And Yet . . . God Provides

Wednesday, March 30, 2022
Pastor Deb Kielsmeier

2 Corinthians 9:6-15

Our mid-week services this Lent have focused on God’s promises to us and this year’s theme. We acknowledge our reality – Our lives may know joy and sorrow, transition, and uncertainty. And YET, and yet… God promises! – God promises to be with us, to encourage and guide us, to provide for us and to be with us, always.

When the ground under our feet seems to shake – God’s promises are a solid rock upon which we can stand.

During this strange season of a pandemic, political tension and uncertainty in our world, anxiety levels have increased for many of us. You may have been up at night – staring at the ceiling and asking… What if this health issue does not resolve? How will I pay my bills next month? What about this issue at work, that relationship, my finances, our children, family, the climate, and the future… and the list goes on.

Fear, when it is healthy, is a natural reaction that stimulates the fight or flight impulse in us. That is crucial when we are faced with a dangerous threat. We are on alert with problem-solving thinking in high gear. But when fear turns into an ongoing anxiety and worry it disrupts our lives and can compromise our health. It robs us of peace and joy and can cloud our judgment.

The bible is full of verses that exhort us not to worry, or to live fear-filled lives. The problem is that we all would love to stop worrying. But it is hard. It takes more than just singing – Don’t worry, Be Happy.

Thankfully the Bible is not only full of stories about worry and fear. It also consistently points to the one thing that can free us from worry and anxiety. God’s faithfulness. When we trust in God and the AND YET of God’s promises… we can lay down our burden and find peace.

For example: In Matthew 6 Jesus tells us,

^“ do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

²⁸“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?

Do you see what happens when we focus upon the GIVER – the Provider? It takes the focus off us and how are ‘we’ going to survive? And places our mind upon God – the One from whom all blessings flow.

Jesus Knew how easily we are gripped by worry and anxiety. And how easily we sink into the belief that “there’s not enough.” Whatever it is.

And he reminds us that God is bigger than us, more able than we are. Most of the things we worry about we cannot really do much about anyway. But GOD is the giver of all good gifts. And we are the sheep of this very good shepherd.

The abundance and generosity of our God knows no bounds. Just look at Genesis One. It is a Litany of Abundance. Out of nothing God creates – stars, oceans, mountains, plants, fish, animals, humankind, infusing all creation with life and vitality.

Then God continues to provide throughout Bible: God blesses Abraham, Sarah with more descendants than stars in the sky. God provides manna and water in the desert wilderness. Jesus turns water into the best wine ever. He feeds the 5,000 with five loaves and two fish, heals the sick and raises the dead to life.

The abundance of life is everywhere.

And the Abundance of God will not end. Our lives will end in God. Our well-being cannot be taken from us. Neither life nor death nor angels nor principalities nor things — nothing can separate us from God.

“God is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine” (Ephes 3:20)

And from today’s scripture hear this…

God able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.

My prayer for you this week is that when the “what ifs” keep you awake at night, or when your stomach knots up with worry –remember. And YET, AND YET. God is able. God sees and cares for you. God will provide. And our GOD is faithful.

AMEN.

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

The book of Romans is a letter. An actual letter. Like, a letter written by hand and then sent to someone else for them to read. Paul, the author of this letter, wrote a lot of letters. Paul was an apostle, that is, someone who is sent – in this case, he is one who is sent to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to the furthest reaches of the known world. He’s really, really good at it.

At the time that Paul writes this letter to the church in Rome, he’s been doing this work for probably twenty years and is at the peak of his career. He’s developed a great pattern in his work: visit a place, get to know the people, continually share his faith with them, help gather a community of believers from all walks of life, and stay with them while they learn how to be followers of Jesus. Then Paul leaves – after all, he’s got other places to visit and more people to teach. He is an apostle – he is sent. But he doesn’t leave the church abandoned. He writes letters back to these churches, especially when he hears about crises or conflicts. Sometimes they need comfort, sometimes challenge, sometimes critique, but always he writes as one they know and love. They welcome his input.

The letter to the Romans is not like that. Paul has never been to Rome. There is already a Christian church there, one brought over likely from Jerusalem very early in the faith. And the church in Rome has recently seen conflict. A few years before the writing of this letter, the Roman emperor expelled all the Jews from Rome. Because Christianity was effectively a form of Judaism at the time, Christians were also exiled. After the emperor died and the Jewish Christians returned, they found a church that had continued to grow and develop – this time with Gentile Christians.

It’s hard for us to understand how shocking and despicable this would have been. Two weeks ago I preached on Acts 10, and how Peter’s vision of God calling all animals clean and good to eat flew in the face of millennia of culture, history, and society for Jewish Christians. Jesus himself was Jewish and kept these laws – surely if anyone else wanted to be Christian, they could likewise follow these rules. Peter’s vision and the general movement of the church revealed otherwise.

That didn’t mean it made things easy. It is hard to let go of tradition and expectation and legislation as the Spirit moves us to new places. I hear people struggle when someone sits in their pew or wears sweatpants to church. Let’s be honest: those are enormously trivial things. If still we grind our teeth at the thought of these worthless infractions how much more might faithful people be driven to despair by moving on from the purity laws ordained by God?

This is the faith community to which Paul writes. He writes to a church redefining and fighting. It is a church that feels a deep rift, a painful split, one that goes deep into matters of identity and righteousness, one that threatens to dissolve into name-calling and condemning and finger-pointing and disgrace to the very name of God in whose name they mean to gather – and if we’re honest, we know how that feels. Those fears are not unfamiliar.

So how does Paul start his letter? He has no standing in that church in Rome. They don’t even know who he is – and if they do, it’s possible that they might still remember him as he was in his youth, an aggressive persecutor of the early faith. What can he say that would possibly invite them to listen to him, to hear the word he will share, to receive the message that he hopes will join them together in the work of the gospel?

He keeps it simple: he tells them the truth. He tells them who he is, and it is fully wrapped up in who Jesus is. His self-introduction is the story of the gospel. Nothing he can say about himself means more than who he is in Jesus Christ.

He tells them he wants to come see them, that he wants to be with them, that he hopes he can share some spiritual gift – but even more than that, so that they might mutually encourage each other in faith. He doesn’t want to come to them because he’s better than them, because he can fix them so they can get things right, because they’re obviously sinful mess-ups who just haven’t been taught the truth. No, he wants to join them for mutual encouragement in faith. He wants to walk with them. He hopes he has something to offer them in his teaching and leadership, but just the same, he knows he will grow by being with them as well.

What if that’s how it’s supposed to be? What if we’re supposed to talk about what we believe and why, not because we’ve got it right and we want to establish our superior knowledge, but because we know that God works through our mutual encouragement in faith? What if we were not ashamed of the gospel, not afraid of getting it wrong, not worried that someone would think we were weird for talking about what we believe and why and then asking others the same? What if we trusted that the power of God was at work in this mutual encouragement? What if we were not so proud and short-sighted as to think that the way we see God is the only way God works in the world? What if we actually believed that God is at work in the world, that God has already been working long before we showed up, that we arrive as much to learn as to teach?

Ah, but I know the argument against it: we’re supposed to keep polite conversation, right? What don’t you talk about at the dinner table? Religion and politics, right? Look where it’s gotten us. It’s gotten us to a place where we can no longer have civil discourse, where we are more likely to condemn than to seek to understand, where we claim a Christian can only look one way, live one place, vote one direction, take one moral position. It’s gotten us built up and walled off and fighting against our own beloved members of the family of God.

So don’t do it. Take Paul’s example. Tell people who you are. Tell them where you’re from. Tell them what you believe. And then invite them to do the same. Make your story of faith as natural a part of your introduction as where you work and where you live and who’s in your family. And when someone’s story is different, listen to it. Hear it. See God at work in it. Be amazed. Allow for the mutual encouragement of faith, because this is how the gospel is shared.

No matter where you go from here, no matter where you find yourself, no matter what comes next for you – you can do this. You are called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel which is the power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith – no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen.

And Yet . . . God Provides

Wednesday, March 30, 2022
Pastor Deb Kielsmeier

2 Corinthians 9:6-15

Past Sermons

Crying Out

Waiting

A World Shaped by God’s Power

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

Crying Out

Waiting

A World Shaped by God’s Power

About Augustana

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Worship Hours

And Yet . . . God Provides

Wednesday, March 30, 2022 Pastor Deb Kielsmeier

2 Corinthians 9:6-15

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019 Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

Wednesday, March 30, 2022
Pastor Deb Kielsmeier

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson