Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Jacque: I'm so glad your mom and your dad started you playing piano at five. That was really, really important to them to pass on their beautiful music to their children, Linda too. I'm so grateful for that: the discipline that it took for them to bring you to lessons.
Brian: My dad always said he would spend his retirement on my music lessons.
Jacque: When Brian's dad went to Crosby, he was making $25 a week. And somehow they found a way to bring you to Brainerd and pay for you and Linda to have piano lessons. It's just a beautiful heritage, another thing that they left the world and us. Mom's funeral will be this Saturday, memorial service will be this Saturday at 10 30, and it's going to be a livestream. So maybe there are some of our new friends—
Brian: Those of you who are out of state, out state and out of state, and out of country, we would be honored if you would join us Saturday at 10:30, central standard time; no, daylight time, central daylight time.
Jacque: I don't know what time we are in. We are in Minnesota time.
Brian: This coming Saturday, July 10th.
Jacque: But the beauty, I just want to say is that as we plan and as we look through things and think of, and pray about what to share, it's going to be such a meaningful, meaningful time.
Brian: It will be.
Jacque: There are so many wonderful things to say about Grace.
Brian: She is a marvelous lady. She was incredible mother. I had great admiration for her. I not only loved my mum, but I had a great admiration for my mother because when my mom and dad got engaged, my dad was in the Navy. He was in World War II. He had got home on a leave. Their best friends’ names were Ed and Grace and my mum and dad's names were Ed and Grace. They both got engaged at Portage and Main in Winnipeg at the same time. Dad was home on leave. It was a 1944, and right before he was being shipped over again to the north Atlantic to be part of the D-Day invasion. When dad was in the war, God had spared his life on a number of occasions, but particularly one occasion where he had been taken off of his ship and the fellow that replaced him and all of my dad's buddies their bunk was torpedoed by a German torpedo, and all of his friends were killed. Most of his unit in D-Day died.
My dad really felt that God had speared his life for more than just becoming an electrical engineer, which is what their plans were. When they got engaged, my dad was going to become an electrical engineer. Not that being an engineer is less than, but when God has a calling on your heart, then you need to follow what God is asking you to do. It doesn't mean it's more important than any other vocation or any other job, but for dad, it was the only thing that he could do was to follow that call to be a shepherd. Why I have such great respect for my mom, is that wasn't what she had planned; that wasn't in her wheelhouse, but she loved my dad and she loved Jesus. I've said many times that she is with the two people she loved the most: Jesus and my dad, right now.
Because of her love for her Lord, and because of her love for my dad, she said to my father, well, I'll do whatever you do. I'll go where you go. I will become what you need me to become. She became a pastor's wife and served the Lord faithfully all those years. It wasn't what she had planned when she got engaged, but it was what God had planned. I have great admiration for my mom because she served faithfully beside my dad all those years. It's a great legacy to have. So we are going to talk a lot about it. We have some great videos that we'll show at the Memorial about my mom and kind of bring everybody up to speed on her life and a little bit more of her legacy. It'll be a great time of honoring her and giving her a good send-of, although she has already been sent. We know that.
Jacque: And she is good.
Brian: She is good. When I look at gymnast, and especially our lovely one that we have here in our congregation, the word contortionists sometimes is used, and my mom was one of those early contortionists. She would do back flips and put her head through her legs and not frontwards, but backwards and stuff like this sentence, and in ways that we would die doing. That was my mom. She was very athletic and so forth.
Jacque: We have a couple of great pictures.
Brian: Yeah. We'll be showing you some pictures of all that stuff on Saturday and whatever. Today's the 4th of July. I appreciate what pastor Jeff shared just moments ago. It was really, really wonderful. Obviously, today is the day in our nation that we celebrate and give recognition to our freedom as a nation, our freedom from a foreign rule, freedom from really in many respects tyrannical rule back in the late 1700s. And yet I would like to talk to you today about a different kind of freedom that God has not just for Americans, but for everybody around the world.
I would like to begin by starting with verse in Galatians chapter five, and someday I'll give you more of a background history of what this whole book is about. It really is a recapitulation of an incident that happened at Antioch, where the Christians were first called Christians and Judaizers had come to Antioch to try and put whole bunch of rules and regulations, particularly circumcision, and things like that. They were telling all these Gentile Christians, well, you need to do this. You need to do that now. A bunch of Judaizers are we are trying to convert them to the ritualistic laws of the Old Testament when Jesus had come to set us actually free from, uh, those kinds of things. Paul now is writing to the churches of Galatia reviewing the circumstance that happened in Antioch. He says this in Galatians chapter 5, verse 1.
Jacque: From the message Bible. Christ has set us free to live a free life, so take your stand. Never again, let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.
Brian: There are many kinds of or slavery, and Christ has come to set us free from all manner of slavery. We see here where Paul says never again let anyone put a harness of slavery around you. His reference here of course, is to kind of religious rules and regulations. But as I began to think of slavery and bondage and freedom, there are many things that actually can create in the life of a believer. Jesus has come; Jesus died to set us free from those things that can create in our life. I read a really interesting quote from Eugene Peterson when he says this, "When I set God at the center of my life, I make Christ the Lord of my life. When I recognize who he is, and I set him at the center of my life. I begin to realize vast freedoms." Vast freedoms.
There are freedoms that God has for you and I, that may be, we still don't even yet understand and have yet to understand sometimes how many know this, that there is this expression when someone's in a manipulative relationship and an oppressive relationship and codependency and so forth. There are people who live under that kind of oppressive rule. Some of you, especially some of you ladies may have experienced that during the course of your life. You don't realize how oppressive it is until the oppressor is gone. You don't realize what freedom really is until the freedom comes. And that's, I think, what God offers us in many respects.
Jacque: When I began to actually believe and really receive God's love, freedom came. God's love brings freedom.
Brian: Yes, it does. The less we recognize God's love, I believe the more we are going to be in, or the less freedom we have.
Jacque: Because when we receive his freedom and our value because of his love, right, then we can love ourselves more and freedom just, it starts up here too.
Brian: An interesting thing happens. When we love ourselves more, we actually begin to have more love for other people. It's true. You know, we get to have love more other people.
Jacque: It's like Jeff said: a kingdom where it's all built on love.
Brian: Peterson says, “I realized these vast freedoms,” but then he also says— this is really cool. I think this can help our open up our understanding about God even more. But he says, “And I also realize surprising spontaneity.” See some of us don't think God's very spontaneous. We have this idea that God is rigid and just, but God is so spontaneous and he is fun and he is enjoyable. And, and he has pleasures untold to share with all of us. A lot of those pleasures just, “oh, I'm going to do this” kind of thing. It's very spontaneous.
Jacque: I had a spontaneous moment walking from my car to the church this morning. I don't know. I was just thinking about worship and the wind was blowing so softly and my eyes just went to the top of all the trees along there. They were just waving and I just thought, look at the trees, they're praising God. I just stopped and watched for— I was late. Sorry. I was watching.
Brian: I knew you had something important going on.
Jacque: Yeah. I was watching the trees praise the Lord.
Brian: Yes. Isn't that good? All of creation praises God. All of creation praises God. So now let's look at another verse. We find this verse in Romans chapter 6, verse 22. Paul is writing a person here in the church in Rome that has now experienced some freedom, freedom from their sin; they received forgiveness from sin. They've received Christ as their Lord and savior, and they are coming into this new spiritual awakening and new life, and here is what he says.
Jacque: But now that you've found, you don't have to listen to sin, tell you what to do.
Brian: Isn't that good? Now that you found out that you don't have to listen to what sin tells you to do.
Jacque: And all the negatives.
Brian: And all the negative things.
Jacque: And have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you. What a surprise?
Brian: Delight. Wouldn't this be great if we all could come to a place of delight in what God tells us what to do? I don't know about you, but I there has been times in my life where I've been a little bit afraid to actually listen to what God wants to tell me to do, because I think he is going to tell me to do something that I don't want to do. Has any of you ever been in that place?
Jacque: The delight of listening to God sounds like surrender.
Brian: It does. Yes, it is.
Jacque: I surrender.
Brian: Some of the times the image I had of God is I never really wanted to pray that I would be a missionary when I was a child because I just thought that God was just waiting for those stupid people that were willing to pray that prayer, and he would send them to the worst place in the world to be a missionary. Yet that whole picture in my head was because I didn't understand how God was. I didn't understand that I could delight in listening to what God has to tell me what to do.
Jacque: Because he is good all the time.
Brian: Because he is good all the time.
Jacque: And he loves us and wants the best.
Brian: So what a surprise.
Jacque: What surprise; a whole healed put together life right now with more and more of life on the way.
Brian: Who wouldn't want a whole healed put together life right now? You who are watching by livestream, do you have any friends that need a whole put together life right now? I believe you do. I believe we all do. We all have friends that we know. In fact, maybe some of this even pertains to us, that we would want to whole healed, put-together life right now with more and more of life on the way.
Jacque: I've experienced a new place of freedom, but I have so much farther to go, so much more freedom to find.
Brian: And so we talk about freedom or we use the word freedom. We'll hear about freedom a lot today and up to the 4th of July and fireworks and we'll have songs that will be some about freedom in our country and et cetera, et cetera. Let me just say this real quickly that, uh, I'm so grateful for people like my father who was willing to put their lives on the line to give us freedom in our country and others that have done this. I met a young man a couple of weeks ago. We went up north to where I grew up and this guy was putting gas in his car. I saw a military license plate, kind of like an insignia on his license plate. So I just walked over to him and said, hey, what branch of the service were you? He told me. I said, can I please shake your hand and thank you for serving our country and for serving me and for putting your life on the line to give me the freedoms to be able to drive up north and take a vacation to sit in front of cameras that send a message around the world that I love Jesus and that Jesus makes the difference that Jesus is the answer. It's because of men like that and women who have given their lives, that we are able to do what we do today. I'm so thankful and grateful for it.
People are going to talk a lot about freedom today, but I think at times there is a misunderstanding about what freedom really is because freedom really isn't the ability to do whatever you feel like doing. See freedom, really isn't the ability to do whatever you feel like doing, but rather freedom is a life that is guided by truth as well as motivated by love. I think you have a scripture that you'd like to read about that in Galatians.
Jacque: Actually, this morning, the Bible app sends you a verse every day, and I read my verse this morning and it was Galatians 5:13 from the New Living Testament: For you have been called to live in freedom, but don't use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom, serve one another in love.
Brian: Our freedom isn't to just do whatever we feel, but our freedom is an empowerment to serve each other and to love. Remember I said last week about the verse where Jesus talked about if a man compels you to go one mile go two. The context of that, of course, was a Roman soldier that could conscript somebody to leave their field, leave their place of business, get them out of bed in the middle of the night and carry their gear for a mile. Jesus was saying that first mile, you are a servant, you are a slave. But if you go two miles, that second mile is freedom. That's freedom when you do it on a love and concern and grace. I want to get to that place, but one of the things that I would like to be free from personally, and you might be able to identify this, is anxiety. I don't have panic attacks and things like that, but the weight at times of what is on the horizon and the future and the things that like that, sometimes they create anxiousness in me.
Sometimes I feel like I have a doctorate degree from the University of Anxiety. Maybe you can relate to that a little bit. I went to the word of God, and I try to go to the word of God when I feel anxious about the future, anxious about what's going to happen tomorrow. I get anxious about what's going to happen with the church, COVID and all these sorts of things. There is a great verse in Philippians four, six, and seven that brings great comfort to me. And let's read that.
Jacque: From the Message: don't fret or worry, instead of worrying, pray, let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns; Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good.
Brian: Let me stop you right there. When we have a sense of God's wholeness or completeness, what he is really saying there is that God has the ability to handle what we are concerned about. He has got the ability to handle what we are concerned about. We can go back to that scripture that says he that began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it, and that everything that will come together will come together for good. I can really trust that because that's what his word said. All things work together for good to those who love him. It doesn't say all things are good, but God will take all the circumstances of our lives and bring good out of them if we yield to him and allow him to put his grace into our lives.
Jacque: Before you know it a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good will come and settle you down.
Brian: Isn't that good, settle us down?
Jacque: It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
Brian: It is wonderful. What happens when he displaces the worry that's at the center of your life? You ever experienced that?
Jacque: Just this morning, I was thinking about this. I was interested, a little worried.
Brian: You were worried?
Jacque: A little worried. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to think about all the positives about this situation, not all the negative about this situation. I just saw, I started thanking God for all kinds of things and the worry— it dispels worrying because when we focus our thoughts on what we don't have, then we can't even see all that we do have.
Brian: Yes, so God really does offer us the possibility of a worry free life. Not just less worry in our life, not just less worry, but really no worry. He really offers that to us. One of the things that causes us to worry is how we envision, or we think about our future. I recently read a story about a guy who was on a cruise. I've never been on a cruise. That's something that's one of our bucket lists things. This guy was not Ernie Stanton by the way; he has gone on 52 cruises. I know Ernie is watching this. I'll tell you why this isn't Ernie in a second. This guy was kind of up on deck where the swimming pool was and he wanted to enjoy the rays, so he took off one of his socks, and the wind came and blew one of his socks over the rail. He goes and looks and sees this sock floating in the ocean. I mean, that's a lost cause; they are not going to stop the cruise ship for this guy to get his sock.
Jacque: It's probably his favorite sock.
Brian: But you know what the guy did? He took up his other sock and threw it over the rail. He took a sock off and threw it over. Many of us, myself and Ernie, would have kept that other sock brought it home, put it in our sock drawer, hoping that someday a mate would show up for that sock.
Jacque: And then we would have felt so bad again about how we lost the other mate every time we looked at it.
Brian: Right, and then we would reminisce over how there was a loss in our life. All we really are doing when we take that one sock home and put it back in our drawers, all we are doing is cluttering up our sock drawer. That's all we are doing. We are just cluttering up our sock drawer. Like the man on the ship, we need to let go of things in our lives. We need to let go, obviously, of painful things of disappointing situations that are out of our control and let our petitions as this scripture says here, our petitions and praises shape our concerns and our worries into prayers that will bring praise and adoration to God because God does hold our futures in his hands. We do pauses throughout the day. One of the things that we do in our pauses, we say, Jesus, I give everyone and everything to you. I have been in this habit of five minutes later saying, I want that back.
Jacque: Letting our brains go back there.
Brian: Yes. And so then I need another pause. Jesus, I give everything and everyone to you. When we do this, we realize we are on a daily journey with God's presence every step of our way. We are on this journey with God's presence. We probably realize this, we know this most of us, if not all of us have probably experienced this, that life is a mixture of sunshine and sorrow. Life is a mixture of happiness and heartache. I am so happy for my mom. I can't remember one time being with my mom, the last number of years where she didn't say to me, "I don't know why God took dad first." She wasn't complaining. She loved her grandchildren. She loved us. She loved to see me. She loved to see her great grandchildren, but she is happy today.
Jacque: She is worry free.
Brian: She is worry free. We have happiness and there is also heartache. Mum couldn't go home to be with the Lord and our family and be happy in doing that without there being some heartache here. Life is happiness and heartache. Life is triumph and tragedy. Life is rest and toil. It's all of these things. We have God's presence to guide us through these moments these times in our lives. Regardless of, let me use the expression, the ingredients in our personal recipe of life, we all have a personal recipe of life and there are ingredients in that recipe and those ingredients are sometimes toil, and then sometimes it's rest. Sometimes it's happiness. Sometimes it's sorrow. There are all different ingredients in the recipe of life, but we don't have to fret or worry because our life is in his hands. Our life is in his hands.
As this becomes more and more and more real to us, the greater our freedom becomes. The more I realized that my life is in his hands, the more as Pastor Jeff preached a couple of weeks ago, the more that we can get this 18 inch journey, from here, from our heads to our hearts, the more our hearts can embrace this reality that our life is in his hands, the more freedom we will experience in our lives. Freedom doesn't come by trying to obey more religious rules. Freedom comes by understanding the depth of God's love for us, the depth of his grace for us, his never-ending, unconditional love for us. There is where the freedom comes.
Jesus would speak of freedom, but as usually when he would speak of something, he usually meant something entirely different than what his listeners thought he was saying. Remember when he said, “I'm going to destroy this temple and rebuild it in three days?” Well, they just ridiculed him for that. Cause they thought he was talking about the temple that took 10 elephants and a team of horses to put one of those big blocks of granite in place. He was saying, "I'm going to destroy this temple and rebuilt in three days." Well, they just thought he was lunatic. He wasn't talking about that temple. He was talking about his temple, the body.
When Jesus talks about freedom, he is talking about something entirely different. The type of freedom that he was talking about is the type of freedom that comes not through power or strength, but through sufficient. It's not the kind of power that comes through control, but rather surrender. Now that's a tough one for us because we like to be in charge. We like to be in control and it's hard to trust somebody else. But when Jesus says, if you trust me, you will have freedom, that's the kind of freedom he is talking about. It's the kind of freedom that doesn't come through having possessions, but rather through having open hands and giving. That's the kind of freedom that he is talking about. You and I are constantly being exposed to advertising and marketing agents and marketing strategies that tell us, we are just the stuff that we have. It's only what you have that matters. It's only what you have that makes you who you are, that makes you valuable, that's only the stuff that we have that gives us value. We are what we drive or we are what we wear, or we are what the number is on the bottom of our bank statement. That's who we are.
And then our conscience goes to work as well as the enemy and starts to tell us that we are our past; we are all of our failures. That's who we really are. We are the sum of all of our choices, and of course those choices are usually thought of as all the bad ones, not any of the good ones, all the wrong ones, with tragic consequences. Our minds even tell us that we are the sum of our fears, that we are the sum of our worries, especially those worries about the future. But Jesus said that the life he has for us are none of those things, none of those things, the life that he has for us, that we are not our stuff, that we are not our possessions that you and I are not what we've done in our past, nor are we what our fears are, but rather we are all someone that he loves on conditionally.
I was thinking today, I wonder if I made a list of everybody that I thought loved me unconditionally, I wonder how many people would actually be on that list. It's a pretty rare thing. It really is. Even in the household of faith, we are trying to move in that direction, aren't we, but how easily we can get offended with each other. Can't we? All of that offense influences us to not love unconditionally. We are someone who matters very much to God. We are someone who matters so much that he actually was willing to give his life for us. He was willing to die in that spiritual war to give us freedom. And no matter what we may have or don't have, or no matter what we've done or what we haven't done, no matter what unknown stretch out before us, and we all have a known in our future, we can know this, that God loves us so much, and that he longs to make himself at home right here in our hearts. That's what God's desire is for us.
When we experience his love and we experienced his forgiveness, we begin to understand what it means to be a person who has nothing to lose. We begin to experience what it means to be a person that has actually nothing to prove and nothing to hide. According to Jesus, that is real freedom. That is real freedom. Do you have something you want to say?
Jacque: I was just thinking of the word spontaneous. That's how spontaneous life can be when you are not trying to guard yourself and protect. It's good.
Brian: Let me close with this: because of Jesus and the sacrifice he made at Calvary, I am free today. I'm free, however, to choose, I'm free to choose, and I want to choose love like Pastor Jeff was talking about, I want to choose love because I don't believe there is any occasion that truly justifies hatred. I don't believe really there is any injustice that warrants me to carry bitterness because I suffer when that happens. I choose to love, and so I choose to love God and I choose to love the things that God loves. I want to love what God loves. I don't always love what God loves, but I want to, and I want to move in that direction.
I want to invite God to be the God of my circumstances. So then when I find myself in a circumstance, I don't get angry. All frustrated, all upset, blow a gasket. I want God to become the God of my circumstance, to know that he is going to work in that circumstance to bring his glory and his peace and his will into my life. I want to refuse the temptation to be cynical because in our culture today, it's real easy, isn't it not to become cynical? We can become cynical by listening to the news and listening to reports about this, where we find out what's going on here or there. I just want to refuse to become a person that's cynical. I want to look at my problems as an opportunity to see God move. That's what I want to do. I want to look at all of my problems as an opportunity to see God move.
I also want to choose peace for my life. I want to choose peace for my life, and I want to live not only forgiven, but I also want to then live in a place of forgiveness so that I can live in a place of forgiveness, but I also want to choose gentleness. One of the reasons I want to choose gentleness is because the kingdom of God, in the kingdom of God, nothing is won by force in the kingdom of God. It's one by gentleness and love, not this power over, but a servant power under. If I raise my voice, and I have been known to do that at times when I'm frustrated and angry, especially at officials during Vikings games, but when I raised my voice, I want it to be only in praise of my savior.
I want my loudest voice to be used to praise Jesus. I don't want my loudest voice to have someone be the target of my frustration, my anger. I want my loudest voice to be given to praise my savior. I want to commit myself to love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control, not just on Sundays, but every day of my life. I want love joy, peace, patience, kindness, self-control goodness, faithfulness, gentleness to be in my life every day. When I am successful at being like that, I will give thanks to the Lord who is worthy forever. If I fail, and I do fail to be that way at times, I will then seek God's grace and seek his mercy to help me to become that, which I have just failed at.
And then when I reach the end of each day, if I have given myself to these things, even if I have failed, if I give myself to getting God's grace and mercy, I can place my head on my pillow at night and rest, because I know I've experienced the freedom of Christ. I know I've experienced the freedom of Christ. And so father, I thank you today that, in Jesus, we truly have freedom.
We have freedom, freedom to follow your truth, and to let that walk out in our lives in love and grace and mercy, kindness. Lord, you have come to bring us freedom, but it's the freedom from all of the schemes of the enemy. It's the freedom that comes with surrender to you.
Most people when they put their hands up and say, I surrender, they become prisoners, and now they become fodder of the ruling nation. Many lose their lives, some on death marches, some working in labor camps, working from sunup to sundown with very little to eat and no compensation. But Lord, when we put up our hands and surrender to you, we become prisoners of love your love. There is where we have the wings to fly over those prison walls. Never to be encumbered again. And so I thank you, Jesus, that the freedom you give can be entered into completely even if we are in a prison camp, even if we are in a nation that doesn't honor you, that makes it illegal to honor you. We can still be free.
How much more Lord in our nation today, how much more in our nation shouldn't we be able to be free, to be free as you want us to be free? So I do pray today in Jesus' name, that the freedom that you have for us, we would obtain, we would receive because you Lord gave your life to give it to us, and there is nothing preventing us from receiving it except us. So we down our weapons of rebellion, as Charles Finney would say. We lay down, Lord, our resistance to you. We lay down our fears. We lay down our doubts, and Lord, we embrace you. Wrap us in your arms; wrap us in your love today. May we know the intimate favor of our God, and in so doing, we will walk into a freedom, freedom that cannot be described in earthly language. That's why we will need eternity to give our expressions for it. This we pray, Jesus in your name for your sake. Amen.
Let's raise our hands together. Let me bless you. Now, may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turned his face toward you and give you his peace. And may you celebrate the freedom of Christ in your life today. This we pray in the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
God bless you. If you would like to receive communion today, Cheryl will be here to serve communion after the service. God bless you. Happy 4th of July. Enjoy your freedom that Jesus has provided for you. God bless you. Have a wonderful day.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 7-4-21. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.