11-14-2025

Good Morning All,

    John 11: 25-26; “Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

    “KISS.”  This is the mantra of every single speech teacher I have ever dealt with at any level of learning.  My first English teacher in high school who taught us “Speech I” emphasized the “KISS” method.  She reiterated it in “Speech II.”  When I got to college it was again reinforced as the preferred method of public speaking “KISS.”  Even when I took “Sermon I” and “Sermon II” it was “KISS.” “KISS;” Keep It Short and Simple.  This is how the current thought in public speaking is going.  The average attention span is shrinking to just a few seconds and then you need to change something; like the pitch or tempo of your voice, move around, use video or audio but do something different or you will lose your listener.  “KISS” 

    When Lazarus died and Jesus was coming to the family, Martha met him on the road.  Jesus spoke to her in a very simple fashion, simple and direct.  He made the statement of faith to Martha and then asked her the simple question, “Do you believe this?”  The statement of belief is short and simple; “if you believe you will live.”  This is pretty straight forward and simple enough for anyone to understand.

    Many of the different religions around the world and throughout time require long and drawn-out rituals and rites.  Some are deadly, like human sacrifices, some are painful, some are expensive, some take years to accomplish.  Manmade teachings are always complicated and confusing; God keeps it simple; “Do you believe?”  Do you believe that when Jesus died on the cross; his death paid for your sins?  Do you trust God when he says that this payment is enough?  Do you believe?  Do you believe that you are forgiven?

    These are easy questions but the devil does his best to complicate them.  He wants you to think through and try to make God’s way to fit into your logic and your motives.  Our old sinful nature gets in the way and always wants there to be something harder.  This seems too easy; there must be a catch; nothing is ever freely given; somewhere there is a price to pay.  Well, there is a price but Jesus paid it.  He paid our debt and then turned around and gave it to you because he loves you.  “Do you believe?”  Because when we believe, we trust.  Because when we believe, we grab hold of God’s promise and cling tightly to them.  We can find our comfort in the certainty of his love for us.  Faith can give us a refuge from the sorrows of this life and a hope for a better tomorrow; do you believe?

Father, I believe.  I believe that Jesus died and rose again and that this is sufficient to pay for my sins.  Keep me strong in this faith.  Father, I believe that your Holy Spirit is with me to go with me and walk with me on my journey in this life.  Father, I believe that Jesus will come again to complete what he has started and end all the pain and sorrows of this world.  Father, I believe in your love.  In the precious name of Jesus our risen and living savior I pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret     

11-13-2025

Good Morning All,

                  Psalm 56:3; “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.”

     “FAIL;” it is an internet sensation.  It shows pictures photographed at just the right time to show someone having a little misfortune.  It might show a person walking down the street being splashed by a passing car.  It might show a person slipping and falling while carrying cake.  It might be the sign that is misspelled.  There are limitless options to this viewing.  Some are more painful than others, some are funny; some are cruel but comedy is often in the eye of the beholder. We can see failure everywhere we look; often we feel it in our own lives.

    Perhaps you feel that you could sum up your life in that one word; “FAIL.”  There are many people who do feel that way.  Does your mind swirl with thoughts of inadequacies and confusion?  Do you look at what is going on in your life and, according to your measurement, it failed?  “What did I do wrong?”  “Maybe I simply cannot do this; or anything right!”   I remember dealing with a preacher who would plan an event for his church.  He would spend months working on it.  He would totally immerse himself in the project, getting very excited about it.  Soon his expectations of the event began to climb.  He was expecting hundreds.  When the event occurred, there were only a few more than the 80 members who usually showed up.  To him, it was a colossal failure.

   Maybe you do that as well.  Maybe you are the parent who feels they have failed if your child isn’t a straight “A” student.  Maybe you are the woman whose house isn’t as clean as you would like it, with three kids, a dog, and a fulltime job.  The people on TV get it done; why can’t I?  Maybe you’re the dad that can’t get to your son’s game this week while everyone else does and you haven’t called your mother in two weeks but then you will only hear about your perfect sister.  The world seems to define you as a failure and often times; you are your worst judge.

    You are not alone in this feeling.  The devil does his best to make sure you know of all your inadequacies.  He wants you to always remember those times when you came up short.  He wants you to think that God will view you in the same light, as a failure.  Yet God does not view you as a failure.  He views you as a parent views his child.  He views you through the eyes of love; a perfect love that knows no bounds or limits.  He loves you and then tells you to trust in that love.  We can be confident of God’s mercy for us.  When we think of confident, we should think in terms of "set in place, make secure, to be made ready, be attached" like an anchor in a storm.  When we fear, whether it is life, death, failure, rejection or loneliness, God is there to comfort us and to give us hope for a certain tomorrow living in his grace.  Trust in his promises; he has never failed you.

Father, your mercies are new every day.  Give me courage to see that, because of Jesus, I am not a failure.  Give me wisdom to hold onto the fact that I am your redeemed, beloved child.  In your hands we are safe and secure.  In the precious name of Jesus our risen Savior we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret  

11-12-2025

Good Morning All,

        Matthew 14: 16-17; “But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”  They said to him, “We have only five loaves here and two fish.”

    So, are you prepared?  Are you prepared for the unexpected?  I can remember as a kid that, more often than not, my mom would keep a John Morrell ‘easy cut’ ham in the freezer.  That way if company showed up on day, she could feed them.  It might have been baked or sliced and fried or just sliced for sandwiches but she could always feed them ham.  She was always ready to feed someone who showed up at dinner or suppertime.  She loved it so you usually had enough “reserve resources” to manage a houseful when she needed to.  Perhaps your mom is or was like that as well.

   In our verses, from the Feeding of the 5000, one might be tempted to think that these disciples needed a Lutheran mother to be ready to feed a crowd of unexpected company.  The disciples and Jesus had sought out a quiet out of the way place so they could take a breather for a moment.  They had just gone out on an evangelism program and came back to tell Jesus.  As they were coming together, they received word that John the Baptist had been executed.  So, they desperately wanted some quiet alone time.

    But the people recognized Jesus and began to gather.  First there were dozens, then hundreds and finally thousands of people; perhaps as many as 25,000 people.  It was approaching the supper hour so the disciples went and asked Jesus to send the people away to find food on their own.  They had looked around and saw nothing for food for the people to eat.  They were away from the cities and even then, didn’t have that much money.  The disciples figured the only way to resolve this was to send the people away before they got too hungry and restless. 

    Yet Jesus gave them a different and a direct command, “you give them something to eat.”  The disciples scrambled and found two fish and five small loaves, roughly two McDonald’s fish filet sandwiches for 25,000 people.  They panicked and were lost and confused.  The problem was that they looked to themselves for their answer and supply rather than to Jesus.  Eventually they came to Jesus for the supply that they needed.

    One thing that comes through to us is this simple fact; our source is always Jesus.  When the need arises, we can look to him first knowing that he will provide for our needs or we can wait, try it on our own, suffer from fear, anxiety, worry and discomfort then look to Jesus.  It might seem somewhat strange but it is our decision.  Do we look to Jesus right away or do we bear a burden that we do not need to bear?  Which is it for you?

Father, the eyes of all look to you and you furnish their meat in due season.  Lead us by your Spirit to look to you as our only source of hope, joy, and peace.  Be with those who are trying to bear the burdens of this life on their own.  Lead them to see that all things come from you and our help is in your hands.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

11-11-2025

Good Morning All,

        Hebrews 10:23; “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”

     “The situation is hopeless.”  There is probably no more painful message than this.  Whether it is a light situation like a basketball game where the one team is behind by 10 points with 25 seconds to play or a serious situation that involves life and death; this message brings about discomfort and pain.  Sometimes, this message comes late like when the firefighters were climbing the stairs in the World Trade Center after the 9/11terrorist attacks.  When they were told to get out that the situation was hopeless; it was already too late.  A few years ago, we came upon an accident.  We began to perform CPR until the ambulance showed up.  It was apparent that the man was dead but the deputy refused to quit giving CPR.  The situation was hopeless but he refused to accept it.

     There are times when we face events that seem hopeless.  A car accident, where the vehicle sinks into some water and after a few minutes of being submerged; the situation is hopeless and those on shore watch, worry, fear then despair.  When you watch someone who has cancer and they begin to fade away, first losing a lot of weight, then the color of their skin goes ashen, they can’t get around very well and soon they are bedridden; the situation is hopeless.  We usually don’t see situations as hopeless unless death is involved.  If we suffer estrangement from a friend or a loved one, we figure, eventually, we’ll fix it but when that someone dies, the situation is hopeless.  Hope is about life; hopelessness is about the end of life.

    Once sin entered the world so did death and so did hopelessness.  Once the enormity of the cost of their sin began to sink in; Adam and Eve experienced hopelessness.  Their perfect world was no more.  They knew pain, sorrow, suffering and hopelessness.  So, God gave them hope, hope for life.  He told them that he would send one to destroy the devil and death.  This One would redeem them and give them life.  It was the same promise that God made to his people throughout the Old Testament.  It was a promise that held out hope.  It held out hope that death and the devil would never be the final victor.  It was a promise that said those who believed and trusted in that promise would live forever.

    That promise was kept on a hill called Calvary.   It was there that Jesus defeated the devil and death.  It was there that the promise was completed and we only have to wait for the final few ticks of the clock to run out and the victory is completely ours.  Death no longer has hold of us; it is but a door for us.  No matter what life throws at us, it can never take away the victory that Christ gives us.  We will always have hope; we will always have life.  This is the promise that God has made and kept to us.  We always have hope.

Father, in you there is life. You give us hope.  Guide us to always rely on your delivered promise.  Teach us to always hope in you.  Be with those who feel they have no hope.  Open the darkness so the light of your truth may enter.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

11-10-2025

Good Morning All,

        Hebrews 11:1; “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

     During one of my high school English classes, we spent a fair amount of time doing some pre-journalism class stuff.  We looked at what it took to be a good journalist.  A good journalist didn’t go into a story with a preconceived idea of how the story was going to flow.  When you did this, it was too easy to find the “evidence” that supported your idea and also too easy to discard “evidence” which showed your idea to be false.  A good journalist would always try to answer the following questions: who, what, where, when, how and why?  Once these questions were answered, the story to be told would unfold naturally.

    As we look at these questions, the first four are pretty standard and are really only informative.  We can know who is involved in the story; we know what the story is and we know where an event occurs and we can know when it occurs.  These are elements of the story that are very observational.  The evidence can exist for many years, allowing us to look back in time and to see the events unfold.  Yet these four questions provide only the body of the work, they only answer the rudimentary questions.  The difficult questions are often how and why.

   The questions of how and why probe into the internal mental and spiritual thoughts, plans and desires of the event.  The how and why can and are at times difficult to imagine.  If you were in a car accident a year ago, you have answered three of the four questions in those 10 words.  Why did the accident happen and how will you go forward after it?  Will you be able to drive again?  Can you go forward?  How will you go forward?  These are the questions you ask.  Sometimes the questions are harder to answer.

    If you are sitting at the funeral of a loved one, like a spouse or a parent; how will you go forward?  How will you go on to the next day or week or month?  What if it is that you are experiencing a very severe sickness, it may take months to recover, if ever?  How do you make it through tomorrow or even the next hour?  How do we go forward?

   Going forward always requires faith.  Going forward is unseen; going forward requires us to trust that it will work out.  How will it work? We have to trust God to keep his promise to us.  We have to trust God to keep the promise that he made to us in our Baptism to love us and to claim us as his children.  This is what faith is.  Faith is trusting in God’s promise even when we cannot see the path or the method of accomplishing this.  Faith is taking one more step.  Faith is turning one more page.  Faith is knowing that, through it all, God goes with us protecting us from harm and danger and giving us hope for the better tomorrow that he has promised.

Father, strengthen my faith.  Lead me forward with your great mercy.  Uphold me in your hand.  Keep me safe from the terrors of uncertainty.  Lead me to trust in your promise of love and salvation.  Lead me to know that in all things you are in control.  Give courage to those who are facing challenges at this time.  Give them the faith they need to see them through.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret     

11-9-2025

Good Morning All,

                2 Corinthians 4:7: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”

    My wife and I received an outdoor propane fire pit for Christmas from our children many years ago.  A couple of weeks later, on a nice warm Sunday, my oldest son offered to put it together for his mother.  I would have gotten to it eventually but, you know.  I didn’t get to watch the construction; I wasn’t back from the church at the time.  Yet my wife could hardly contain her laughter when she told the tale.

    It seems that our, then, 2, almost 3, year old grandson offered to “help” his dad “fix it”.  Soon the little screws and nuts and bolts were spread around the patio.  Every so often he would stand in front of dad to get a better look or have the screwdriver that dad needed.  All in all, it added some time to the construction, but we both told my son; it is only beginning.

    When my sons were about that age and then older, they liked to “help” as well.  I remember telling my wife that I could get our livestock chores done in about an hour; it took an hour and a half when I was “helped.”  I remember looking for wrenches, hammers, screwdrivers, saws, nails, boards, screws, bolts and just about anything that wasn’t tied down that one, two or three little boys could carry.  They would always want to help and we usually let them unless it was unsafe for them.  They were allowed and encouraged to help because it formed a bond of love between them and the parents and grandparents that they were spending time with and now, the next generation is bonding as well.

  Now, some 10 years later, that firepit is in pretty tough shape. The hinges on the door have rusted off, some of the tiles have chipped off, and it is a little wobbly. We discussed tossing it and getting a new one. But as we thought and remembered; we looked again and, the legs were still straight and firm. The burner still works and we are going to try and put a new face on it with some new paneling to cover the hole where the door is. It holds too many memories to toss without trying.    

 This is part of why our verse plays out the way it does. We have the treasure (God’s saving Gospel message) but we have it in our frail human nature and condition.  This is one of the mysteries of faith; why does God let us humans mess it up so often?  It would go smoother if God just “zapped” the ones who would believe and then be done with it but that is not how he does it.  God uses created things to bring about healing in this broken world.  He uses water and bread and wine for our sacramental nourishment and he uses other humans to provide the physical warmth and touch.  He uses human voices to speak to us at times; he uses human arms to comfort us when we are hurting; he uses humans to reach humans. He loves us and does not want to throw us away but to renew, restore and keep in hos holy family.

Father, in your hands we rest safely.  Move us by your mighty Spirit to spread your message of salvation and hope.  Move us to have compassion on our brothers and sisters who are in need of your mercy.  Guide us to be your hands and voices in this world of pain and silence.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret     

11-8-2025

Good Morning All,

      Luke 23: 42-43; “And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

     How do we view these verses?  This is part of the exchange between Jesus and one of the men who were crucified with Jesus.  We have both men, suffering incredibly, and yet there is dialogue, there is interaction.  It begins with those who are watching the crucifixion hurling taunts and insults at Jesus.  Soon one of those who were also being crucified joined in.  The other man rebuked the first and then said to Jesus “remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  Jesus answered with the familiar, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”  How do you view these verses?

    For some, these are troubling verses.  We know little of this man other than “the thief on the cross”’ we don’t know his name or anything about him.  He doesn’t seem to be a follower of Jesus or that he even particularly believed in Jesus.  Je made a request for Jesus to ‘remember me.’  There was no apparent confession of sins; there was no apparent repentance; there was no apparent confession of faith in Jesus as Lord over all; there certainly appears that there is no baptism, at least at this time.  Some have suggested that the thief had experienced the baptism by John the Baptist.  It is possible but nothing in Scriptures suggests this.  We only have this short exchange and in it, we hear Jesus making the statement that today you will be with me in paradise.

    Many struggle because the thief didn’t ‘do anything.’  He should have had to do something to show that he had received Jesus.  He should have had to do something.  Many think that they give up something to be a Christian.  I remember one young man saying he was going to wait to be a Christian because he wanted to have ‘fun first.’  It is strange what we think is fun.  We abuse our bodies, we abuse other people with shallow or non-existent relationships; we scheme, connive, contrive, and make all sorts of foolish ventures.  Through it all, we try to avoid God, his grace and peace, and think we are having fun.  So, if I have to give up my ‘fun’ why didn’t he?  It is as if he got in for nothing and that is exactly the point.

   The man was given paradise by a merciful Jesus; that is the same way we get paradise.  It is given to us by a merciful Jesus.  These verses should give us a lot of comfort and hope.  It wasn’t what the man did or didn’t do; it was that Jesus showed him mercy; the same mercy that he has promised to show you.  The only possible way for the thief to enter Paradise was for Jesus to allow him to enter, for Jesus to have mercy on this thief and to bring him into paradise solely and completely out of love; the same way you and I get in.  “Jesus, remember me in your kingdom.”

Lord Jesus, remember me in your kingdom.  I only have your grace to save me.  I am only a worthless beggar before you and so I beg for your mercy and you give it to me without reservation, without demands, without restrictions but with total love.  Keep me safe in your arms.  In your precious and loving name, we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret