FROM THE SHEPHERD’S HEART
Do you feel like you have woken up to a bit of a nightmare? Maybe it’s been the nightmare lines that wrap around Costco, the empty shelves at Raley’s, the daily avalanche of revelations about COVID-19, or whatever they are calling this unseen invader, and the inability to draw encouragement from each other because we can’t assemble together. Well maybe it isn’t a nightmare but it isn’t a happy dream either.
Nevertheless, our church family is going to navigate these uncharted waters together. God has blessed us with life in the electronic age that gives us the means to stay connected through such means as email, texting, Facebook, and that antiquated means called the telephone (for those of us slightly more up-to-date, the cell phone). Though we cannot come to church, the church can come to us. The church, both we who are at the office every day, and the entire church family can stay connected and will stay connected.
We will not journey through this time alone nor will we forsake the “assembling of ourselves together” (Heb 10:25). But our assembling will be electronic. During this time, do pay attention to the daily medical news and advice. Also check your email every day. I will be sending you daily devotionals and each week we will upload our worship service to our church website (lincolncommunitychurch.us). We are working at putting our weekly bulletin, as well as our monthly Connections Newsletter, on line via email and Facebook. I personally am endeavoring to call every household in our church family to pray with you. We are enlisting the help of volunteers who would also like to help us stay connected through phone calls.
Many of you are bringing your offerings to the office or learning how to give your gifts to the Lord via online giving. We thank you; our missionaries thank you; and our community thanks you as we continue serve the Kingdom of God in the Lincoln Community.
These times may seem a bit nightmarish, but to quote former President Roosevelt as the nation plunged into the Great Depression, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” Jesus said much the same thing, only with far greater impact and truth: In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world (John 16:33). Thus, as the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8:35-37:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution,
or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are
more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
Pastor Mike
