First Presbyterian Church of Mora

First Presbyterian Church of Mora We are a Bible believing, Bible teaching church. We offer the truth of Christ

05/07/2026

Help us open up camp for the summer! Camp will provide a free lunch and direction on what projects needs to be done. Bring your work gloves, a willingness to serve, and your friends, family, or church group to join together in a day of service to GLBC!

04/04/2026

Therefore
Romans 8:1-11
David Felker

The beginning of John Calvin’s Institutes has been quoted many times: “Nearly all wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves” (Inst. I.1.i). This week, as we look at the cross and the empty tomb, God is inviting us again to this knowledge of God and self. The details of the prophecies fulfilled and the story brought to its climax illustrate for us that we worship a God who is weaving a beautiful story of redemption. Our identification with those who mocked our Lord at the cross tells us that we are sinners in grave need of a Savior. Christ’s promises to the thief at the cross tells us that salvation belongs to the Lord and that we are not able to come to the Father through our own merit. The mourners remind us that our earthly sorrow is no match for our heavenly gain -- that we should expect to lament here on earth, but that there will be joy in the morning. The angels tell us that we have no reason to be afraid in seeking our Savior.
The resurrection is not merely a sentimental story about the possibility of good coming from evil or a story about never giving up. But the resurrection is the loud declaration that we are given the great gift of salvation through the work of Christ at the cross. Because of Christ’s work on the cross, our sins are atoned for, and we sit in the warm embrace of a loving Father. Because of Christ’s work on the cross, there is now therefore no condemnation. Because of Christ’s work on the cross, we are set free from the law of sin and death. Because God sent His Son, we can set our minds on life and peace. May we each take this Easter as a reminder of who we are in Christ, and may we rejoice that in Jesus Christ, an abundance of steadfast love is ours as we walk as children of the light.

04/03/2026

Grindstone Lake Bible Camp is seeking an Executive Director to provide spiritual leadership and operational management for the camp, ensuring a safe, fun, and gospel-centered camp experience for all who come. Key responsibilities include hiring, training, and discipling staff, overseeing programming, managing budgets/facilities, and promoting the ministry to the association churches and community. Our Director is responsible to the Camp Board of Directors that is comprised of pastors and lay people from the association Churches. Grindstone is a seasonal camp open May through September. The compensation package includes year-round housing on site for the Director’s family. Come help us continue our goal to ‘chart the course to Christ’ in East Central Minnesota.

Director Qualifications:
1. Must give evidence of personal faith in Jesus Christ as Savior
2. Must be in agreement with the Constitution, Statement of Faith, Mission, and Purpose of the camp.
3. Prefer two years of previous camp experience in a supervisory role.

To get more information and/or apply with testimony and resume please reach out to [email protected] or send to 13222 Grindstone Lake Road, Sandstone, MN 55072.
To learn more about our camp please visit our website at www.grindstonelakebiblecamp.org.

04/03/2026

At the Cross: Scoffers
Matthew 27:32-44
Ann Lowrey Forster

In my own personal bible, the story of the crucifixion is not the most notated or marked up. I love the Gospels – all four – but this isn’t the bit to which I return. Being a sentimentalist about words, I love the Christmas stories, the prayers, and the precious “I am” statements. I treasure both the Sermon on the Mount and the parables. As a woman, I am touched by Jesus’ care over women throughout His life and ministry. A student of human interaction, I love to sit with the disciples and listen to their personalities being sanctified but not erased. As a lover of literature, I lap up the various allusions, themes, and symbols the Gospels highlight from the whole counsel of our God. A bit antiestablishment in my bones, I delight in Jesus’ every interaction with the Pharisees. Being a skeptic, I need every miracle. The Gospels are a devotional home for me. But, being a sinner, I do not naturally warm to the crucifixion. As I read the accounts in the Gospels of the sufferings of Christ, I am awash with human emotion. I am horrified at the treatment of my Lord, and I am tempted towards unrighteous indignation. I am more concerned with finding a shred of my own dignity, one last hope that I do not need this horror: “Thank you, Lord, that I am not like other men.” As I read, my heart turns away in disgust. My disgust is with them, with the sinners. But somewhere I know the truth. We people alive in Christ are given the precious blessing of a conscience-stinging Holy Spirit. Mercifully, He will not allow us to wallow in a fruitless search for a way out. We are there in the crowd. Stuart Townend pens it well: “Behold the man upon a cross, My sin on His shoulders; Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call among the scoffers.” I callously divide my Savior’s clothes. I mock: “Behold the King of the Jews.” I scoff: “Let Him come down now from the cross.” But God is not mocked. He will go about His saving work whether the crowd at the cross or we have anything to do with it. He will not let our sin keep us from Him. The most precious part of the Gospels is the crucifixion. While we were yet mockers, Christ died for us. While we were dead in our scoffing, He went to His death for us. Yes, it was my sin that held Him there – until it was accomplished. But! What hope at the cross for scoffers! Christ dies, declaring my way out, and thus I know that it is finished.

04/02/2026

At the Cross: Robbers
Luke 23:32-42
Scott Miller

Reading this passage, lyrics from Joseph Hart’s hymn “Come Ye Sinners” are brought to mind. Specifically, the hymn writer’s description of Jesus as “full of pity, joined with power” echoes in my mind as I contemplate this scene of Christ on the cross. Think about the pain that Christ was experiencing during His crucifixion. How brutally awful that must have been. Astoundingly, in those moments, what mattered most to Christ was not coping with the pain of the cross or defending Himself from the soldiers’ mocking, but showing compassion to sin-wrecked souls. And this is not just who Christ was in His final moments on this earth, this is who Christ was His whole life and ministry. Moreover, this disposition does not merely characterize who Christ was back then, but who He is right now. As the hymn puts it, “Lo, the incarnate God ascended, pleads the merit of His blood.” So even now, as you look to Christ in faith, your Savior is full of pity and compassion for you as He holds forth His atoning work for you.
Of course, Christ does not simply pity sinners in the way we might pity someone we drive past on the interstate or someone we see on the news, maybe praying briefly for and then moving on with our lives. Christ is “full of pity joined with power.” Notice the authority with which He declared to the second criminal, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Christ is the only One able to open blind eyes and make dead hearts come alive. He is both willing and able to save helpless sinners.
My prayer is that as you read this passage, you will see your sinful condition freshly, and rather than proudly disdaining the only true hope in life and in death, you will turn to Christ and “venture on Him, venture wholly,” allowing “no other trust intrude.”

04/01/2026

At the Empty Tomb: Angels
Matthew 28:1-9
Jennings Duncan

Matthew 28:1-9 portrays a microcosm of the Christian life, showing us the good news that enables us to fight and the Comforting Conqueror who has put even death to rest. Here is that glorious moment in which we see in full view the Messiah rise as the one who has accomplished all that was purposed for Him! This is what our confession, “Jesus is Lord,” is contingent upon. It is understandable that many of us might want to skip straight to the angelic assurance or even the women worshiping at the feet of Christ the Victor. And yet in doing this, we miss something of the full beauty of this moment.
They rose early. Matthew begins with a somber scene: Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” visiting the tomb of Christ. No doubt this walk was filled with deep wrestling – the hard work of reconciling what we see with what we know and believe. These women had placed their hope in Jesus Christ as the long-awaited Messiah, the very hope of Israel. And that same hope had been arrested, falsely tried, abused, mocked, publicly executed, and now buried. Could He really be who He claimed to be and suffer such things? Still, even in their wrestling, in the face of silence, they walked. It is a beautiful picture of what we are called to do as Christians, in the midst of our world, testifying against the power and goodness of God. We walk, and we trust, and we never trust in vain. Neither did they. And when the two Marys encounter the echoing angelic greeting, “Do not be afraid,” we should not be surprised that the angel neglects to address his “appearance like lightning” or the earthquakes that accompanied his arrival. Their present fears were more than their present sights, and all could only be put to rest by assurance of God’s plan, God’s promise. The angel’s message is the Christian’s hope: “He is not here, for He has risen.” We can only imagine the elation those two women felt! The funeral party now turns to celebrate the wedding supper of the Lamb! The angel tells them to go quickly, and they do just that – “with fear and great joy!” The two Marys illustrate that obedience and joy are complements in true Christian living.
And now they encounter the Master, who has turned the greatest injustice in the history of the world into the very act which has satisfied God’s justice, reconciling rebels unto Himself. They cannot but worship Him. His words to them are ones of comfort, the same as the angel’s: “Do not be afraid; go and tell.” Even in His triumph, the King is focused on the comfort of His people. He is Lord of all of our fears and repurposes every evil for His people’s good. He is the Conqueror of Death. He is the King of Life. He is Jesus Christ. Do not be afraid. Go and tell.

03/31/2026

At the Cross: Mourners
John 19:38-42
Shirley Windham

Death is the most bitter pill to swallow. Through our tears we mourn the loss of presence and relationship, of hopes and dreams.
Sometimes we mourn that which never was, or that which was never meant to be. Grief is highly skilled at ambushing us.
But then they show up. The mourners’ friends, family, church family, fellow-mourners as it were. They patiently line the pews and halls in order to take their turn whispering words of consolation, reassurance, and comfort. Gathering at graveside they declare yet again their only comfort in life and death is that they are not their own, but belong body and soul to their faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. At the funeral service of worship, singing, praying, preaching the word, and praising God who has made a way for sinners, bolsters the weary-hearted yet again. And afterward, if you live in Mississippi, the church ladies with their cavalry of casseroles, help to make mourning a bit more palatable. By God’s grace and through the hands of fellow mourners, the grieving receive a glimpse of joy restored. His friends held a funeral for Jesus. They showed up. That in itself is remarkable as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, the two friends, previously met with Jesus in secret or in the dark of night. For Jesus, a man of no early means, the tomb of a wealthy man was provided, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 53:9. The two men, seemingly unaware these particular efforts would not be necessary, prepared his body for burial. And because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and the Sabbath was at hand, the mourners laid their friend in the tomb. We have no record that the women were there at that particular moment, or that any meal for mourners was served. Jesus’ memorial meal had already taken place in the upper room, and He had told His disciples, “You will weep and lament… You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy” (John 16:20). Death and grief made a way for sinners. For mourners Joseph and Nicodemus, for us, there can be joy in the mourning – for there will be joy in the morning.

03/30/2026

At the Cross: Soldiers
John 19:31-37
Chase Wynn

The soldiers pierced Jesus’ side, and out came blood and water. I love when images from the natural world recur prominently throughout the Bible: trees, mountains, water. Reading about the blood and the water flowing out from Christ’s side, I think about the river that flowed out from Eden at the beginning of the Bible, and the River of Life we are told will flow through God’s new creation in the Bible’s last chapters. Even in the Gospel of John, this is not the first we’ve read of water: Jesus tells the woman by the well, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14)
Water of life in the beginning of God’s story, water of life at the end, and here at the Bible’s climax, we again have the image of water flowing when the soldiers pierce the body of God’s son – but this water flows along with Christ’s precious blood, the cost to Jesus in bringing us that water of eternal life.
Seeing this unity of thought and images that runs through our Bible, who could not marvel at its beauty?
But God’s Word isn’t worthy of praise just because it’s beautifully told – it’s praiseworthy because it is the truth. Underneath the artistry, it’s the witness at the cross in verse 35 of this chapter that makes this story truly beautiful: “He who saw it has borne witness – his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth – that you also may believe.”

03/30/2026

Devotions for Holy Week:
An Introduction, By David Strain

The gospels depict the cast of characters who gathered at the foot of the Cross in ways that draw us into the mystery of what happened that first Good Friday. The callous indifference to brutality displayed by the soldiers; the vitriol of those who mocked Jesus in his agonies; the two thieves who responded in such contrasting ways to the man crucified between them; the mourning Pharisees, Joseph and Nicodemus, who finally stepped from the shadows of equivocation to own their allegiance to Jesus, but only after His death when all appeared lost: each exposes another response of the human heart to the Cross of Jesus Christ. There is skepticism, shading towards contempt. There is eleventh-hour faith to assure us it’s never too late. There is resolve to follow Jesus when a commitment like that could cost us everything.
But this cast of characters is much more than a mirror in which to see ourselves. It is a window through which to see Jesus more clearly than ever. So, when the soldiers twist a crown of thorns together and push it into His scalp, their actions proclaimed unwittingly the true nature of Christ’s kingship. When the jeering crowds called for Him who saved others now to save Himself, they did not realize that they were explaining His substitutionary sufferings. When the dying thief begged Jesus for pardon, he showed us the true greatness of the mercy that flows from the sufferings of Jesus to even the worst of sinners. And when the shame-faced Pharisees prepared Jesus’ body for burial at great risk to themselves, they were reminding us that, in light of Christ’s death, “were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small, love so amazing so divine demands my soul my life my all.”
There is one final group of supporting characters that we will consider. They assembled, not at the Cross on Good Friday, but at the empty tomb on Easter Sunday morning. The angelic witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection remind us of the glory and wonder of the

Life Line Screening is coming to the First Presbyterian Church on Tuesday, January 20th!
01/07/2026

Life Line Screening is coming to the First Presbyterian Church on Tuesday, January 20th!

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551 S Wood Street
Mora, MN
55051

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+13206791969

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