Brothers and sisters,
Happy Tuesday to all! As some of you know I was unable to send my regular email yesterday, so this is another attempt to send it out.
I hope your times of worship have been helpful during our times of social distancing. I know the song Pete shared written by Ron Roberts reminded me God can and will, “Give us hope, give us strength, give us grace.” As we looked at 1 Samuel 17 and the event of David and Goliath, we learned all of us have times of discouragement in our lives. We become discouraged because we underestimate our enemy the devil and overestimate ourselves. We become discouraged because we forget we are children of God and belong to the Almighty God of the universe. We become discouraged because we often seek to avoid difficulties and problems instead of dealing with them in a timely manner. We can overcome discouragement when we realize that our faithfulness to serve God yesterday in small things enables us to deal with possibly bigger assignments today. And ultimately, we overcome discouragement when we realize that the battle is the Lord’s and we will be victorious as we live for Him. God empowers those who look to Him to be victorious even in the most difficult of circumstances.
Wonderful news! The city has approved our variance request to improve and update our sign! It will not be long now!
We are reminded from Philippians 4:4 that we are to “rejoice in the Lord always.” To do that we make a deliberate choice to always rejoice in Jesus Himself. We might not rejoice in our circumstances, but we rejoice in Jesus, who is greater than our circumstances. Jesus is the true source of our joy and in Him we can always rejoice.
I encourage you to take advantage of virtual meetings with other believers during this time. We need each other! I continue to be grateful for the virtual meetings taking place with the ladies on Saturday morning and the prayer meeting on Sunday evening.
I want to thank you for your faithfulness in giving to the Lord during these difficult times. We are receiving offerings in a couple of ways. You can mail offering checks to the church address at the Milwaukee Street address below. Also, you can give your offerings online at the embclife.org website by clicking the “Give Online” tab on the homepage or you can click this link directly: https://give.idonate.com/east-madison-baptist-church/give
Remember to keep praying continually for each other.
Love being your pastor!
Bob Ray, Pastor, East Madison Baptist Church