Been a crazy week, not bad, but filled, busy, stressful to say the least.  You see my wife and I are trying to get ready for vacation, a blessed and much anticipated respite from work.  If you have ever taken some time off, you understand what I mean by stressful.   Meetings, completion of paperwork due while I’m away, tying up loose ends and then one last, unexpected pandemic issue.  Talk about a chaotic time, but then I read these words offered by Jesus in the Gospel of John,

” And everything I’ve taught you is so that the peace which is in me will be in you and will give you great confidence as you rest in me. For in this unbelieving world, you will experience trouble and sorrow, but you must take heart for I have overcome the world.”  John 16:33

Take heart, that is be encouraged I, [Jesus], have overcome the world.  Reading these words, I realized that Jesus was about to be arrested, to be crucified, to die and be resurrected.  Jesus was telling the disciples then and each of us as followers today, trouble is around, difficult times will find us.  We may be confused or even overwhelmed.  That knowing this it may be easier to pull back or turn away but rather we must be encouraged, that we are in relationship with One that is greater.  That through our relationship with Jesus, in our acceptance of the Holy Spirit as our companion, God is present in our lives.  Jesus says, take heart.

When this world feels as though it will wash over you, overwhelm you I encourage you to take heart, remembering your relationship with Jesus, remembering these things, that our pain is not wasted, that God can use the difficult season each of us experience and that we find peace knowing that Jesus has overcome, has conquered the world.  Take heart in that.

Prayer: “Lord, I know that you are present in my life and when that vision waivers open my eyes wider, help me to reach a bit higher, make my ears more sensitive to your word, that I might be encouraged, that I take heart in the peace you offer.  Hold me firmly and guide me gently in your will and in your ways.  Amen”

“Bless the Lord! The God of our salvation supports us day after day!” Psalms 68:19

This selection is written from the experiences of David himself. Each of us know burdens, anxieties, and struggles, am I right? David, someone we say is chasing after God was no exception. He knew the worries and burdens and struggles of life. David was seen by his father and siblings as unimportant and neglected. Saul, the king persecuted him, and his own son betrayed him, so he knew what each of us experience in our lives, in sharing this lesson.

The first thing he does is divert our attention, reminding us of who is in our lives. He says, “Blessed be the Lord! God of our salvation…”  Even when we are faced with questions about our future, worry about our family and/or our relationship, even when we may face anxieties about the world that surround us, we are to praise God, the Lord is our salvation, the one who will protect us, look out for us save us! The one, who as the scripture tells us will “…support us day after day!”

God is there next to us in every battle that we face, every struggle we encounter, with each fear that we have, but we must give them over to God. The Apostle Peter tells us, “Cast, throw all your cares, your worries, your burdens your anxieties onto the Lord because He cares about you.” (1 Peter 5:7 CEB)

You see for this to work, we must learn to trust that God is there, that God cares about us, that God is much more capable of dealing with our struggles and worries than any of us. When we begin to trust God turning over our burdens, with our worries, with our anxieties, we finally begin to realize the peace that comes from trusting and resting in the arms of God.

I encourage you to take a moment to lift up that which is laying heavily upon you. Give praise to the Lord. The God of our salvation is here to care for us, to support us and to carry the struggles, the burdens, and the worries in our life.

Prayer: “Lord, I trust that you are here. I give to you the things that I am struggling with and trust in you to carry that weight. Let me know the peace of your presence. Hold me firmly and guide me gently in your will and in your ways. Amen”

Have you ever thought “why am I the way I am” or, “why do I do or say things that way”? I suspect it is a question many of us have asked, I know I have, until I look back at my parents, my friends, the people who surround me and my experiences then it starts to make sense. You see, we are or maybe better said, we tend to reflect the people who surround us and the examples we see.

Think about the meals you prepare. Some are filled with nostalgic reflections of a moment in your childhood or in your life,  aren’t they?  Or, the funny sayings or the way you pronounce something, I suspect, if you go back into your youth, you will find someone offering the same phrase or twisting their tongue around a word in the same funny way that you do. Children follow their parents in service in the military, college selections and professions.  We often do things because we have witnessed someone else do it before us, do it first.

We see witness to this in. John 4:19 which reads, “We ourselves love now because He, God, loved us first.”

We know love because we have witnessed God’s love all around us from our very first breath. In the creation that surrounds us from the streams of living water to the mountain’s majesty, the birds and flowers, the air that breath, the trees that offer shade. God’s love can be witnessed throughout creation.

(Enter midnight infomercial) But wait there’s more! We know God’s love through Jesus Christ, through the words that he taught, offering that the love of God and the love of neighbor are the two most vital commands we are to follow. Loving us to his death and beyond, overcoming death and sharing that victory with us, that those things that hold us to this world no longer hold their grip on us.

Finally, we witness love in the companion that God sent to be by our side in all things, in the Holy Spirit. That Spirit is God’s presence, next to us and within us that we may never be alone. In the darkest of valleys and in the highest of mountain peaks we know Emanuel, God with us, holding us and loving us where we are.

Consider this, we spend a lifetime seeking unconditional love, that we will never have to change, yet God loves us unconditionally and because of that we want to change. It is that very love that we have seen in all that surrounds us. It may have been parents or grandparents, teachers or coaches, friends or partners. So, now that you have been a witness to that unconditional, meet you where you are love I challenge you to find situations, to find opportunities, to find people around you to begin to share and teach that love to another, showing them not just who you are but whose you are.

Prayer: “Thank you Lord for the love you have shared with me in my life. As I have witnessed that love allow me now to share it to those I encounter. I pray that you hold me tightly and guide me gently in your will and in your ways.  Amen”

“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the self with its passions and desires.” Galatians 5:24

My family moved back to my father’s childhood community after he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. While he never shared this with me, I am sure he wanted us to be in the one place where he felt the comfort and love of community.

One Saturday, several years after he passed, I walked into the bank, I was picking up change for the business for whom I was working. The teller looked at me, looked away for a moment and then looked back and asked if I was Raymond’s boy. With a confused look I replied that I was. She smiled and said, “I thought so, you look just like the boy I knew.”

It’s kind of fun to hear that, to have someone tell you that you look like or talk like someone you love in your life. Imagine the power and the peace if we allowed ourselves to look like Jesus.  The good news is, when we give up, when we destroy, when we crucify our old self.  That self who gets angry, the one who experiences moments of hatred toward others, the one who thinks of self before neighbor, that one who is of this world.  When we get rid of all of that, we can then begin to know that new life and that new image.

And it is possible through the power of the Holy Spirit, but we must be willing to submit to that transformative power. Offering words of kindness rather than anger, forgiving instead of holding a grudge. Removing all signs of hate and loving our neighbor.

When we begin to turn loose of these things, these attitudes, these emotions, we begin to take off the old life and start to put on new life, new opportunity and a new image, the image of Jesus Christ and who knows, you might have someone ask, “Aren’t you one of His children.”

Prayer: “God you are my Shepherd, offer me courage today to turn loose of the one that I am in this world and become the one that I am supposed to be in you. Hold me firmly and guide me gently in your will and in your ways. Amen”

Make sure no one repays a wrong with a wrong, but always pursue the good for each other and everyone else.  1 Thessalonians 5:16

What a profound but difficult concept by which to live, am I right?  I mean, when someone does something we don’t like or that hurts us, our primal response is to lash out, to respond in a way that allows us to “be even”.  Yet that’s not the message that the apostle Paul shares in this message.

Rather what Paul does is offer witness to the manner in which God responds to you and me, his children. He is offering the life of Jesus Christ.  In life we are going to experience times where someone will hurt us, take from us, threaten us with their words and with their actions and as a follower of Christ we are called to love, to forgive, to simply remove ourselves from the situation by walking away.

I think about the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, where he was beaten, ridiculed, and mercilessly nailed to the cross, yet what are some of the last words attributed to Jesus, “Father, forgive them…” (Luke 23:34). 

We each will face situations where people try to hurt us, to use us, abuse us, to make fun of us or undermine the hard work we have been doing.  And, the truth is, it is going to be tempting to seek revenge or repay them with evil, “wrong for wrong”, but the God we serve does not operate like that.  We are shown through Jesus that God is a God of mercy, of grace, of forgiveness and of love.  As claimed followers of Jesus Christ we need to try and respond in the ways that we have been shown.

It’s not easy and most likely we are not going to be able to do this in every situation, but we should, no, we must try.  Try to do good for each other.  Try to forgive those who have hurt us.  Try to pray for them. Try to love them.  In this way not only will you be a reflection of whose you are, but you will begin to know the peace that only God can offer.

Prayer: “Lord, be with me always and in those times when someone does something to hurt me, help me to remove myself and to respond as you would, with mercy, with forgiveness and with love.  Hold me firmly and guide me gently in your will and in your ways.  Amen”

“For whoever wants to save his own life will destroy it, but whoever destroys his life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News will save it.”  Mark 8:35

I believe that the message in this selection offers us both challenge and encouragement and hope.  It challenges our very nature.  Few of us want to rely on another in our lives, we will do most anything so that we do not give up control.  Am I right?

I know for me, I find it difficult to ask for help, to not be in control of what is going on around me, to have a plan to deal with what ever might be going on in my life, and my son can be the same way.  I remember when he was very young, he had a Thomas the Tank Engine and the wooden track it would go around on.  One of the very first times we got the track out and he was trying to put something together, he didn’t want any help.  When I offered, he got very frustrated and told me, “No daddy, I want to do it myself.”  After continuing to struggle for some time trying to get the track to come together in a continuous “loop”, he came to me with a piece of track in each hand, lifted them up and asked for help. 

That is the challenge, in our lives and in this world, we face constant struggles.  We face circumstances we cannot handle on our own but yet because we are Stubborn McStubbornson we refuse to ask for help even though, and here is the encouragement and hope, God is waiting to step in, to intercede on our behalf, we simply must admit that we cannot do it, we cannot face it, we cannot handle it on our own.  That we just cannot get our track to come together on our own.  When we submit our lives to God, we begin to know the comfort of that presence, that even when we face difficult times, when our track just won’t quite line up, God is present there with us.

I would encourage you to take a look at what’s going on in your life in this moment and rather than shutting God out, ask that you know that presence.  Bring those two pieces of track, holding them up, asking for help, and simply submit to the presence and power of God

Prayer: “Lord, I know you are there, you are present always, simply waiting to hear my call to you.  Grant me the courage to submit my problems and my whole life to you.  Hold me firmly and guide me gently in your will and in your ways.  Amen”

As I sit in front of the screen and keyboard this morning, rain is falling along with some lightening and thunder, and I cannot help but think about my mom and her fear of thunderstorms.

Let me explain, Mom grew up in war time England, beginning in 1940 through the end of World War II, she would hear planes overhead, the weapons falling and the explosions, as she explained, all around her and her family.  So, the crashing of a midwest thunderstorm would always put her on edge creating both anxiety and fear.

If we are honest with ourselves, worry, fear, anxiety or what ever the name you put on it is a part of each of our lives.  It could be a fear of storms as mom experienced.  We could be worried about the new school year, a new job or new experience.  We could be anxious about the future of our relationships, the results of medical testing or our future.  The thing is concerns are a part of our lives and that is ok.

David tells us as much in Psalm 56:3 which reads, “whenever I’m afraid, I put my trust in you”

Did you read that, David, the one whom God called and who was anointed to lead a nation?  The David who faced and defeated a giant, said, “whenever I’m afraid”.  He not only understood but experienced fear in his life, but he knew the faithfulness of God.  David knew that even when he walked through difficult times, when he traveled through dark valleys he could trust God, because God was always present.

We can experience the same level of comfort and trust that David shares in this statement through the promise Jesus offered before ascending into heaven.  Jesus promised to send a comforter, the Holy Spirit of God, to be with us through all experiences and situations.  

Our trust can be built up by acknowledging that presence whenever we are afraid, with what a friend calls sentence prayers.  Thinks like, “Thank you Lord for being with me right now.”, or “Thank you God that your Holy Spirit is right here next to me.” or one of my favorites “Thank you Father, for the way the Holy Spirit is fighting for me right now.”

As we begin to acknowledge the presence of God in our lives, in the difficulties, in the dark valleys our trust grows and in that we can find comfort.  So today, as you feel your anxiety level inching up, fears beginning to get to you or your mind cannot stop worrying about the future, acknowledge God’s presence.  Whenever you are afraid place your trust in God.

Prayer, “Almighty God, thank you for Your presence here with me.  Thank you for the Holy Spirit and the ways You are moving in my life.  Help me find comfort in knowing you are always near me.  Hold me firmly and guide me gently in your will and in your ways.  Amen

“Therefore, imitate God like dearly loved children. ² Live your life with love, following the example of Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us. He was a sacrificial offering that smelled sweet to God.” Ephesians 5:1-2

Wow did July go fast!  In a way I am reminded of the song, Cat’s in the Cradle, by Harry Chapin.  For those of you who have heard the song, I’d bet by now you’re singing the chorus, “and the cats in the cradle, and the silver spoon…”.  I’ll let you continue to sing while I explain the song to those who may not have ever heard it.

The song is an exchange between a father and his son.  At first the father tells the son that he’s really to busy at the moment to spend time with him, work has him here or there and well you know, sadly he’s busy.  A little later on, the song comes around and now the father desires to spend time with his son but sadly, the son now grown is very busy.  It is a sad reminder of how quickly time goes by, especially when we get busy in our lives.

The song also reminds us of how as children we do a lot of the same things that our parents did.  In the song the son witnessed the hectic schedule kept by the father and now, well he is imitating him. 

Do you remember, getting into your mom or dad’s closet, putting on their shoes and then walking around?  For me I did something different my father for most of his professional career was in some kind of military or federal investigation and/or law enforcement.  On this particular day, dad was out of town, traveling for work, and I wanted to be like him.  I found a pair of handcuffs he kept in his office and put them on.  Seems I was a natural because I got them on tight enough, I couldn’t pull my hands through.  I can’t tell you how many times he had told this curious 4-year-old, not to mess with them.  Boy, was I going to be in trouble!  Fear of the situation and of mom’s reaction allowed me to muster a few tears as I called out her name. 

When she walked in the frustration was evident and immediately, she went to where dad kept the keys.  They weren’t there.  She checked a couple of more spots, but it seems dad had taken them with him.  What’s a mom to do when her son, has locked himself in a set of handcuffs?  Call the police!  Within 5 minutes, two huge members of Chicago’s finest were at the door, ready to see why this woman’s son was sitting in the living room wearing handcuffs.  They were surprised when they saw me, just trying to imitate my father.

For most of us, hearing what we should do isn’t as easy as imitating what we see being done.  In our heavenly Father, we witness many things.  We witness, creation, take a moment to step outside and look around at the work of God’s hands.  We witness love in the people who are in our lives, possibly our parents, our children, our siblings, our partners, and spouses and in our friends.  In the documented life of Jesus, we find not only sacrificial love but grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

In a way, it almost seems as though the Apostle Paul (author of Ephesians) had heard that song by Harry Chapin, knowing that as children, we are more likely to do what we see rather than what we have heard.  Strive each day to be imitators of the abundance each of us knows through the presence of God in our lives.

Let’s pray; “God, you show us the way, the way to love, the way to forgive, the way to serve, help us to be more like you, that we might be imitators of you.  Hold us firmly and guide us gently in your will and in your ways. Amen”