Dear Friends,

On the behalf of our staff and church leadership, thank you for visiting the website of Emanuel Lutheran Church. We hope you will attend a worship service soon. We want to offer a warm welcome, so let us know if we can help you. Your spiritual and practical concerns are important to us.

 

Our motivation to help comes from our Lord Jesus Christ, who teaches us, “Love one another as I have loved you.”

 

May the Lord bless you and your family with joy.

  

Some thoughts for the day...

  

I am writing to invite you to pray with me. We have so many folks in our prayer ministries. Moms and Dads who are home with the children today are prayer ministers. Retirees who live in our neighborhoods and local retirement communities are prayer ministers. Teenagers attending middle schools, high schools and community colleges up and down Highway 99 are prayer ministers and our members away at college and jobs are prayer ministers. We pray in homes on our knees, on the streets as we walk, on campus and at job sites. We pray in cars as we drive, and here at the church.

 

We pray in response to our Lord’s call to pray. I remember Jesus’ words to the disciples after he “withdrew from them, about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed,…when he got up from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping because of grief, and he said to them, ‘Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray’…” from Luke 22.39 to 46).

 

Can we not stay awake one hour to pray? Say Yes! Let us pray for our friends, relatives, acquaintances, and neighbors. If we know some details of their circumstances we can pray with knowledge and faith, or if we have only seen their needs from a distance we can still pray in faith. Let us pray even if we are grieving. Let us pray even when we are rejoicing. Christians pray constantly.

 

Now that “normal” schedules are giving us that familiar structure, let’s be as constant in prayer as Jesus. He is praying for you even now.

 

 

God bless you all,

Pastor Jo Ann Neal