Evangelical Covenant Church, Thief River Falls

06/14/2026

June 14 Service

06/07/2026

June 7 Service

05/24/2026

Sunday May 24th Service

04/02/2026

Tonight is our Maundy Thursday Tennebrae Service....7 pm at Evangelical Covenant of TRF. This is auch a powerful service! It's not only a don't miss for you...but it's also an invite others!

03/28/2026

Don't forget. .....Easter Bunny photos, crafts, snacks, gift bags 9-11am @ TRF Covenant Church 1425 3rd St E

03/04/2026

01/18/2026

No Worship Service Today, Sunday, 1/18/26!
Dear Church Family and Visitors,

Out of an abundance of caution, the General Board has decided to cancel church today, Sunday, January 18th, due to the blizzard warning.

Even though we are not meeting today, we would love to pray for you! Prayer requests may be sent to [email protected].

The Second Half of the Annual Meeting will be rescheduled for February 1st at 11:30 am (following the Worship Service).

Family Movie Night will be rescheduled for January 25th at 6:30 pm.

12/27/2025

Walk to Bethlehem - Day 20

Day 20. Words Are the Greatest Gifts

“I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” John 15:11

Words may be the best-kept secret of Christmas. Even more important than the items we purchase and the packages we wrap are the letters we write and the phrases we utter. And once you discover the secret, you might spend less time sweating over what to buy and give more energy to crafting what to say.

Jesus’ own words are what should make us pause and ponder the power of words at Christmas, and all year long. In John 15:11, he says to his followers:

I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

It’s one thing to feel happy for a fleeting moment. It’s quite another to have Jesus’ own joy coursing inside of you—not only to taste joy but experience fullness of joy. So how does that happen? How does Jesus’ own delight—dwelling in him, empowering him, filling his soul— become ours? How does his happiness come to dwell in and empower and fill us?

The answer, he says, is the wonder of words. Words are God’s vessel for passing joy from one soul to another.

Jesus’ Own Joy in Us
Our human lives are awash in words. We encounter (and produce) tens of thousands of them every day. We’re prone to take their function and power for granted, when we should regularly marvel.

In John 17:13, Jesus turns to his Father and prays about his disciples:

Now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

All the things Jesus said (and then caused to be captured and preserved for us in the Gospels) he said not just that we would have joy, but that his own joy in his Father might be in us. It’s almost too magnificent to contemplate. If Jesus himself had not said it, we would not presume it were so.

But Jesus really does mean to share his own joy with us. And he does so through words. He designs that his followers hear and receive his words, and feed their souls on them, as the prophet Jeremiah was fed by God’s word, and tasted them as his joy and delight (Jeremiah 15:16). How can we not exclaim with John Wesley, “Oh, give me that Book”?

And Jesus models for us how we can pass his joy on to others, at Christmas and year-round. As joy fills and expands in a soul, it rises to the level of expression. The vocal cords sound, the lips and teeth move, and the words pass through the air and into the open holes in the sides of our head called ears. Invisible words pass into the open receptacles and down into our souls, and one person’s joy feeds another’s. Not just from Jesus to us, but from others to us—and from us to others. All through words.

“Magic” Words of Joy
If we weren’t so familiar with words, and were to learn about their power for the first time, it would sound like magic. You mean someone with a full heart of priceless joy in God can exhale, sound and shape these invisible vessels of joy (which pass through the air, into my head, and down into my soul), and by faith give me real and lasting joy? Yes, it is amazing.

And it gets even better. As we draw from a full tank of joy, to transmit through words our joy to fill another’s tank, our own joy doesn’t go down but up! “Praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment,” the author C. S. Lewis once said.

When we stay quiet about what makes us happiest, we don’t preserve our happiness. Hearts don’t stay full by us keeping the lid on them. Our joy dwindles when we stay quiet. But when our joy inspires us to expend energy to express it in understandable words—which can be hard work—our joy actually ripens, deepens, expands, and “completes the enjoyment.” Giving ourselves to the effort it takes to carefully say it (or write it) both sweetens our delight and makes it more contagious. Others can share in it when they hear about it.

Which makes us want to tell others not just that we’re happy but why. What is the fuel on our fire? Instead of just saying, “I’m happy,” why not say instead, “Messiah has come”? Instead of just saying, “I’m hopeful,” say why you have hope. Instead of just saying, “Jesus is my treasure,” say what specifically makes him feel supremely valuable.

God’s Own Joy in His Word
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that words hold such power—yes, for spreading discontent and ruining Christmas, but also for sharing joy and making it what it is.

After all, when God himself reaches into our world to communicate to us through his Son, he calls him “the Word” (John 1:1). God’s Word in Jesus to us is so rich and deep and full and personal that what he sends forth is not just an invisible word but a Word-person. God has spoken to us, not just through prophets and apostles but “by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2). Jesus’ person and work is the very embodiment and climactic expression of what God has to say to humanity—and the grace and joy he has to offer.

In his first advent, the Word became flesh that the very joy of God—eternal, unquenchable, unshakable—might become our joy. That Word, his words, and our words about him are the greatest gifts of Christmas. So, let’s learn the secret. Even more valuable than anything we can wrap in paper is the joy we can capture in words, whether spoken or written, to help fill others with the sweetest delight a soul can taste: Jesus’ own fullness of joy.

Father in heaven, this Christmas make our words your means of joy. Keep us from souring the great occasion of Christmas with the lingering discontent in our souls. Grant instead that the joy in us, through Christ, would rise to the level of sweet, encouraging, upbuilding, hopeful words. Make our mouths to be foundations of contagious joy in Christ this Christmas. May Jesus be honored in our words, and may the hearts of our friends and family be enriched, rather than encumbered, by the things we say. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Taken from The Christmas We Didn't Expect: Daily Devotions for Advent by David Mathis. Available for purchase at Amazon.com.

12/23/2025

Walk to Bethlehem - Day 19

Day 19. Christmas Tests Our Treasure

“It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Acts 20:35

’Tis the season to test our treasure. The days leading up to Christmas bid us dig deeper in our wallets than any other season.

Which may be a great annoyance for Scrooge—but it is a great opportunity for the Christian to put to the test one of the great realities in the universe: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Consider three truths for Christmas spending and year-end giving.

1. Money Is a Tool
It can be easy to forget that the problem isn’t money but our hearts. It is not money, but “the love of money,” that is “a root of all kinds of evils” (1 Timothy 6:10), and from which we should keep our lives free (Hebrews 13:5). Finances, salaries, and budgets themselves are an important part of the world that our Lord created and entered into as a creature.

When people asked him about taxes to Caeser, Jesus didn’t decry the evils of money but relativized its value in relation to God (Matthew 22:21). Whey they came looking for his temple tax, he didn’t rebuke them but made (miraculous) provision for both himself and Peter (Matthew 17:27). He even commended, in the face of Judas’s objections, Mary’s lavish display of love in anointing his feet with expensive ointment worth more than a year’s wages (John 12:3-8). Jesus would have us go so far as to “make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:9). In other words, money is a tool that can be used for long-term Godward goals, not just short-term selfish purposes.

And tools are made to be used. Holding on to money will not satisfy our souls or meet the needs of others. And Christmas is a good time to put our finances to work in the service of love.

2. How We Use Money Reveals Our Hearts
Matthew 6:21 holds an important reminder for every December: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Hoarding our money says something: that we fear not having sufficient
resources for the future. Penny-pinching betrays our unbelief in the provision of our heavenly Father (Matthew 6:26) and his promise to “supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).

Giving, on the other hand, is an opportunity to show, and reinforce, the place of faith and love in our hearts. It’s a chance to gladly cultivate the mind of Christ through our spending: “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4).

But the greatest test of our treasure is not whether we’re willing to spend it, but who and what we spend it on. In particular, Christmas is an occasion to look past the small joys of self-oriented spending, and pursue the greater pleasures of spending on others.

3. Surplus and Sacrifice Varies from Person to Person
Hoarding and generosity aren’t the only options. For most of us, the vast majority of our spending goes to meet our own everyday needs and those of our families. God provides us with income for such purposes. And to many of us, he gives resources beyond our needs and enables us to join him in the joy of giving to others.

This raises the question of what qualifies as “our needs.” Is it simply food, clothing, and shelter in meager proportions? Where is the line between righteous and unrighteous spending on ourselves? The great bishop and theologian Augustine of Hippo (354-430) offers us one time-tested standard in “the needs of this life,” summarized by author Rebecca DeYoung as being…

… not just what is necessary for bare subsistence, but also what is necessary for living a life “becoming” or appropriate to human beings. The point is not to live on crusts of bread with bare walls and threadbare clothes. The point is that a fully human life is lived in a way free from being enslaved to our stuff. Our possessions are meant to serve our needs and our humanness, rather than our lives being centered around service to our possessions and our desires for them. (Glittering Vices, p 106)

No doubt, discerning what is (and is not) “a fully human life…free from being enslaved to our stuff” will vary from person to person, place to place, and age to age. “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart” (2 Corinthians 9:7). We do well to be more critical of ourselves than of others on this score, remembering how prone we are, when it comes to money, to be hard on others and easy on ourselves.

One reality to acknowledge is that “a fully human life” is not a static existence. God made us for rhythms and cadences, for feasting and fasting, for noise and crowds, and silence and solitude. So we are wise to avoid both extremes of sustained opulence and sustained austerity. And while discerning precisely what’s too little or too much is no easy task, John Piper wisely observes, “the impossibility of drawing a line between night and day doesn’t mean you can’t know it’s midnight.”

One important test is sacrifice. Do you ever abstain from something you’d otherwise think of as “the needs of life” in order to give to others? Few acts lay bare our hearts like sacrifice. When we are willing not only to give from our excess but to embrace some personal loss for the sake of showing generosity toward others, we say loudly and clearly, even if only to our own souls, that we have a greater love than ourselves and our comforts.

The Most Cheerful Giver
In the end, as cheerfully as we may give, we cannot outgive the truly cheerful Giver. Willingly, he gave his own Son (John 3:!6; Romans 8:32), as he had decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion but with overflowing joy.

God loves cheerful givers because he is one - the supreme one. And every gift we give in Christ is simply an echo of what we have already received and of the immeasurable riches to come (Ephesians 2:7).

Father in heaven, here at Christmas save us from the heart of Scrooge, and make us more like you. You are truly the ultimate Giver. Christmas expresses your stunning generosity. You gave your own Son to the constraints and miseries of our humanity and world. And wha love you have demonstrated in history, for all to see, in that while we were still sinners, Christ dies for us. So, Father, bend our hearts to be more like yours this Christmas. May we know as never before, the heights and depths and riches of the blessedness of giving. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Taken from The Christmas We Didn't Expect: Daily Devotions for Advent by David Mathis. Available for purchase at Amazon.com.

12/23/2025

Walk to Bethlehem - Day 18

Day 18. Christmas Doesn’t Ignore Your Pain

“[We are] sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” 2 Corinthians 6:10

Some buoyant personalities can celebrate Christmas even in hard seasons of life, seemingly unfazed. But for others, all the talk of joy and merriment at Christmas can make our sorrows feel all the more acute and our pains all the more painful. Normal life is hard enough. It’s even harder when all the world seems to be singing, ringing bells, and pretending everything’s suddenly merry. The pressure to feel the joy of Christmas can make joy all the more difficult.

The real Christmas, however, does not ignore our pain. When we open the pages of Scripture and turn to that first Christmas, we find, without doubt, that all was not merry and bright. The new glimpses of merriness that do emerge fall against a backdrop of misery and disorder. Those first rays of brightness shone in a land of deep darkness.

Mary and Joseph
First, consider Mary. Doubtless much excitement and anticipation came with the angel’s announcement—along with great confusion and misunderstanding. Soon she would be showing. She was betrothed but unmarried. Soon the watching eyes of her native Nazareth would make her the subject of their whispering and judgments. Even three decades later, her son’s enemies would play the card when outmaneuvered: “We were not born of sexual immorality” (John 8:41, emphasis added). If Jesus couldn’t leave such rumors behind, then even less could Mary.

And consider Joseph. His betrothed “was found to be with child” before their marriage. What disgrace would have attended this news for him? How deeply hurt must he have felt to find her pregnant? She had seemed so wonderful, so chaste, so favored by God. What dreams were certainly shattered? What turmoil he must have faced, for however long those hours and days dragged on between learning of her pregnancy and the angel later appearing to him in a dream, appealing to him to “take Mary as [his] wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20). Joseph trusted the angel’s words, but he must have had his momentary lapses. And word of his dream wouldn’t have stopped the gossip around town.

Sins He Came to Take
More significant than Joseph’s or Mary’s pain, however, is the pain and sin and suffering and ruin for which Jesus came. The angel declared to Joseph, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21, emphasis added). Every Jew agreed that God’s people needed saving—from Roman occupation and dominion, that is. The coming of Christ was at least a reminder of their political subjugation to pagan Gentiles. But the angel’s announcement to Joseph didn’t even mention Rome. God’s first-covenant people indeed needed saving—from their own sins: from the darkness and corruption within them.

If God’s people, not to mention the nations, weren’t needy—and desperately so—there would have been no Christmas. Christ did not come to put on a show or make a cameo appearance in history. He came to bring life to the dead, to rescue the perishing, to heal the sick, to destroy the works of the devil. For centuries, misery and darkness had been compounded. Only in coming to save such a depraved and disfigured world would his arrival signal hope for any real merriment and brightness.

A Sword to Pierce Your Soul
Yet the relief of our pain would come through his. Mary must have experienced a shock when she presented her newborn son in the temple. An old man named Simeon declared his sense that this child was the Christ, but then he turned to look Mary in the eye and spoke to her a sobering prophetic word:

Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed. (Luke 2:34-35)

Her child being the Christ would not mean immunity from controversy, enemies, and great pain—but precisely the opposite. And Mary herself would have “a sword … pierce through [her] own soul also.” What could this mean but that some great tragedy was appointed? Could her own soul be pierced by anything other than his premature death?

Joy Deeper Than Sorrow
The earthly life that began at Christmas was not to be an easy one: not at birth, not in infancy, not in adulthood. Isaiah had prophesied that the Christ would be despised and rejected, and he was; that he would be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and indeed he was (Isaiah 53:3). But this life, painful and challenging as it would be, was not unacquainted with the deep, deep joy that could sustain the man of sorrows.

Christmas doesn’t ignore our many pains; neither does it bid us wallow in them. Christmas takes them seriously—more seriously than any secular celebration can—and reminds us that our God has seen our pain and heard our cries for help (as in Exodus 2:23-25; 3:7-9; 6:5), and he himself has come to deliver us.

Christmas, at its best, gives us a peek of the uncompromised joy that is coming, and as we glimpse it, even from afar, we have a foretaste. Like the apostle Paul, and the man of sorrows himself, we are “sorrowful yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10). We may be overwhelmingly sorrowful at Christmas, and yet, in Christ, by his Spirit, God can give us the resilience to rejoice.

Father in heaven, in our toughest seasons of life, it’s good to know that you’re not pressuring us to feign merriment. You see our pains. You hear our cries for help. And what greater demonstration of your care and concern could we have than that you sent your own Son into our world of sin and chaos and frustrations that first Christmas to come to our rescue? O Father, in our sufferings and stress, grant that we do not ignore the great display of your love in sending your Son to die for us. Touch our souls this Christmas. Show us that real joy is possible, even in the midst of pain. Give us a glimpse and foretaste of the glory to come. In Jesus’ healing name we pray. Amen.

Taken from The Christmas We Didn't Expect: Daily Devotions for Advent by David Mathis. Available for purchase at Amazon.com.