10-17-2025

Good Morning All,

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

         It is interesting to study our life and culture by looking at our music.  One of the most common themes, one that goes from the earliest American music until today; is the idea of being tired.  We are tired of work; we are tired of war; we are tired of being excluded and marginalized.  It is easy to feel tired.  We live in a culture and lifestyle that demands so much that most people are often tired.  We also live in a culture where “enough” never is.  We always want more.

    Our culture, our world and our sinful desire drive us to a point of exhaustion.  The issue is that because of our sinful nature, we are no longer content.  We are restless and demanding more.  This desire goes all the way back to Eve when she was content with living in God’s perfect paradise.  She wanted to be like God.  She was restless and seeking more.  Soon she was tired; tired from her desire which was not for God but for herself.  She, and Adam, soon became weary of the weight of their sinful desires.

   Abel lost his life because of sinful desire and selfishness.   Abraham’s desire for a son led him to try and bypass God.  This led to family strife that, in many ways, still exists today.  David’s desire for another man’s wife led to his exhaustion as the prophet Nathan called him out on his sin.  The list in Scriptures is almost endless.  Sinful desire leads to striving for things that are either unattainable or of no value to our existence as God’s people.

    This is why we are always exhausted; the devil never lets us rest.  He is always telling us that we need more and more and that what we have is either old, worn out or out of date.  He says this about our relationships and our possessions.  He wants us chasing after nightmares that he disguises as dreams.  All we have is pain, suffering and that backbreaking tiredness that leaves us exhausted.

    Yet God gives us hope.  He gives us rest.  Rest in him that is completely unlike anything that the world offers.  When we rest in God’s grace, we have contentment and we have true peace.  The restlessness of the world can be put away if we trust God’s grace to protect us.  The devil will always try and cause us to be restless but God desires that we live in peace and harmony with him.  Peace was the promise of the angel that heralded Jesus’ birth.  Peace is the gift we have when we live by faith in God’s promise to us.  We have peace with God and with peace we have rest.

Father of all mercy, we stand before you a tired and worn-out people.  Because of our sin we have no rest.  Yet in your wonderful mercy you forgive us and give us rest.  Be with those who are still aching with the pain of no peace in their life.  Guard them with your Spirit and bring them to know your true peace which we find only in Jesus.  In His precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret     

10-16-2025

Good Morning All,

           Psalm 23:4; “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

      Any type of action movie, whether it is a western, or a war movie, or a science fiction, or a murder mystery seems to have a crucial scene in it where the good guys have to pass through a narrow passage with the enemy on both sides.  They do it because safety awaits at the end of the passage.  I remember a scene from one western.

    It had the cavalry troop riding in the southwest part of the US.  I think they were looking for Geronimo.  As they got about halfway through the pass, hundreds of Indians lined the top wall of the pass on both sides.  The walls of the canyon were too steep so the soldiers kept riding through the pass while the Indians looked down from above.  Of course, there is always the one new recruit who is petrified with fear.  There seems to always be an old, grizzled sergeant (usually Irish or Scottish) who keeps telling the young recruit to be “steady, laddie” as they ride through the valley.

    In many ways, this is how our life is.  We travel through that valley with the enemies all around us waiting to attack.  A major part of that attack is the wait.  The wait puts fear in our heart and that is part of the devil’s scheme is to put fear in our heart.  Fear and trepidation are a normal response to death.  No one wants to die.  Even Jesus didn’t want to die, three times he asked the Father to “remove this cup (suffering and death).” He died willingly but not necessarily wantingly.

    Yet he did die.  He did pass through that valley of the shadow of death and he came out victorious.  He came through the valley with the victor’s crown.  He came through with the victor’s crown and he gives it to you.  We have the victor’s crown waiting for us at the end of the valley.  The place where there is complete safety and peace.  Heaven waits for us at the end of the valley; but we will go through the valley.

    Yet we don’t go alone and we don’t go where there is no path.  Jesus goes with us as he has already gone before us.  We are never alone; we never face this battle by ourselves.  Jesus goes with us every step of the way.  His love and his promise of salvation will lead the path as we go.  We do not have to fear the enemies that surround us; they cannot destroy us.  They cannot contain us.  They will not defeat us.  The victory is ours and Christ has guaranteed it with his blood bought redemption.  We are his and we have his victory.  He is our comfort, our hope, and our shield.

Gracious heavenly Father, as we go through the valley of the shadow of death we have nothing to fear.  For us death is but a gateway to your heavenly throne.  Give us the strength to trust in your grace and to be comforted when that time comes.  Give comfort to those around us who fear death and do not know what is at the end of the valley.  Keep us in your arms.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret     

10-15-2025

Good Morning All,

          Nahum 1:7; “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him.”

       In any military campaign, one of the key parts is to have a base or stronghold from which you can operate.  It is the place where the supplies are kept, where the healing of the wounded take place, where the strategy takes place and where the troops can fall back to in order to regroup and then begin a new attack.  One of the most critical and important parts of a successful battle is the stronghold from which it unfolds.

    You and I, as Christians, are engaged in a war.  This is not the sort of cultural war that we read about on TV.  This isn’t a battle about morals or mores; it is a battle for the souls of believers everywhere.  Believers are under constant attack from the devil.  He launches his attacks of lies deception, fear, and doubt.  The attacks are real and aimed right at us.

    Many doubt that they are under attack.  They think they are immune to the devil’s arrows.  Yet the truth is believers are under constant attack.  The devil cannot attack the saints in heaven and the unbelievers are already in the devil’s camp.  The only battle is over believers.

    We are in a battle and we need a stronghold.  God enables us to do battle.  He arms us with the sword, the helmet, the breastplate; all we need to do battle.  These are vital but no soldier can fight 24 hours a day, seven days a week and survive.  He needs to be restocked, replenished, and rejuvenated.  He needs a stronghold and that is what God is and that is what he supplies.  It is in this stronghold where we can heal, where we are fed and nourished, where we can retreat when the battle is too great.  It is the place to regroup.  God gives this to us in the form of His holy Church.

    It is there, in the gathering of the faithful with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that we find our place of solace.  This is where God nourishes us with his Word and his sacraments.  This is where we go to for comfort and strength.  God’s Spirit works through the Church.  God uses earthly elements to deliver his compassion and love for us.  He uses water connected to His Word for Baptism and he uses bread and wine connected to His Word for Holy Communion.  He uses our fellow Christians to be his physical arms and ears to hold and comfort, to encourage and inspire.  God provides for us a stronghold and it is our refuge.  He knows our needs and our fears and gives us the tools to fight and the place to rest.  It is in Him who we can trust.

Gracious and wonderful Father, our battles are long and hard.  We are under constant attack from the devil and the world.  Keep us strong and fit for battle.  Guide us by your Spirit that we may withstand the arrows that are fired at us.  Be with those who are under attack and bring them through safely.  Use us to help comfort and nourish them, to help them strengthen once again.  Keep us safe within your mighty arms.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret    

10-14-2025

Good Morning All,

               Psalm 103:8; “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

      I remember the cartoon character Popeye.  He was always doing battle with either Bluto or Brutus depending on the age of the cartoon.  He was always defending his girlfriend (goilfriend?) Olive Oyl.  Bluto or Brutus would always be trying some scheme to get Olive Oyl away from Popeye and eventually Popeye would utter his tag line, “that’s all I can stands; I can’t stands no more!” he would then eat his can of spinach and the beat the tar out of Bluto or Brutus.  Popeye was always a kind-hearted, happy-go-lucky kind of guy until Bluto or Brutus pushed him too far then he became very angry indeed.

     Maybe you know someone who is like Popeye.  They are calm for the most part but when they get angry, they really get angry.  It usually blows over fairly quickly but for that time being it is pretty intense.  In some ways this is how Scriptures describes God.  He is “slow to anger.”  It takes a lot for God to get angry.  In Psalm 30:5 we are told that “his anger is but a moment.”  Rather we see that God, by nature is loving and merciful.  He becomes angry but he is love.

    So, what does that mean to us?  A Baylor University study found that half of the Christians in the United States view God as a wrathful and vengeful being.  Nothing is farther from the truth.  It is the very nature of God; that is this is his make up or essence, to love us.  It is his nature to show us his mercy and his kindness.  This is what he wants to show us.  This is evident in the phrasing where his anger is short but his love is eternal.  God by nature loves you.

    So, as we look at the life and crucifixion of Jesus, we don’t do so as someone who is looking at an angry God who will seek retribution because our sins caused him to kill his Son Jesus.  That is not what we see; we see a loving God; one who loves you so much that he willingly and lovingly died for you so you can live.  That is what we see.  As now as we carry the weight of sin, we can go to God willingly and with joy to confess our sin and be freed of the guilt of sin.  God has forgiven us; it is his nature of love for us.  His love allows us to come to him freely and often with our cries of sorrow or pain because he loves us and wants us to be healed.

    Thus, we do not have to timidly and fearfully approach God, we can do so with the confident knowledge that he forgives us and wants us back as his dear children.  When God called to Adam in the garden, “where are you?” it was more of a calling to return than a question of positioning.  Because of his love God calls to you and calls you back to his family and back to the loving grace that he has for you.  God loves you and he always will.  His desire, his nature is for you to be his child.

Father of all mercy, your love lifts us and lifts us even higher.  Through the wonders of your love, you sent Jesus to redeem us and to bring us back into your family.  Give us the great comfort in the knowledge that it is your love that moves you and that we can find refuge in your mercy.  Guard us by your grace.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

10-13-2025

Good Morning All,

        Isaiah 26:4; “Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.”

     It happened when one of my sons was in junior high.  He was having trouble with a math problem.  It was one of those story problems and they are usually more problem than story.  The correct answer was in the back of the book; all he had to do was show how to get the answer using the information given.  It was a struggle.

     We worked on it for a couple of hours.  We just couldn’t make all the numbers work.  Since we had the answer; we just started to try different random combinations of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing to try and get the answer.  We were never even close.  We got the rest of them but this one truly had us stumped.  We knew his grade would be fine as we were only wrong on this one problem but it was aggravating that we couldn’t figure it out.  My son was frustrated and I was as well; we should have been able to figure it out.

     When he came home from school the next day, he couldn’t wait to tell what had happened.  It turned out that book had an error in it and part of the problem was missing.  Part of the equation was missing so we would never have figured it out.  We felt both relieved and even more frustrated because we never had a chance to get it right.  It just goes to show you can’t leave something vital out of the equation or else you will never get the right answer.

      That is the trouble with a lot of people today.  They leave something out of their equation; they often leave God out.  They look at the battles of their lives and they try and figure out how to solve them.  They add drugs and alcohol here, they subtract faith there and they divide from their family over there and all this does is multiply their struggles.  They leave God out of the equation and then wonder why nothing ever comes out to the right answer.

     Part of the problem is that, like the textbook, we leave God completely out often trying to leave Him at church where we can pick Him up next time we go.  There are many who like to keep God bottled in and left in the church so that they are not bothered by Him during the rest of the week.  The problem is that the rest of the week is where our struggles occur.  They occur at work, or at the doctor’s or around the kitchen table.  The rest of the week is where we need God in our calculating the most.

     God desires to be part of your solution.  He gives us the hope of everlasting life and the comfort and consolation for today.  He wants us to have peace.  He wants us to have abundant life and to live with the total contentment that gives us the serenity to wait eagerly for our lord’s return.  Place your trust in God and your problems will have solutions.

Wondrous Father, in you we place our trust and confidence.  It is through your grace that the struggles of today seem less harmful and less stressful.  Guide us by your Spirit to place our faith in you.  We ask that you be with those who are struggling at this time and the lives that don’t add up.  Move them by your Spirit, use our hands and our voices to reach out to them and to being them into the certainty of your eternal hope and love.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret   

10-12-2025

Good Morning All,

           1 Corinthians 13:13; “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

     It has probably been a school yard argument for as long as there have been school yards.  “My dad is smarter than your dad” or “My dad is richer than your dad” or “My mom is prettier than your mom.”  School yard bragging about who is better, faster, stronger has been going on for ages.  It is that as we get older, we outgrow it, don’t we?

    That was the problem that the Apostle Paul was facing in the church at Corinth.  The church had divided itself among different factions who claimed to have certain gifts from the Spirit and that the gift they had was the best gift of all.  Some claimed that speaking in tongues we the greatest gift; some thought it was healing and some thought it was preaching.  So, they argued back and forth and did a lot of damage to the church.  Their infighting made their evangelism almost dry up.

    So, Paul goes through all of chapter 12 telling them that it takes all kinds of gifts and talents to make the church work just like it takes many different body parts to make the body work.  That is the background for 1 Corinthians 13, “the love chapter” is really Paul criticizing and correcting one of his churches.

    It is always interesting listening when you ask people why Paul said that the greatest of these is love.  You would be inclined to think that faith would be the greatest.   After all faith is an element in our salvation, as in “through faith.”  Yet Paul chose love over faith and over hope something that he had said wouldn’t put us to shame.  Why did Paul choose love?

    Paul chose love because love is what you give to others.  Love is how you react to others.  Faith and hope are things that God gives to you so that you will stand tall and firm until Christ returns.  Love is given away.  Love is what causes us to come to another person’s aid.  This is why Paul describes love in the terms that he uses earlier in the chapter.  Love is patient, love is kind, love bears all things.  These are actions we take for other people.  Faith is for our own good; hope is for our own good.  We may share them with others whom we love but faith and hope are personal while love can only be shared.

    So, the Spirit, through Paul, tells us to love one another, bear one another’s burdens.  Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, bring comfort to the dying and consolation to the suffering.  This is love and this is why Paul claims that it is the greatest of these.  Because love best emulates Jesus.  For God so loved the world; something God did for you so pass it on.

Father of all love, in you we see love in its most perfect form.  You loved us enough to send your only son to die for us.  Here we see love.  Help us to show this love to those around us.  Help us by your Spirit to love as you have loved us.  Be with those who do not feel the love that you have for them.  Help them as they travel the way of their life and guide them back into your grace.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret    

10-11-2025

Good Morning All,

           Romans 5:5; “and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

        I always like to watch a movie where our heroes face a situation that seems hopeless.  Most westerns have a time when our heroes are short of water and there is no water in sight.  Most war movies have a time when the heroes are running out of bullets.  Most ocean or water movies have a time when the boat or raft is about to sink.  Most romantic movies have a time when the heroes think they will never see each other again.  We watch movies where it looks hopeless but, in the end, everything works out.  I think most of us do this because we wish real life was like the movies; everything turns out the way we want it to.

    Yet the real world doesn’t always go that way.  The good guy doesn’t always get the girl, the cavalry doesn’t always appear in the nick of time, sometimes the boat sinks.  That is the real world; we know this because at one point in time we have all experienced this.  We have had loved ones die, relationships break, jobs lost, health broken.  In the movies, the good guys would not die, the relationships are amazingly restored, jobs saved and health returns.  But only in the movies.

    This is what happens in a broken and sinful creation.  Sin introduced chaos to an orderly system and death was the result.  So, the devil keeps telling us that there is no hope.  Most of the world agrees with him.  Most of the false religions of the world offer little in the way of hope.  They tend to have a fatalistic and fearful tale to tell.  Yet we don’t.

    God gives us hope.  God pours his love on us through the Holy Spirit because of his love for us.  God poured out his heart for us by having Jesus die for our sins and then raise again as a sign of the acceptance of that death but also to give us hope.  For as Christ rose from the dead so will we.  We have been given the complete victory over death and the devil.  They will never completely win.  We will rise again and we will live with a perfected, transformed body that is perfect.  We have the victory; God guarantees it.

    What a wonderful promise this is!!  All those people whom we have loved and looked so ravaged by disease and death will be perfect and we will live with them in God’s perfect garden.  All things are perfect.  God’s mercy gives us this hope.  So, as we wait, we do so with the confidence of God’s grace to sustain us, sustaining us until that time comes when Jesus returns and completes his total destruction and ends death’s reign forever.  That is our hope; death will not win.  All believers will live in eternal glory with Jesus in his wondrous kingdom with the perfected and transformed body which will never experience pain or sorrow, death, or disease.  We are victors; we have hope.

Father, through your wonderful mercy you sent Jesus to give us hope.  You have given to us the victory that Jesus earned for us.  We ask that you strengthen all those who feel as though they have no hope.  Keep us mindful of your mercy.  Keep us aware of your undeserved yet undying love.  Guard and protect us.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret