been unnecessary. Yet because of our weakness, God’s mercy moved Him to bring salvation to us and that is a truth that lasts year to year, decade to decade, lifetime to lifetime. God’s love moves Him to redeem you and me so that we may be His children in His kingdom. Good luck with your resolutions! Yet, when you fall, remember God is there to always pick you up and to give you peace in His Name by His forgiveness of your sins.

Gracious Father, we fall short of your Law, for this we are truly sorry. Give us the courage and strength to walk in Your ways so that we may know your peace. Guide us as we go. In the precious Name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret