Dear Springs of Grace Church Family,
Grace and peace from our Risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ – the Great I Am. I trust you have been taking your bruised and hurting hearts to Jesus this week as you have walked in the glorious of truth of your position of no condemnation and the challenge of a new practice.
WE WILL ONLY LIVE STREAM OUR WORSHIP SERVICE TOMORROW AT 10:45 AM. Please join us at 10:35 for the welcome time and instead of emailing in a photo you can now just upload it tomorrow morning prior to 10:30 AM (much easier) this will enable you to send in your Easter photos if you so choose https://photos.app.goo.gl/djZxYhkzjNV8uCmQ8

Here’s the link again for tomorrow’s YouTube live stream of our service:

Feel free to send it out to others who might not know the Lord or who might not have a church family to worship with tomorrow. Be sure and participate during the service and avoid the temptation to get too comfortable and just spectate. Sing with us. Pray with us. Reading the Scripture with us and join us in the FLOWERING OF THE CROSS. We will be doing this a little differently this year. If you want to drop off flowers there is a bucket of water at the north doors of the church building where you can drop off flowers that will be used to flower the cross during the service. Please drop them off tonight or tomorrow before 10:00 am. If you want to send in a virtual flower – you can do that by simply texting me (918-760-0089) or emailing me at joeblankenship@springsofgrace.church and we will put a flower(s) in the cross for you. Alissa Hill and Kaity Swinford plan to be our hands in flowering the cross. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Alissa and hopefully she will be able to give you guidance. After the message – consider how you might respond to what God says to us and then share that with someone or think of ways that you might stir others towards love and good deeds. Some of you might consider hosting a discussion online about the message through one of the social media platforms. I’ve been told that google hangouts are great for this. We can video talk through zoom or other mediums and I would love to participate with you in that.
I plan to interact after the service with as many of you that can through the you tube chat on our live stream.
Spring Kids will happen again this week and I encourage you to send in short videos that can be included. We had a couple of problems last week technology wise but will try and get that fixed so we can get more videos next time. Please pray for Greg and Lois Lewis and their family in the Philippines. They are in a very difficult situation there under tight quarantine and with a major outbreak of the virus all around them and the quarantine hospital still hasn’t opened up. They are in desperate need of equipment.
• Please pray for those in New York City, Italy, Iran, France, Germany, Detroit, New Jersey, New Orleans and the United Kingdom who have been most impacted at this time.
• Pray for those who are mourning the loss of loved ones (currently over 110,000 as of this writing according to the World Health Organization (WHO)
• Pray for Nina and Sergii and their family in the passing of Nina’s dad
• Pray for Philip Scanlan in the passing of his dad
• Pray for our brothers and sisters in Shreveport. Pray for Jahill Richards and the other elders at Springs of Grace, Shreveport as they face these difficult days
• Pray for Steven and Morgan Partain (Jake’s sister and brother-in-law) who minister in New Orleans
• Pray for those who are currently sick from the virus – pray that they might not feel alone
• Pray for the spread of the virus to stop
• Pray for the medical personnel who are treating those who are sick
• Pray for the medical personnel in our church (Dr. Brandon Ganzer, Dr. Grace Yoon, Dr. Johanna McKaskill, Dr. Nathan Smith, Dr. Tim Condie, Dr. Sergii Alekseiev , Dr. Shaun Peters, Dr. Hae-Jean Peters, Dr. Greg Lewis (in the Philippines) and nurses – Carol Benson, Erica Raguse, Lottie Blankenship, Faith Ruffenach, Nate Boone, Noemi Wells, as well as other medical personnel like Krista Burton who as a physical therapist at St. John’s is in the thick of it, Kyra De La Torre or people in our church who may have increased challenges and opportunities during this pandemic)
• Pray for those who have lost jobs and income
• Pray for our other missionaries – Nick and Renee’ Gathers in the Middle East (they are under strict quarantine and experiencing many challenges in their international community), Carrie Moss and Sveta Gusieva in Ukraine (Agape House is currently closed and they asked that we might pray for the patients who are without much care who otherwise would be treated at Agape), Dorothea Schultz in Thailand
• Pray for hospital administration, the COVID task force, our president, governor, mayor and other government leaders as they make very difficult decisions
• Pray for Christians (and particularly us at Springs of Grace) to model “do not be afraid” and “love your neighbor”
• Pray for those who have greater fears of isolation
• Pray for those experiencing a greater threat of abuse
• Pray for those who have greater risks from this virus
• Pray for one another in our church family (consider calling 2-3 people in the church and getting prayer requests directly from them)
• Pray for our live stream worship service Sunday – that God might use it to bless and love, encourage and help and that Jesus might be lifted up in ways that many might see His glory and fall more in love with Him
• Pray for our time of communion – that we might sense our union with the Lord Jesus and with one another in greater reality than ever before
• Pray for the gospel witness from God’s people to go forth in the midst of a heightened awareness of the brevity of this life
• Pray for our church staff and leaders as we try to find creative, God-honoring and helpful ways to serve our church and neighbors
I miss you and look forward to our time Sunday. He is risen. He is risen indeed.
Pastor Joe