Church Blog

Brothers and sisters,

Happy Monday to all! I am excited today that you and I are part of extending God’s Kingdom. We come into contact daily with those who need the love and life of Jesus, and the forgiveness He offers. Yesterday’s worship time and message reminded us that we have the privilege to share with them that His kingdom has come and they can be part of that kingdom! May God grant to all of us the boldness and wisdom to not miss those opportunities.

We missed those of you who weren’t here yesterday and pray you are doing well. As humans, sometimes sickness, family obligations or just the need for time away means we can’t gather with God’s people on a given week. However, there are some of you haven’t been here in a while and I am concerned for you. The enemy of your soul, the devil, wants you to not be among the people of God. He will try to isolate you. Sometimes the enemy wants you to feel so horrible when you mess up that you just want to avoid God’s people. Don’t let him isolate you! We all blow it and we all mess up and sin. There is God’s promise that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God’s people are not a bunch of arrived saints, but a group of struggling pilgrims that need each other to help us keep moving toward becoming like Jesus. We are here to help each other when we are doing good and when we fall. If when you fall, it causes you to avoid God’s people, the enemy has achieved his goal. Don’t let the enemy deceive you and shame you into avoiding God’s people. We need you and you need us!

I want to thank again all those who helped with the Kennedy anniversary celebration and those who helped in the church work day last weekend. You guys and gals are great!

We will have a pot luck dinner after worship next Sunday, September 25. We will be having this dinner upstairs to make it easier for those who have difficulty navigating the stairs.

Email or call me if you need prayer or ministry from me or your East Madison family. We can’t provide that needed prayer or ministry if you don’t let us know you need something.

Love being your pastor!
Bob

Brothers and sisters,

Happy Monday afternoon to all of you! We had a great day yesterday with the East Madison family and a lot of guests. Thank you for making them feel welcomed! It is so important to help guests feel welcomed and cared for when they worship with us at East Madison. As someone said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” When people worship with us and somehow find a human connection, it helps our message that Jesus loves them become more believable. Thank you for making an extra effort to connect with our guests.

I hope you learned with me that following Jesus is a great adventure! Yes, it is sometimes hard and there are times of difficulty. But whatever it might cost us to follow Jesus, it is worth it! Can I get and “Amen”! As we follow Him, He provides His Holy Spirit as our constant companion. He provides strength and wisdom for the journey and His people to be our fellow travelers. We follow the One who loves us more than we can even comprehend or understand. We follow the One who laid His life down for us. My prayer for myself and for you is that we will “see Him more clearly, love Him more dearly, and follow Him more nearly, day by day.”

We will be helping Kennedy school with their anniversary celebration Friday night, September 16.

Next Sunday during morning worship, we will be observing the Lord’s Supper.

Have a great week!

Love being your pastor! Thank you for being a great church!
Bob

Brothers and sisters,

Happy Tuesday to all of you! I hope you had a great Labor Day holiday and did not have to do much labor! Sunday was a great day to be with the people of God. We missed those who were gone! I know that the end of summer stuff and the celebrations were good for you. In our worship time, we learned that we not only need to confess and follow Jesus as Lord, but we need to understand what kind of Savior He is and what kind of people he wants us to be. Jesus is the Savior who served and suffered for his followers that they may have life. As His followers, we are to serve others and be willing to suffer for them. We are to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus. We are to follow the Jesus revealed in the Bible and not a false Jesus made up out of our own desires and imagination or the imaginations of others. We follow one who gave up His life as a ransom for many, and we are to have that same attitude and lifestyle. The way to real life is to lose it to Jesus and find our lives in Him.

I encourage each of you to be involved in Bible Study on Sunday morning. We have classes for all ages, from preschool to adults. Now is a good time to join one of these studies.

Have a great week!

Love being your pastor!
Bob

Brothers and sisters,

Happy Monday morning! I hope your day has started well. It was great to be with you yesterday and worship together. We missed those of you who weren’t here and pray you also had a great day. Yesterday, we worshipped our great God and learned that He will always provide us with whatever we need to serve Him. He may not provide it until the exact right time, but He will always provide for His work. We learned that as we serve Him and share the good news of the gospel, some will not receive the gospel. We move on and share it with others because there are those who may be waiting to respond. We also learned that sometimes God will call us to some impossible task we with our strength and resources cannot accomplish. God does this to show us that when we are at the end of our strength and resources, He is there to do what He alone can do. There is nothing He cannot accomplish! He is the God of the impossible who uses imperfect vessels like us to show His mighty power.

As we seek to share the gospel with family and friends and with others, I am reminded of Paul’s burden for his fellow countrymen who had rejected the gospel. He wrote about this in Romans 9. The intensity of his burden was profound and could have been paralyzing. However, he kept praying and seeking to share the gospel with his fellow Israelites and he also took the gospel to those who were more open. Many of you have family and friends who continually seem to reject the gospel. You are intensely burdened for them. Don’t blame yourself for their rejection of the gospel. God will bless every imperfect effort you make to share His good news. Keep praying for them and sharing the gospel as you have opportunity, but don’t let your burden for them keep you from sharing with others who may be more open. God is able to open hearts and He is hearing your prayers for those you love, so don’t lose heart. Keep being faithful and see what God can do.

We pray God’s blessing for those starting back to school this week. Have a great year! May God use you to be His light and show His love to those God places in your path.

Have a great week!

Love being your pastor!
Bob

Brothers and sisters,

Happy Monday! We have a beautiful day to rejoice in the Lord! The circumstances of our lives may be difficult, but when we remember Jesus and all He has done, we can always rejoice in Him.

It was great to worship with you yesterday here at East Madison. The music helped us to focus on our great God instead of lesser things. The message out of Luke 8 reminded us that Jesus has the power to calm all our fears. Whatever your great fear may be, Jesus is greater than that fear. Jesus is greater than nature, greater than demons, greater than disease and greater than death! Jesus overcame them all and will help those of us who believe in Him overcome whatever we are facing or might face in the future. We truly are “more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”

Remember to pray for each other this week.

Love being your pastor!

Bob

Brothers and sisters,

Happy Monday! I hope your week has gotten off to a good start. My week has stated well. I met this morning with some leaders of Kennedy School and others from the community to see how we might partner with Kennedy to impact our community. I am excited about the possibilities.

It was wonderful to worship with all of you and celebrate the Lord’s Supper yesterday. We were reminded of the high price Jesus paid for our salvation. We were encouraged to hear well His Word and seek to be doers of His word. The Word of God deeply implanted in us will continually change us. If you could not be here, we missed you! Remember, you can hear the message at embclife.org if you missed it and would like to hear it.

I want to thank Damon, Megan, and Cheryl for conducting the youth lock-in. I heard from many that they had a wonderful time. Thank you, youth leaders, for investing in eternity by investing in these young people.

I want to thank all of you for supporting the “Let’s Eat Out” that was held on our property this summer. You came and met people and spent time with your brothers and sisters in Christ. Hopefully, we can have more and more community events on this property as we seek to be salt and light in East Madison.

Have a great week! Below is some information and some prayer requests for missionaries we support.

Love being your pastor!
Bob

Brothers and sisters,

Happy Monday to all! It was wonderful worshiping with all of you who were here yesterday at East Madison. We missed those who were away. We sang “Hope Has Come,” and were reminded that hope is here because of our Savior’s love for sinners and His willingness to forgive any, every and all sin. Jesus can, He will forgive the most blatant sinner who turns from his or her sin to Him. Jesus forgave the sinful woman who came to him in faith after a lifetime of bad choices. Jesus forgave a murderer like Karla Faye Tucker and replaced her hate with love. Jesus can and will forgive any who come to Him in repentant faith. Jesus will put our “sins so far from us that even God Himself cannot find them.”

“Let’s Eat Out” has been extended for one week. If you can, come and eat with us and meet our neighbors tomorrow night, August 9, from 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM.

We will be observing the Lord’s Supper this Sunday, August 14, during our morning worship service.

Some person or some people around us this week are in need of the love of God. Be looking for them with me. Ask God’s Spirit to use us to share His love with them when they come our way.

Have a great week!

Love being your pastor!
Bob

Brothers and sisters,

Happy Monday! Whether your week has gotten off to a good start or whether it has been a rocky day, we can choose to rejoice because we with imperfect faith are serving a perfect Savior. Our faith at times might be as small as a speck of dust but if that faith is in Jesus, we can see mountains move! The just God who declares “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” also declares to those who believe in Jesus, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” If your imperfect faith is in the perfect sacrifice of the perfect Savior Jesus, you can rejoice in that you have peace with God! Can I get an “Amen” for that good news!

Have a great week!

I really love being your pastor. You are a blessing to me!
Bob

Brothers and sisters,

Happy Monday! I hope your Monday is going well. It was good yesterday to worship with the family of God at East Madison and learn how Jesus is working among every group in society from top to bottom. God was among us, even answering our prayers as we met! It was also fun just watching people interact after the service was over and enjoying being together.

We are missing those of you away for activities, vacations and health reasons. All of you are being prayed for this week. Remember your brothers and sisters love you! It is good being able to get away from routine and spending time in special activities, enjoying beauty and possibly catching up with family. I hope all of you have that opportunity this summer. It is also good to come back together and be with God’s people. Carla and I worshipped with my sister and her husband, my son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter, and Carla’s parents while we were in Oklahoma. That was special! But there is also something special about worshiping with our church family, with people whom we know and love and serve God with week by week. Yesterday was sweet!

We have two more Tuesday’s for “Let’s Eat Out.” Let’s make the best of them inviting and meeting neighbors.

Have a great week!

Love being your pastor,
Bob

Brothers and sisters,

Happy Monday morning! I hope you are having a great Monday. Yesterday we met and it was wonderful to have been together and worshipped the God of justice, mercy, love and forgiveness. It was wonderful to worship the One who gave His life for our salvation. We took His supper together remembering that and remembering we are one in Him.

We talked about some things believers can do in response to last week’s horrible tragedies in our country that claimed the lives of seven people. We can grieve with those family members and friends who have suffered these horrible losses. We can seek to listen to those who have different experiences and perspectives than we have. We can, we must, pray that God would intervene and use us to be instruments of His justice, forgiveness and peace to others around us.

The message reminded us that when we truly believe in Jesus, He changes us and makes us different. He enables us hear His Word and empowers us to put it into practice. Those who simply hear the Word of Jesus but do not trust in Him and who do not put into practice what Jesus says simply delude themselves. We learned that what we do today is what we really believe and everything else is just religious talk.

I forgot to announce that next week, July 17, Kevin Phillips will be bring the message from Psalm 63.

Remember “Let’s Eat Out” Tuesday night on the church property from 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM.

Have a great week!

Love being your pastor,
Bob