Lloyd Schelhaas Memorial Service

Forgiveness is not something automatic. It's not something that we can just assume and and take for granted. Forgiveness comes from through Jesus Christ. And Jesus does take sin seriously enough to bear it himself. Jesus takes guilt seriously enough to carry it to the cross. Jesus takes broken lives seriously enough to redeem them. And that's what you're seeing when you look at Lloyd's life. A man who knew failure and who caused pain like we all do, who needed mercy like we all do, and who received it. [01:26:31] (56 seconds)  #ForgivenessThroughChrist

And so what he shared with us is that his life was not built on pretending that hurt and pain and failure were not there. His life was built on bringing those things before God and receiving mercy. That changes everything about how you, that changes how you understand everything that followed, everything that you know about Lloyd after that time. Because you start to see now that the steadiness that you saw and that you received as God's grace was not it wasn't self made. [01:23:46] (43 seconds)  #MercyBuiltLife

We hear it so many times as we we gather together in moments like like this. But it is so much more than poetic language that softens our grief. It is a a concrete promise from Jesus to his followers. A concrete promise that that the life that God begins is never abandoned by God. The love that comes from God is not cut off by death. As a matter of fact, it is brought to its fulfillment in the presence of Jesus Christ, which is where Lloyd now is. [01:33:06] (41 seconds)  #GodNeverAbandons

And so I don't think those years of weakness were a contradiction of his life. I think they were a continuation of it. Yeah. Quieter and and slower, But it's a real expression of the same grace of God that has been at work in him all this time. And through all of the ups and downs, through ninety five years of work and care for a family and faithfulness, one thing remained. Scripture says that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. The body of Lloyd Skelhaus gave way, but love did not disappear. [01:31:51] (63 seconds)  #GraceInWeakness

You see what remained in Lloyd's life was not bitterness or withdrawal or or an inward turn as you do sometimes see. What remained after all of this was love. The same pattern that marked his life earlier continued even as his body weakened. That's no accident, people of God. This happens in a man's life because over time, a person has been rooted in something that's deeper than their own strength. It happens because their life has been anchored in a god who is unchanging and who is eternally strong to save. [01:31:01] (50 seconds)  #RootedInGod

And I wanna be clear about something, not just about Lloyd, but about ourselves. The good news of Jesus Christ, the gospel, is is not that that some people are naturally loving and that other people have to really try hard at it. The gospel of Jesus Christ says that all of us fall short, that all of us fail in love. All of us fall short of what we were made to be. All of us carry sin that we can't fix and we can't undo on our own, but God doesn't leave us there. [01:25:34] (44 seconds)  #GraceForAll

And the faithfulness that you saw was not the result of human willpower. No. This was about the fruit of a man who knew that he had been forgiven by the god of the universe and a man who continued to live out of that forgiveness. So his life is not just an example to admire. It's a witness to what God does with people who come to him with an honest heart. [01:24:29] (34 seconds)  #LivingOutForgiveness

The love that you see in a loving man like Lloyd is not the absence of failure. It is the result of forgiveness. It was the work of God in a life that had been brought back. Right? The brought back by the righteous dying for the unrighteous to bring us back to God, to restore us to God and to one another. [01:25:04] (31 seconds)  #LoveThroughForgiveness