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Hi FCBC Family,

I hope you are doing well and staying safe in this time. I really missed seeing all of you and the time we have to come together as a church family, the time we have to talk together and hear how you are doing and what God’s teaching you, the time we have to pray together, to fellowship, to learn together at Sunday school and worship together, and even time afterwards just to eat and just to watch the kids play.

We are nearing two full weeks where we have been unable to meet together, and it looks like it will be many more before we able to come together again, but even though we can’t be together, I thank God that we have technology and just many different ways that we can keep in contact during this time that we are apart. We are in the midst of a time of great uncertainty, throughout the whole world and just for us as individuals, and it's during these times where our frailtiy, our weakness is so obvious and evident and we see how little we have control over things. At the same time, as Christians we are also reminded of how we can take comfort in knowing that God is in control and He cares for us, although we don’t understand why He's doing what He's doing all the time, we know that we can cast our cares on Him because He cares for us. We know God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble, but even knowing all that, it is still scary. And during these times we experience so many different emotions, anxiety and fear because there is so much unknown. There’s concern for our health and the health of our loved ones. We experienced different financial pressures, and just different frustrations and stresses of having our lives as we know it turned completely upside down. 

As you go through this, we deal with it many different ways. For some of us, we want to do something to regain some of the control that we've lost. Some of us, we make sure we have enough food and supplies, for others, we constantly wash our hands and sanitize, we distance ourselves from others, for some of us, we are constantly checking the news for the latest information. Some of us, we don’t want to control or think about any of this, we just want to escape reality. We watch movies and TVs, we go play games or go online or just dive into our hobbies.

You know all these different responses are not necessarily wrong, in fact many of these things we are doing are really good and important to do. But at the same time, as Christians, we understand that our comfort, our refuge and security is found not in what supplies we have or what we can do to slow down the spread the disease or what we know as far as the latest news or even our ability to escape reality.  Our comfort and refuge is found in knowing we know God and God is our Heavenly Father and He cares for us. He is our refuge, our strength, He demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were sinners, He sent His son to die in our place. And we can rejoice always even time like this, we know that God is near. 

He calls us to pray with thanksgiving and He hears our prayers, and He gives us peace that surpasses all comprehension, that this peace will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. I want to take this opportunity to encourage all of us to humble ourselves before God and cast all our cares on Him, to pray to the one who is sovereign over all, our creator.  Whatever is troubling you, whatever you’re worry about, we can cast those before God.

I want to take a moment and pray.

God helps us in this time, we are weak, we are frail, we have little that we are actually really in control of. Lord, help us to go to you, our creator, our God who is in control of all things, and help us to trust in you, to look to you for help, and all these different things that we are facing, with our health, with our finances, with taking care of family, with all these different things, Lord we entrust our lives to you, and lives of our loved ones, knowing that you will take care of them. We pray for all the medical workers as they care and help the sick, especially many who are part of our church. We pray for our government, that you would give them wisdom that they will make the best decisions for the people in this time. We pray for us as a church, that we will continue to look for ways to encourage each other to love in good deeds, even though we can’t come together as a body of Christ, so Lord help us, we need your help, we thank you, and we pray in Jesus name. Amen. 

Well, I miss all of you, I look forward the next time when we are able to come together, and I really look for to that. I encourage all of you to join us this Sunday for our livestream, go check out the church website for more information. Take care. Stay safe. God blessed. Peace.