Joy Lutheran Church Ocala, Florida

Disney and all its many avenues of entertainment spell magic and success. In Disney’s movie, Toy Story, an award winning song was “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” explaining the relationship between Woody and Andy and the toys of this wonderful hit flick.

Is a friend a confidant, someone who shares your ups and downs and maybe even someone who loves you through thick and thin?

What a Friend We Have in Jesus, a beautiful hymn, seems to explain our personal Perfect Friend so succinctly. The original poem was written by Joseph M. Scriven in 1855.

“What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer!
Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
Oh, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer!“

In the Toy Story song, the words say, “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you. Together we can see this through.”  However, we are not animated. We are not toys. We are God’s creation. How wonderful that our Lord loves us unconditionally and when we take our woes and troubles to Him in prayer, our friend, Jesus, will see us through. “Jesus knows our every weakness…Thou will all our burdens bear.” What a friend; what a blessing!

Jill

Most of us know someone who is depressed. Hopefully we have progressed beyond such unhelpful sayings as “snap out of it”, “count your blessings”, “get involved” or “you don’t realize how good you have it”. They need presence, even if it means simply sitting together in silence. What we can try to do is get them out of their isolation.

Suffering and pain of spirit are sometimes hard for others to understand. It is shockingly tragic when someone who seemingly is upbeat and not appearing to be lonely takes their own life. Shame convinces us that everyone else is judging or laughing at us, or just dismissing us as insignificant, nothing.

God promises to be with us in trouble, to not leave us alone and forsaken. Sometimes He shields us from harm, but even when He doesn’t, He is right there in the midst of it, turning the situation or problem into something that can be learned from. When we are the presence of Christ, in accompaniment with our depressed friend or loved one, we break the power of the suffering. We embody Christ, who showed that same power to heal the suffering. Jesus never turns away. No matter the depth of our isolating depression, Jesus already endured it when he went to the cross for us.

When life knocks us for a loop, the darkness in and of our souls lies waiting for the healing light of Christ. When these moments hit you, or someone you care about, may you know and feel the unconditional love of God.

Pastor Art

“Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.”  Psalm 29:2

The beauty of God’s holiness – just thinking about these words is an overwhelming experience.  There is no end to the beauty of God’s holiness.  We think about the beauty of his creation: the rivers, mountains, valleys and plains.  We think about the universe: the earth, the sky filled with stars and planets beyond our imagination.  And how about his love, the love he has poured into us, and the love we are able to share? 

The Psalms refer often to the “splendor and glory of God’s holiness.” This calls for our reverence and adoration, our deep respect.  “Tremble before him,” the psalmist says, as we recognize God’s sovereignty.

If we ponder even a fraction of this beauty, we are deeply humbled.  Overcome by the beauty of our Almighty God, we can only kneel before him.

“In the beauty of your holiness, I bow to worship you.”  These are the words of the worship song I have chosen for today: “In the Beauty of Your Holiness,” is sung by the Pasadena Tabernacle Songsters.  I hope you enjoy it.

Judy

Did you ever save loose change in a jar or piggy bank? When old enough, did you open a savings account and deposit “extra” monies, creating a feeling of security? Do you have stocks, bonds, 401K’s and assorted places for monies to be saved, again creating that feeling of security?

Reality is, sometimes that stash, those monies under the mattress, in the bank, secured in a financial institution, are needed. Life happens. Rainy days of the unexpected happen. I remember clearly the day my parents were driving my brother to college in Massachusetts and as they pulled out of our little Ohio town, the refrigerator at home konked out. So, with the first quarter monies just sent to my brother’s college, they now needed to invest in a new appliance.  Spending wasn’t planned, but those tucked away monies were needed. During my first husband’s illness and subsequent death, all our checking and savings were used for his treatments. Can we really feel secure with our monies stashed away, invested?  We can plan and try to create security around us and our families, but the REAL truth is Jesus, our Lord and Savior is our only security. 

Don’t rely on Social Security as a guaranteed forever option, or your investment guru to always be there for you and your savings. The real, positively, unbreakable, unshakeable, guaranteed 100% security you can trust FOREVER, is that Jesus loves you unconditionally!

Your attempts at creating financial security are worthy efforts, but invest and save knowing that life may throw a curve ball your way and those savings might lessen or disappear.  Jesus said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” Hebrews 13:5. Knowing our Lord died for us and we are forgiven and recipients of His grace and love is SECURITY!  Be sure you latch on to Him, learning more, sharing His truth and it’s ok to fill your piggy banks, too. Just remember the REAL gift is the security of knowing Him.

Jill

If you know Christ and His salvation then you have the Holy Spirit living in you. What a wonderful gift we have been given from our Father in Heaven! This means you are no longer “controlled” by your sinful nature but by the Spirit of God. That being said, we were also given the gift of “Free Will”.  As a result, we can and do have moments when we give in to our sinful natures.

I know this happens to me from time to time and as soon as I give in to my sinful nature, I get that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach which has always been my guide that I am doing wrong. This feeling has been a directive for me from my earliest memories, long before I knew much about the Holy Spirit, but I am certain it has always been the Holy Spirit at work within me.

We are human however and far from perfect. We as Christians can and should work towards listening and following the guiding light of spirit nature and not sinful nature. At the same time, we need to be gracious with nonbelievers and focus on our own behaviors to be better people and positive witnesses to them in all things.

God’s unconditional love for us is so awesome with the gifts of His Son Jesus who gave us the chance of eternal life and the Holy Spirit to help pilot us towards that goal. Let the Holy Spirit live within all of us. Thanks be to God.

Patty

It comes around annually, and I am always excited to celebrate it. It happens to you also. Yes, it is my birthday today. Just being here – alive and relatively well is great cause for celebration. The birthday is a wonderful reminder to celebrate and give thanks. 

What will we do? I don’t know yet. I know that I will have lunch with a special friend and go out for dinner in the evening. Maybe my sisters will join the fun. I will hear from my children and there will probably be some flowers and gifts. (I am blessed with a loving and generous family.)  

What we do doesn’t matter, I will have Big Gratitude all day long. This is one of those times when my heart swells to capacity and I have no alternative but to shout out my thanks for these amazing blessings.  Even the ones that I cannot identify. God has always been on my side. And I am very grateful. 

Even during the times of sadness and tragedy, the times when I turned away in anger or embarrassment, the times when I made bad decisions and went off on my own, God has always been at my side. And I am grateful. 

I am sure that left to my own devices, I would not be here celebrating a birthday with Big Gratitude for all the people in my life; all that has happened in my life; and all the surprises that are to come. And I am grateful. 

In 1939, Mary Stevenson wrote the original Footprints Prayer. She knew that God loved her unconditionally. Her beautiful poem speaks to us in an illustrative language that we can understand and visualize. I have always identified with the words of this prayer, because I know that God loves me and loves you unconditionally. And I am grateful. 

Terri 

Dame Julian (1343-1416?) was an English mystic whose book “Showings” marks the earliest work in English by a woman. Around age 30 she became severely ill and had a series of visions or showings about the passion of Jesus which she wrote down. Some years later she reflected on these visions in a longer version of “Showings.” Around the same time, she became an anchoress, a woman who lives completely by herself. She lived in a sealed cell attached to a church in Norwich, England.

Here’s a quote from her: “The mother can lay her child tenderly to her breast, but our tender Mother Jesus can lead us easily into his blessed breast through his sweet open side, and show us there a part of the godhead and of the joys of heaven, with inner certainty of endless bliss … This fair lovely word ‘mother’ is so sweet and so kind in itself that it cannot truly be said of anyone or to anyone except of him and to him who is the true Mother of life and of all things. To the property of motherhood belong nature, love, wisdom, and knowledge, and this is God.”

Does the language strike you as odd? It wasn’t to Julian, and it has proved to be comforting to many people. Sometimes our human ideas of what God is like need shaking up. I’m not telling people to pray to Mother Jesus, but next time you pray try associating all the qualities of a mother with God. It might give you a different perspective.

Read Isaiah 66:13 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne

I really like the phrase “Love is contagious.” I think it succinctly expresses the power of love, and it raise a picture in my mind of love passed along person to person. I first heard, or at least first noticed, the phrase as part of a story told to me by an older couple at our church in North Carolina.

Dean and Mary were probably in their late 70s when this story took place. They were standing, with a number of other people, in the foyer of a very popular family-style restaurant waiting for a table, and happened to be holding hands. After a while a young woman came up to them and politely said, “My husband and I have been admiring the way you two are so obviously still in love. You know love is contagious, and you are role models for us. Seeing you makes us love each other more. We hope that when we reach your age that we will still be so much in love.”

We all know that feeling loved make us feel good and more ready to show that love to others. What this story shows is that observing love, even when we’re not the recipients, can motivate us to love. Jesus points out in John 13:35 that this is one of the ways in which we can witness, when he says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Fortunately he makes this easier for us by giving us His own unconditional love.

At the end of her story, Mary admitted that she and Dean didn’t have the heart to tell the young woman that they’d only been married for two weeks.

Jim Originally posted May 2019

Have you ever chided yourself for spending money with your heart and not your head? Of many sad personal tales I could tell, I made a purchase not long ago that at the time seemed very sensible. Needing a new lawn mower, I went to a local home center where they were having a great sale on mowers. The one I fixated on was a rechargeable battery model. I thought, “this will not only be good for the environment (no gas), I won’t have to pull a cord incessantly to get the darn thing started.” All was well and good for a while, until…it wasn’t. Even with newly charged batteries, I went to start it and…crickets. Nada. Zippo. I brought it back to the home center, they took if for repairs, and I waited. And waited. And waited some more. In frustration, I went back in to investigate this interminable delay. Of course, no one could help, they didn’t have the right code, no tracking info. So I waited. And waited. And waited some more. They finally determined that the mower was defective and beyond repair. Adding insult to injury, the customer service person said, “never buy that brand.” Great. Just great.

 Sometimes we make bad choices with our money. When it comes to Christian stewardship of treasure, time, and talent, we often give with our head and not our heart. Our head, connected to the bank account, sees depleted funds and makes a bad choice to withhold from God. We rationalize by saying, “I wish I could give more, but I can’t.” When we give from a spiritual mindset of abundance, we realize that God amply provides the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the other items (like lawnmowers) that manage our lives. God bids us to spend from our heart, attempting to mesh our passions with the world’s greatest needs.

(I might have to remember all this come fall, when we emphasize stewardship in my congregation!)

Whether we choose wisely or poorly, our good and gracious God still loves us unconditionally.

Pastor Art

At daybreak, we could stand beside the pond.  The water was still. Two ducks floated by and a turtle sunned himself on a rock.   In the silence the songbirds chirped a beautiful melody.  Quietly launching our canoe, we paddled out, to become one with the serenity of the lake, such a place of peace.

For several years,  this joy was ours, while we summered at a small lake cottage.  The tranquility of these mornings is a feeling I will never forget.  It is this picture that comes to my mind when I hear the words of Psalm 23, “He leads me beside still waters.”

The word “still” in English refers not so much to water that is not moving, but to water by which we can rest. The Hebrew word is מְנוּחָה (menuchah), is also used in the other psalms referring to: “This is my resting place forever.”

I think about the word, stillness.  God is with us every moment of every day. But, it is our “busyness” that dulls our awareness of his presence.  When we are still, then we feel the peace of his presence.  “Be still and know that I am God.”  Psalm 46:10

Allow him to lead you beside the still water today. He will not force you.  Rest in the stillness with him.  Be refreshed.  And let us all say yes!

The song I have attached, “Beside the Still Waters” is a new Christian song based on Psalm 23.

Judy