An Update from Pastor Rhode on April 20, 2020

Dear Saints of Faith Lutheran Church,

My family and I would like to express our deepest thanks to all of you for your prayers, words of encouragement, and offers to help during our time of illness. We are so very grateful for all of you. Please accept my deepest apologies if you called, texted, or emailed and did not hear back from me, I have simply been overwhelmed.

These are challenging times for all of us. Yet, it is through these very challenges that God is calling us to draw nearer to Him, to cast our burdens upon Him, and to entrust ourselves to His Fatherly care. He has revealed His loving heart toward us in Jesus. He forgives us. He loves us. He wants us to set our hearts and minds on Him and on those things that are eternal. These temporal struggles are indeed only temporary.

What pleases our God and Father most of all? Faith. Consider the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. Even when forsaken by God on the cross, He cried out in perfect faith: “My God, My God.” Just as gold becomes purer and more precious as it passes through fire, so faith becomes purer and more precious as it passes through the fiery trials of this life. Gold is nothing to God; as the Bible shows, He paves the streets with it! But faith – our trust in Him – there is nothing more precious in His sight.

So, understand what the fiery trials that you are going through are really all about. You are being made more and more like Jesus. Your faith is being made purer and purer. God is conforming each one of us, through the things we experience, into the image of His own beloved Son. There could be no greater or higher honor.

Take heart. The one who is humbled with Jesus is exalted with Jesus. The one who dies with Jesus is raised with Jesus. If we are drawn into Good Friday with Him it is precisely so that that we will be drawn into Easter with Him. Jesus is risen and we shall arise.

“Faith,” as the Scriptures say, “comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” So please continue to join us for the streaming of our online Services. Whoever hears the word of Jesus, hears Jesus Himself. His word creates and sustains faith in us.

Also, please join us for the many Biblical studies that we are streaming online, including two new ones: 1 Samuel on Thursdays at 11am and Revelation on Sundays at 9:20am.

We do have a limited number of openings throughout the week for those who would like to attend Services. Please contact Pastor Rhode by email to make a reservation or to arrange for a Communion service by appointment.

May God draw you ever closer to Him and may He sustain you in the one true faith even as He purifies and beautifies your faith.

In Christ,

Pastor Rhode